tihraxy of trhe t:heclo0ical Seminar jo
PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY
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PRESENTED BY
The Estate of the
Rev. Harold F, Pellegrin
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AN
Exposition
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NOV 22 1941
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Bible
A SERIES OF EXPOSITIONS COVERING
ALL THE BOOKS of the OLD and
NEW TESTAMENT
Marcus Dods, D. D.,
R. A. Watson, D, D.,
Dean F. W. Farrar, D. D.,
Alexander MacLaren, D. D.,
S. H. Kellogg, D U ,
j Monro Gibson, D. D.,
H. C. G. MouLE, D. D.,
Robert Rainy, D. D.,
J. R. LuMBY, D. D.,
BY
G. A. Chadwick, D. D., George Adam Smith, D.D.,LL.D.
Andrew Harper, D. D., W. G. Blaikie, D. D., LL.D.,
W. H. Bennett, M. A., W. F. Adeney, M. A.,
R. F. HoRTON, D. D., Samuel Cox, D. D.,
C. J. Ball, M. A., John Skinner, M. A.,
Henry Burton, M. A., G. T. Stokes, D. D.,
James Denney, D. D., G. G. Findlay, D. D.,
A. Plummer, D. D., T. C. Edwards, D. D.,
W. Alexander, D. D., W. Milligan, D. D.
Vol. I.
GENESIS— RUTH.
PRINTED INDEPENDENTLY OF THE ENGLISH EDITORS AND OF OTHER PUBLISHERS
BY AND FOR
THE S. S. SCRANTON CO.,
HARTFORD, CONN.
1910.
THE BOOK OF GENESIS,
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Chapter I. Chapter XVI.
The Creation 5 Sacrifice of Isaac,
Chapter II.
The Fall.
Chapter III.
Cain and Abel, ...... II
Chapter IV.
Cain's Line, and Enoch 15
Chapter XVII.
8 Ishmael and Isaac,
Chapter XVIII.
Purchase of Machpelah,
Chapter XIX.
Isaac's Marriage,
Chapter V. Esau and Jacob,
The Flood, « . .18
Chapter XX.
Chapter XXI.
Chapter VI.
Jacob's Fraud,
Noah's Fall,
21
Chapter XXII.
Chapter VII. Jacob's Flight and Dream,
The Call of Abraham 24 Chapter XXIII.
Chapter VIII. Jacob at Peniel. . . .
Abram in Egypt 28 Chapter XXIV.
Jacob's Return,
Chapter IX.
Lot's Separation from Abram, .... 31 Chapter XXV.
Joseph's Dreams,
Chapter X.
Abram's Rescue of Lot, 34 Chapter XXVI.
Joseph in Prison,
Chapter XI.
Chapter XXVII.
Covenant with Abram,
. *
38
Pharaoh's Dreams,
Chapter XII.
Birth of Ishmael, . . . . , . 4I
Chapter XXVIII.
Joseph's Administration,
Chapter XIII.
The Covenant Sealed,
. .
Chapter XXIX.
* ^ Visits of Joseph's Brethren,
Chapter XIV. Chapter XXX.
Abraham's Intercession for Sodom, ... 47 The Reconciliation
Chapter XV. Chapter XXXI.
Destruction of the Cities of the Plain, . . 51 The Blessings of the Tribes, . ,
page
54
• 57
c 61
64
. 68
• 71,
. 74
. 77
. 81
84
. 89
• 93
. 97
. 100
X04
. 108
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
BY MARCUS DODS, D. D.
CHAPTER I.
THE CREATION.
Genesis i. and ii.
IF any one is in search of accurate information
regarding the age of this earth, or its relation to
the sun, moon, and stars, or regarding the order
ill which plants and animals have appeared upon
it, he is referred to recent text-books in astron-
omy, geology, and palseontology. No one for a
moment dreams of referring a serious student of
these subjects to the Bible as a source of infor-
mation. It is not the object of the writers of
Scripture to impart physical instruction or to
enlarge the bounds of scientific knowledge. But
if any one wishes to know what connection the
world has with God, if he seeks to trace back all
that now is to the very fountain-head of life, if
he desires to discover some unifying principle,
some illuminating purpose in the history of this
earth, then we confidently refer him to these
and the subsequent chapters of Scripture as his
safest, and indeed his only, guide to the informa-
tion he seeks. Every writing must be judged by
the object the writer has in view. If the object
of the writer of these chapters was to convey
physical information, then certainly it is im-
perfectly fulfilled. But if his object was to give
an intelligible account of God's relation to the
world and to man, then it must be owned that
he has been successful in the highest degree.
It is therefore unreasonable to allow our rever-
ence for this writing to be lessened because it
does not anticipate the discoveries of physical
science; or to repudiate its authority in its own
department of truth because it does not give us
information which it formed no part of the
writer's object to give. As well might we deny
to Shakespeare a masterly knowledge of human
life, because his dramas are blotted by historical
anachronisms. That the compiler of this book
of Genesis did not aim at scientific accuracy in
speaking of physical details is obvious, not
merely from the general scope and purpose of
the Biblical writers, but especially from this,
that in these first two chapters of his book he
lays side by side two accounts of man's creation
which no ingenuity can reconcile. These two
accounts, glaringly incompatible in details, but
absolutely harmonious in their leading ideas, at
once warn the reader that the writer's aim is
rather to convey certain ideas regarding man's
spiritual history and his connection with God,
than to describe the process of creation. He
does describe the process of creation, but he de-
scribes it only for the sake of the ideas regarding
man's relation to God and God's relation to the
world which he can thereby convey. Indeed
what we mean by scientific knowledge was not
in all the thoughts of the people for whom this
book was written. The subject of creation, of
the beginning of man upon earth, was not ap-
proached from that side at all; and if we are to
understand what is here written we must burst
the trammels of our own modes of thought and
read these chapters not as a chronological,
astronomical, geological, biological statement,
but as a moral or spiritual conception.
It will, however, be said, and with much ap-
pearance of justice, that although the first object
of the writer was not to convey scientific infor-
mation, yet he might have been expected to be
accurate in the information he did advance re-
garding the physical universe. This is an enor-
mous assumption to make on a priori grounds,
but it is an assumption worth seriously consider-
ing because it brings into view a real and im-
portant difficulty which every reader of Genesis
must face. It brings into view the twofold char-
acter of this account of creation. On the one
hand it is irreconcilable with the teachings of
science. On the other hand it is in striking con-
trast to the other cosmogonies which have been
handed down from prescientific ages. These
are the two patent features of this record of crea-
tion and both require to be accounted for.
Either feature alone would be easily accounted
for; but the two co-existing in the same docu-
ment are more baffling. We have to account at
once for a want of perfect coincidence with the
teachings of science, and for a singular freedom
from those errors which disfigure all other
primitive accounts of the creation of the world.
The one feature of the document is as patent as
the other and presses equally for explanation.
Now many persons cut the knot by simply de-
nying that both these features exist. There is
no disagreement with science, they say. I speak
for many careful enquirers when I say that this
cannot serve as a solution of the difficulty. I
think it is to be freely admitted that, from what-
ever cause and however justifiably, the account
of creation here given is not in strict and de-
tailed accordance with the teaching of science.
All attempts to force its statements into such ac-
cord are futile and mischievous. They are futile
because they do not convince independent en-
quirers, but only those who are unduly anxious
to be convinced. And they are mischievous be-
cause they unduly prolong the strife between
Scripture and science, putting the question on a
false issue. And above all, they are to be con-
demned because they do violence to Scripture,
foster a style of interpretation by which the text
is forced to say whatever the interpreter desires,
and prevent us from recognising the real nature
of these sacred writings. The Bible needs no
defence such as false constructions of its lan-
guage bring to its aid. They are its worst
friends who distort its words that they may yield
a meaning more in accordance with scientific
truth. If, for example, the word, "day" in
these chapters, does not mean a period of
twenty-four hours, the interpretation of Scrip-
ture is hopeless. Indeed if we are to bring these
chapters into any comparison at all with science,
we find at once various discrepancies. Of a
creation of sun, moon, and stars, subsequent to
the creation of this earth, science can have but
one thing to say. Of the existence of fruit trees
prior to the existence of the sun, science knows
nothing. But for a candid and unsophisticated
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
reader without a special theory to maintain, de-
tails are needless.
Accepting this chapter then as it stands, and
believing that only by looking at the Bible as it
actually is can we hope to understand God's
method of revealing Himself, we at once per-
ceive that ignorance of some departments of
truth does not disqualify a man for knowing and
imparting truth about God. In order to be a
medium of revelation a man does not need to be
in advance of his age in secular learning. Inti-
mate communion with God, a spirit trained to
discern spiritual things, a perfect understanding
of and zeal for God's purpose, these are qualities
quite independent of a knowledge of the discov-
eries of science. The enlightenment which en-
ables men to apprehend God and spiritual truth
has no necessary connection with scientific at-
tainments. David's confidence in God and his
declarations of His faithfulness are none the less
valuable, because he was ignorant of a very great
deal which every schoolboy now knows. Had
inspired men introduced into their writings in-
formation which anticipated the discoveries of
science, their state of mind would be inconceiva-
ble, and revelation would be a source of confu-
sion. God's methods are harmonious with one
another, and as He has given men natural facul-
ties to acquire scientific knowledge and historical
information. He did not stultify this gift by im-
parting such knowledge in a miraculous and un-
intelligible manner. There is no evidence that
inspired men were in advance of their age in the
knowledge of physical facts and laws. And
plainly, had they been supernaturally instructed
in physical knowledge they would so far have
been unintelligible to those to whom they spoke.
Had the writer of this book mingled with his
teaching regarding God, an explicit and exact
account of how this world came into existence —
had he spoken of millions of years instead of
speaking of days — in all probability he would
have been discredited, and what he had to say
about God would have been rejected along with
his premature science. But speaking from the
point of view of his contemporaries, and accept-
ing the current ideas regarding the formation of
the world, he attached to these the views regard-
ing God's connection with the world which are
most necessary to be believed. What he had
learned of God's unity and creative power and
connection with man, by the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost, he imparts to his contemporaries
through the vehicle of an account of creation
they could all understand. It is not in his knowl-
edge of physical facts that he is elevated above
his contemporaries, but in his knowledge of
God's connection with all physical facts. No
doubt, on the other hand, his knowledge of God
reacts upon the entire contents of his mind and
saves him from presenting such accounts of crea-
tion as have been common among polytheists.
He presents an account purified by his concep-
tion of what was worthy of the supreme God he
worshipped. His idea of God has given dignity
and simplicity to all he says about creation, and
there is an elevation and ma;esty about the
whole conception, which we recognise as the re-
flex of his conception of God.
Here then instead of anything to discompose
us or to excite unbelief, we recognise one great
law or principle on which God proceeds in mak-
ing Himself known to men. This has been
called the Law of Accommodation. It is the
law which requires that the condition and ca
pacity of those to whom the revelation is made
must be considered. If you wish to instruct a
child, you must speak in language the child can
understand. If you wish to elevate a savage,
you must do it by degrees, accommodating your-
self to his condition, and winking at much igno-
rance while you instil elementary knowledge.
You must found all you teach on what is
already understood by your pupil, and through
that you must convey further knowledge and
train his faculties to higher capacity. So was
it with God's revelation. The Jews were chil-
dren who had to be trained with what Paul
somewhat contemptuously calls " weak and beg-
garly elements," the A B C of morals and re-
ligion. Not even in morals could the absolute
truth be enforced. Accommodation had to be
practised even here. Polygamy was allowed as
a concession to their immature stage of develop-
ment: and practices in war and in domestic law
were permitted or enjoined which were incon-
sistent with absolute morality. Indeed the
whole Jewish system was an adaptation to an
immature state. The dwelling of God in the
Temple as a man in- his house, the propitiating
of God with sacrifice as of an Eastern king with
gifts; this was a teaching by picture, a teaching
which had as much resemblance to the truth and
as much mixture of truth as they were able then
to receive. No doubt this teaching did actually
mislead them in some of their ideas; but it kept
them on the whole in a right attitude toward
God, and prepared them for growing up to a
fuller discernment of the truth.
Much more was this law observed in regard to
such matters as are dealt with in these chapters.
It was impossible that in their ignorance of the
rudiments of scientific knowledge, the early
Hebrews should understand an absolutely accu-
rate account of how the world came into being;
and if they could have understood it, it would
have been useless, dissevered as it must have
been from the steps of knowledge by which men
have since arrived at it. Children ask us ques-
tions in answer to which we do not tell them
the exact full truth, because we know they cannot
possibly understand it. All that we can do is to
give them some provisional answer which con-
veys to them some information they can under-
stand, and which keeps them in a right state of
mind, although this information often seems ab-
surd enough when compared with the actual
facts and truth of the matter. And if some
solemn pedant accused us of supplying the child
with false information, we would simply tell him
he knew nothing about children. Accurate in-
formation on these matters will infallibly come
to the child when he grows up; what is wanted
meanwhile is to give him information which will
help to form his conduct without gravely mis-
leading him as to facts. Similarly, if any one
tells me he cannot accept these chapters as in-
spired by God, because they do not convey scien-
tifically accurate information regarding this
earth, I can only say that he has yet to learn the
first principles ot revelation, and that he mis-
understands the conditions on which all instruc-
tion must be given.
My belief then is, that in these chapters we
have the ideas regarding the origin of the world
and of man which were naturally attainable in
the country where they were first composed, but
with those important modifications which a.
Genesis i., ii.]
THE CREATION.
monotheistic belief necessarily suggested. So
far as merely physical knowledge went, there is
probably little here that was new to the contem-
poraries of the writer; but this already familiar
knowledge was used by him as the vehicle for
conveying his faith in the unity, love, and wisdom
of God the creator. He laid a firm foundation for
the history of God's relation to man. This was
his object, and this he accomplished. The Bible
is the book to which we turn for information re-
garding the history of God's revelation of Him-
self, and of His will towards men; and in these
chapters we have the suitable introduction to
this history. No changes in our knowledge of
physical truth can at all affect the teaching of
these chapters. What they teach regarding the
relation of man to God is independent of the
physical details in which this teaching is em-
bodied, and can as easily be attached to the most
modern statement of the physical origin of the
world and of man.
What then are the truths taught us in these
chapters? The first is that there has been a crea-
tion, that things now existing have not just
grown of themselves, but have been called into
being by a presiding intelligence and an origi-
nating will. No attempt to account . for the
existence of the world in any other way has
been successful. A great deal has in this genera-
tion been added to our knowledge of the effi-
ciency of material causes to produce what we
see around us: but when we ask what gives har-
mony to these material causes, and what guides
them to the production of certain ends, and what
originally produced them, the answer must still
be, not matter but intelligence and purpose.
The best informed and most penetrating minds
of our time affirm this. John Stuart Mill says:
" It must be allowed that in the present state of
our knowledge the adaptations in nature afford a
large balance of probability in favor of creation
by intelligence." Professor Tyndall adds his
testimony and says: " I have noticed during
years of self-observation that it is not in hours
of clearness and vigor that [the doctrine of ma-
terial atheism] commends itself to my mind —
that in the hours of stronger and healthier
thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as
offering no solution of the mystery in which we
dwell and of which we form a part."
There is indeed a prevalent suspicion, that in
presence of the discoveries made by evolutionists
the argument trom design is no longer tenable.
Evolution shows us that the correspondence of
the structure of animals, with their modes of life,
has been generated by the nature of the case:
and it is concluded that a blind mechanical
necessity and not an intelligent design rules all.
But the discovery of the process by which the
presently existing living forms have been
evolved, and the perception that this process is
governed by laws which have always been oper-
ating, do not make intelligence and design at all
less necessary, but rather more so. As Pro-
fessor Huxley himself says: "The teleological
and mechanical views of nature are not neces-
sarily exclusive. The teleologist can always defy
the evolutionist to disprove that the primordial
molecular arrangement was not intended to
evolve the phenomena of the universe." Evolu-
tion, in short, by disclosing to us the marvellous
power and accuracy of natural law, compels us
more emphatically than ever to refer all law to
a supreme, originating intelligence.
This then is the first lesson of the Bible; that
at the root and origin of all this vast material
universe, before whose laws we are crushed as
the moth, there abides a living conscious Spirit,
who wills and knows and fashions all things.
The belief of this changes for us the whole face
of nature, and instead of a chill, impersonal
world of forces to which no appeal can be made,
and in which matter is supreme, gives us the
home of a Father. If you are yourself but a
particle of a huge and unconscious universe — a
particle which, like a flake of foam, or a drop of
rain, or a gnat, or a beetle, lasts its brief space
and then yields up its substance to be moulded
into some new creature; if there is no power that
understands you and sympathises with you and
makes provision for your instincts, your aspira-
tions, your capabilities; if man is himself the
highest intelligence, and if all things are the pur-
poseless result of physical forces; if, in short,
there is no God, no consciousness at the begin-
ning as at the end of all things, then nothing can
be more melancholy than our position. Our
higher desires which seem to separate us so im-
measurably from the brutes, we have, only that
they may be cut down by the keen edge of time,
and wither in barren disappointment; our rea-
son we have, only to enable us to see and meas-
ure the brevity of our span, and so live our little
day, not joyously as the unforeseeing beasts, but
shadowed by the hastening gloom of anticipated,
inevitable, and everlasting night; our faculty for
worshipping and for striving to serve and to re-
semble the perfect living One, that faculty which
seems to be the thing of greatest promise and of
finest quality in us, and to which is certainly due
the largest part of what is admirable and profit-
able in human history, is the most mocking and
foolishest of all our parts. But, God be thanked.
He has revealed himself to us; has given us in
the harmonious and progressive movement of all
around us, sufficient indication that, even in the
material world, intelligence and purpose reign;
an indication which becomes immensely clearer
as we pass into the world of man; and which, in
presence of the person and life of Christ, attains
the brightness of a conviction which illuminates
all besides.
The other great truth which this writer teaches
is, that man was the chief work of God, for
whose sake all else was brought into being.
The work of creation was not finished till he ap-
peared: all else was preparatory to this final
product. That man is the crown and lord of this
earth is obvious. Man instinctively assumes
that all els has been made for him, and freely
acts upon this assumption. But when our eyes
are lifted from this little ball on which we are
set and to which we are confined, and when we
scan such other parts of the universe as are
within our ken, a keen sense of littleness op-
presses us; our earth is after all so minute and
apparently inconsiderable a point, when com-
pared with the vast suns and planets that stretch
system on system into illimitable space. When
we read even the rudiments of what astronomers
have discovered regarding the inconceivable
vastness of the universe, the huge dimensions of
the heavenly bodies, and the grand scale on
which everything is framed, we find rising to our
lips, and with tenfold reason, the words of
David: " When I consider Thy heavens, the
work of Thy fingers: the moon and the stars
which Thou hast ordained; what is man that
8
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that
Thou visitest him?" Is it conceivable that on
this scarcely discernible speck in the vastness of
the universe, should be played out the chiefest
?.ct in the history of God? Is it credible that
He whose care it is to uphold this illimitable
universe, should be free to think of the wants
and woes of the insignificant creatures who
quickly spend their little lives in this inconsider-
able earth?
But reason seems all on the side of Genesis.
God must not be considered as sitting apart in a
remote position of general superintendence, but
as present with all that is. And to Him who
maintains these systems in their respective rela-
tions and orbits, it can be no burden to relieve
the needs of individuals. To think of ourselves
as too insignificant to be attended to is to dero-
gate from God's true majesty and to misunder-
stand His relation to the world. But it is also
to misapprehend the real value of spirit as com -
pared with matter. Man is dear to God because
lie is like Him. Vast and glorious as it is, the
sun cannot think God's thoughts; can fulfil but
cannot intelligently sympathise with God's pur-
pose. Man, alone among God's works, can
enter into and approve of God's purpose in the
world and can intelligently fulfil it. Without
man the whole material universe would have
been dark and unintelligible, mechanical and
apparently without any sufficient purpose. Mat-
ter, however fearfully and wonderfully wrought,
is but the platform and material in which spirit,
intelligence, and will may fulfil themselves and
find development. Man is incommensurable
with the rest of the universe. He is of a differ-
ent kind and by his moral nature is more akin to
God than to His works.
Here the beginning and the end of God's
revelation join hands and throw light on one
another. The nature of man was that in which
God was at last to give His crowning revelation,
and for that no preparation could seem extrava-
gant. Fascinating and full of marvel as is the
history of the past which science discloses to
us; full as these slow-moving millions of years
are in evidences of the exhaustless wealth of
nature, and mysterious as the delay appears, all
that expenditure of resources is eclipsed and all
the delay justified when the whole work is
crowned by the Incarnation, for in it we see
that all that slow process was the preparation of
a nature in which God could manifest Himself
as a Person to persons. This is seen to be an
end worthy of all that is contained in the physi-
cal history of the world: this gives completeness
to the whole and makes it a unity. No higher,
other end need be sought, none could be con-
ceived. It is this which seems worthy of those
tremendous and subtle forces which have been
set at work in the physical world, this which
justifies the long lapse of ages filled with won-
ders unobserved, and teeming with ever new life,
this above all which justifies these latter ages in
which all physical marvels have been outdone
by the tragical history of man upon earth. Re-
move the Incarnation and all remains dark, pur-
poseless, unintelligible: grant the Incarnation,
believe that in Jesus Christ the Supreme mani-
fested Himself personally, and light is shed upon
all that has been and is.
Light is shed on the individual life. Are you
living as if you were the product of blind me-
chanical laws, and as if there were no object
worthy of your life and of all the force you can
throw into your life? Consider the. Incarna-
tion of the Creator, and ask yourself if sufficient
object is not given to you in His call that you
be conformed to His image and become the in-
telligent executor of His purposes? Is life not
worth having even on these terms? The man
that can still sit down and bemoan himself as if
there were no meaning in existence, or lounge
languidly through life as if there were no zest or
urgency in living, or try to satisfy himself with
fleshly comforts, has surely need to turn to the
opening page of Revelation and learn that God
saw sufficient object in the life of man, enough
to compensate for millions of ages of prepara-
tion. If it is possible that you should share in
the character and destiny of Christ, can a healthy
ambition crave anything more or higher? If
the future is to be as momentous in results as the
past has certainly been filled with preparation,
have you no caring to share in these results?
Believe that there is a purpose in things; that in
Christ, the revelation of God, you can see what
that purpose is, and that by wholly uniting your-
self to Him and allowing yourself to be pene-
trated by His Spirit you can participate with
Him in the working out of that purpose.
CHAPTER II.
THE FALL.
Genesis iii.
Profound as the teaching of this narrative is,
its meaning does not lie on the surface. Literal
interpretation will reach a measure of its signifi-
cance, but plainly there is more here than ap-
pears in the letter. When we read that the
serpent was more subtile than any beast of the
field which the Lord God had made, and that he
tempted the woman, we at once perceive that it
is not with the outer husk of the story we are to
concern ourselves, but with the kernel. The
narrative throughout speaks of nothing but the
brute serpent; not a word is said of the devil, not
the slightest hint is given that the machinations
of a fallen angel are signified. The serpent is
compared to the other beasts of the field, show-
ing that it is the brute serpent that is spoken of.
The curse is pronounced on the beast, not on a
fallen spirit summoned for the purpose before
the Supreme; and not in terms which could
apply to a fallen spirit, but in terms that are ap-
plicable only to the serpent that crawls. Yet
every reader feels that this is not the whole mys-
tery of the fall of man: moral evil cannot be ac-
counted for by referring it to a brute source.
No one, I suppose, believes that the whole tribe
of serpents crawl as a punishment of an oflfence
committed by one of their number, or that the
whole iniquity and sorrpw of the world are due
to an actual serpent. Plainly this is merely a
pictorial representation intended to convey some
general impressions and ideas. Vitally impor-
tant truths underlie the narrative and are bodied
forth by it; but the way to reach these truths is
not to adhere too rigidly to the literal meaning,
but to catch the general impression which it
seems fitted to make.
No doubt this opens the door to a great va
riety of interpretation. No two men will attacK
to it precisely the same meaning. One says, the
Genesis iii.]
THE FALI,.
serpent is a symbol for Satan, but Adam and Eve
are historical persons. Another says, the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil is a figure, but
the driving out from the garden is real. An-
other maintains that the whole is a picture, put-
ting in a visible, intelligible shape certain vitally
important truths regarding the history of our
lace. So that every man is left very much to his
own judgment, to read the narrative candidly
and in such light from other sources as he has,
and let it make its own impression upon him.
This would be a sad result if the object of the
Bible were to bring us all to a rigid uniformity
of belief in all matters; but the object of the
Bible is not that, but the far higher object of
furnishing all varieties of men with sufficient
light to lead them to God. And this being so,
variety of interpretation in details is not to be
lamented. The very purpose of such representa-
tions as are here given is to suit all stages of
mental and spiritual advancement. Let the
child read it and he will learn what will live in
his mind and influence him all his life. Let the
devout man who has ranged through all science
and history and philosophy come back to this
narrative, and he feels that he has here the essen-
tial truth regarding the beginnings of man's
tragical career upon earth.
We should, in my opinion, be labouring under
a misapprehension if we supposed that none
even of the earliest readers of this account saw
the deeper meaning of it. When men who felt
the misery of sin and lifted up their hearts to
Xjod for deliverance, read the words addressed
to the serpent, " I will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her
seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel " — is it reasonable to suppose
that such men would take these words in their
literal sense, and satisfy themselves with the
assurance that serpents, though dangerous,
would be kept under, and would find in the
words no assurance of that very thing they
themselves were all their lifetime striving after,
deliverance from the evil thing which lay at the
root of all sin? No doubt some would accept
the story in its literal meaning, — shallow and
careless men, whose own spiritual experience
never urged them to see any spiritual signifi-
cance in the words, would do so; but even those
who saw least in the story, and put a very shal-
low interpretation on its details, could scarcel}'
fail to see its main teaching.
The reader of this perennially fresh story is
first of all struck with the account given of man's
primitive condition. Coming to this narrative
with our minds coloured by the fancies of poets
and philosophers, we are almost startled by the
check which the plain and sober statements of
this account give to an unpruned fancy. We
have to read the words again and again to make
sure we have not omitted something which gives
support to those glowing descriptions of man's
primitive condition. Certainly he is described
as innocent and at peace with God, and in this
respect no terms can exaggerate his happiness.
But in other respects the language of the Bible
is surprisingly moderate. Man is represented as
living on fruit, and as going unclothed, and, so
far as appears, without any artificial shelter
either from the heat of the sun or the cold of
night. None of the arts were as yet known.
All working of metals had yet to be discovered,
so that his tools must have been of the rudest
possible description; and the arts, such as music,
which adorn life and make leisure enjoyable,
were also still in the future.
But the most significant elements in man's
primitive condition are represented by the two
trees of the garden; by trees, because with plants
alone he had to do. In the centre of the gar-
den stood the tree of life, the fruit of which be-
stowed immortality. Man was therefore natu-
rally mortal, though apparently with a capacity
for immortality. How this capacity would have
actually carried man on to immortality had he
not sinned, it is vain to conjecture. The mys-
tical nature of the tree of life is fully recognised
in the New Testament, by our Lord, when He
says: "To him that overcometh will I give to
eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of
the Paradise of God;" and by John, when he de-
scribes the new Jerusalem: '' In the midst of the
street of it, and on either side of the river, was
there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner
of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and
the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the
nations." Both these representations are in-
tended to convey, in a striking and pictorial
form, the promise of life everlasting.
And as of the tree of life which stands in the
Paradise of the future it is said " Blessed are
they that do His commandments, that they may
have right to the tree of life;" so in Eden man's
immortality was suspended on the condition of
obedience. And the trial of man's obedience is
imaged in the other tree, the tree of the knowl-
edge of good and evil. From the child-like in-
nocence in which man originally was, he was to
pass forward into the condition of moral man-
hood, which consists not in mere innocence, but
in innocence maintained in presence of tempta-
tion. The savage is innocent of many of the
crimes of civilised men because he has no op-
portunity to commit them; the child is innocent
of some of the vices of manhood because he has
no temptation to them. But this innocence is
the result of circumstance, not of character; and
if savage or child is to become a mature moral
being he must be tried by altered circumstances,
by temptation and opportunity. To carry man
forward to this higher stage trial is necessary,
and this trial is indicated by the tree of knowl-
edge. The fruit of this tree is prohibited, to in-
dicate that it is only in presence of what is for-
bidden man can be morally tested, and that it is
only by self-command and obedience to law.
and not b)' the mere following of instincts, that
man can attain to moral maturity. The prohi-
bition is that which makes him recognise a dis-
tinction between good and evil. He is put in a
position in which good is not the only thing he
can do; an alternative is present to his mind, and
the choice of good in preference to evil is made
possible to him. In presence of this tree child-
like innocence was no longer possible. The self-
determination of manhood was constantly re-
quired. Conscience, hitherto latent, was now
evoked and took its place as man's supreme
faculty.
It is in vain to think of exhausting this narra-
tive. We can, at the most, only remark upon
some of the most salient points.
(i) Temptation comes like a serpent; like the
most subtile beast of the field; like that one
creature which is said to exert a fascinating in-
fluence on its victims, fastening them with its
glittering eye, stealing upon them by its noise-
lO
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
less, low, and unseen approach, perplexing them
by its wide circling folds, seeming to come upon
them from all sides at once, and armed not like
the other beasts with one weapon of ofifence —
horn, or hoof, or teeth — but capable of crushing
its victim with every part of its sinuous length.
It lies apparently dead for months together, but
when roused it can, as the naturalist tells us,
" outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, out-
leap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, and crush
the tiger." How naturally in describing tempta-
tion do we borrow language from the aspect and
movements of this creature. It does not need
to hunt down its victims by long-continued pur-
suit, its victims come and put themselves within
its reach. Unseen, temptation lies by our path,
and before we have time to think we are fasci-
nated and bewildered, its coils rapidly gather
round us and its stroke flashes poison through
our blood. Against sin, when once it has
wreathed itself around us, we seem helpless to
contend; the very powers with which we could
resist are benumbed or pinned useless to our
side — our foe seems all round us, and to extri-
cate one part is but to become entangled in an-
other. As the serpent finds its way everywhere,
over every fence or barrier, into every corner
and recess, so it is impossible to keep tempta-
tion out of the life; it appears where least we
expect it and when we think ourselves secure.
(2) Temptation succeeds at first by exciting
our curiosity. It is a wise saying that " our
great security against sin lies in being shocked
at it. Eve gazed and reflected when she should
have fled." The serpent created an interest, ex-
cited her curiosity about this forbidden fruit.
And as this excited curiosity lies near the begin-
ning of sin in the race, so does it in the indi-
vidual. I suppose if you trace back the mys-
tery of iniquity in your own life and seek to track
it to its source, you will find it to have origi-
nated in this craving to taste evil. No man
originally meant to become the sinner he has
become. He only intended, like Eve, to taste.
It was a voyage of discovery he meant to make;
he did not think to get nipped and frozen up and
never more return from the outer cold and dark-
ness. He wished before finally giving himself
to virtue, to see the real value of the other alter-
native.
This dangerous craving has many elements in
it. There is in it the instinctive drawing towards
what is mysterious. One veiled figure in an
assembly will attract more scrutiny than the
most admired beauty. An appearance in the
heavens that no one can account for will nightly
draw more eyes than the most wonderful sunset.
To lift veils, to penetrate disguises, to unravel
complicated plots, to solve mysteries, this is al-
ways inviting to the human mind. The tale
which used to thrill us in childhood, of the one
locked room, the one forbidden key, bears in it
a truth for men as well as for children. What
is hidden must, we conclude, have some interest
for us — else why hide it from us? What is for-
bidden must have some important bearing upon
us. Else why forbid it? Things which are in-
different to us are left in our way, obvious, and
without concealment. But as action has been
taken regarding the things that are forbidden,
action in view of our relation to them, it is
natural to us to desire to know what these things
are and how they affect us.
There is added to this in young persons, a
sense of incompleteness. They wish to h",
grown up. Few boys wish to be always boy;..
They long for the signs of manhood, and seek
to possess that knowledge of life and its waj>
which they very much identify with manhoo<f.
But too commonly they mistake the path to
manhood. They feel as if they had a widt r
range of liberty and were more thoroughly men
when they transgress the limits assigned by cor—
science. They feel as if there were a new and
brighter world outside that which is fenced
round by strict morality, and they tremble with
excitement on its borders. It is a fatal delusion.
Only by choosing the good in presence of the
evil are true manhood and real maturity gained.
True manliness consists mainly in self-control,
in a patient waiting upon nature and God's law,
and when youth impatiently breaks through the
protecting fence of God's law, and seeks growth
by knowing evil, it misses that very advance-
ment it seeks, and cheats itself out of the man-
hood it apes.
(3) Through this craving for an enlarged ex-
perience unbelief in God's goodness finds en-
trance. In the presence of forbidden pleasu e
we are tempted to feel as if God were grudgirg
us enjoyment. The very arguments of the sc-
pent occur to our mind. No harm will come of
our indulging; the prohibition is needless, un-
reasonable, and unkind; it is not based on ai y
genuine desire for our welfare. This fence that
shuts us out from knowing good and evil is
erected by a timorous asceticism, by a ridicu-
lous misconception of what truly enlarges
human nature; it shuts us into a poor narrow
life. And thus suspicions of God's perfect wis-
dom and goodness find entrance; we begin to
think we know better than He what is good for
us, and can contrive a richer, happier life than
He has provided for us. Our loyalty to Him is
loosened, and already we have lost hold of His
strength and are launched on the current that
leads to sin, misery, and shame. When we find
ourselves saying Yes, where God has said No;
when we see desirable things where God has said
there is death; when we allow distrust of Him
to rankle in our mind, when we chafe against
the restrictions under which we live and seek
liberty by breaking down the fence instead of by
delighting in God, we are on the highway to all
evil.
(4) If we know our own history we cannot be
surprised to read that one taste of evil ruined
our first parents. It is so always. The one
taste alters our attitude towards God and con-
science and life. It is a veritable Circe's cup.
The actual experience of sin is like the one taste
of alcohol to a reclaimed drunkard, like the first
taste of blood to a young tiger, it calls out the
latent devil and creates a new nature within us.
At one brush it wioes out all the peace, and joy,
and self-respect, and boldness of innocence, and
numbers us among the transgressors, among the
shame-faced, and self-despising, and hopeless.
It leaves us possessed with unhappy thoughts
which lead us away from what is bright, and
honourable, and good, and like the letting out
of water it seems to have tapped a spring of evil
within us. It is but one step, but it is like the
step over a precipice or down the shaft of a
mine; it cannot be taken back, it commits to an
altogether different state of things.
(5) The first result of sin is shame. The form
in which the knowledge of good and evil comes
Genesis iv.]
CAIN AND ABEL
II
to us is the knowing we are naked, the con-
sciousness that we are stripped of all that made
us walk unabashed before God and men. The
promise of the serpent while broken in the sense
is fulfilled to the ear; the eyes of Adam and Eve
were opened and they knew that they were
naked. Self-reflection begins, and the first
movement of conscience produces shame. Had
they resisted temptation, conscience would have
been born, but not in self-condemnation. Like
children they had hitherto been conscious only
of what was external to themselves, but now
their consciousness of a power to choose good
and evil is awakened and its first exercise is ac~
companied with shame. They feel that in them-
selves they are faulty, that they are not in them-
selves complete; that though created by God.
they are not fit for His eye. The lower animals
wear no clothes because they have no knowledge
of good and evil; children feel no need of cov-
ering because as yet self-consciousness is latent,
and their conduct is determined for them; those
who are re-made in the image of God and glori-
fied as Christ is, cannot be thought of as
clothed, for in them there is no sense of sin.
But Adam's clothing himself and hiding himself
were the helpless attempts of a guilty conscience
to evade the judgment of truth.
(6) But when Adam found he was no longer
fit for God's eye, God provided a covering which
might enable him again to live in His presence
without dismay. Man had exhausted his own
ingenuity and resources, and exhausted them
without finding relief to his shame. If his
shame was to be efYectually removed, God must
do it. And the clothing in coats of skins indi-
cates the restoration of man, not indeed to pris-
tine innocence, but to peace with God. Adam
felt that God did not wish to banish him last-
ingly from His presence, nor to see him always
a trembling and confused penitent. The self-
respect and progressiveness, the reverence for
law and order and God, which came in with
clothes, and which we associate with the civil-
ised races, were accepted as tokens that God was
desirous to co-operate with man, to forward and
further him in all good.
It is also to be remarked that the clothing
which God provided was in itself different from
what man had thought of. Adam took leaves
from an inanimate, unfeeling tree; God deprived
an animal of life, that the shame of His creature
might be relieved. This was the last thing
Adam would have thought of doing. To us life
is cheap and death familiar, but Adam recog-
nised death as the punishment of sin. Death
was to early man a sign of God's anger. And
he had to learn that sin could be covered not by
a bunch of leaves snatched from a bush as he
passed by and that would grow again next year,
but only by pain and blood. Sin cannot be
atoned for by any mechanical action nor without
expenditure of feeling. Suffering must ever
follow wrongdoing. From the first sin to the
last, the track of the sinner is marked with
blood. Once we have sinned we cannot regain
permanent peace of conscience save through
pain, and this not only pain of our own. The
first hint of this was given as soon as conscience
was aroused in man. It was made apparent that
sin was a real and deep evil, and that by no easy
and cheap process could the sinner be restored.
The same lesson has been written on millions
of consciences since. Men have found that their
sin reaches beyond their own life and person,
that it inflicts injury and involves disturbance
and distress, that it changes utterly our relation
to life and to God, and that we cannot rise above
its consequences save by the intervention of
God Himself, by an intervention which tells us
of the sorrow He suffers on our account.
For the chief point is that it is God who re-
lieves man's shame. Until we are certified that
God desires our peace of mind we cannot be at
peace. The cross of Christ is the permanent
witness to this desire on God's part. No one
can read what Christ has done for us without
feeling sure that for himself there is a way back
to God from all sin — that it is God's desire that
his sin should be covered, his iniquity forgiven.
Too often that which seems of prime importance
to God seems of very slight importance to us.
To have our life founded solidly in harmony
with the Supreme seems often to excite no de-
sire within us. It is about sin we find man first
dealing with God, and until you have satisfied
God and yourself regarding this prime and fun-
damental matter of your own transgression and
wrong-doing you look in vain for any deep and
lasting growth and satisfaction. Have you no
reason to be ashamed before God? Have you
loved Him in any proportion to His worthiness
to be loved? Have you cordially and habitually
fallen in with His will? Have you zealously
done His work in the world? Have you fallen
short of no good He intended you should do
and gave you opportunity to do? Is there no
reason for shame on your part before God?
Has His desire to cover sin no application to
you? Can you not understand His meaning
when He comes to you with offers of pardon and
acts of oblivion? Surely the candid mind, the
clear-judging conscience can be at no loss to ex-
plain God's solicitous concern for the sinner;
and must humbly own that even that unfathom-
able- Divine emotion which is exhibited in the
cross of Christ, is no exaggerated and theatrical
demonstration, but the actual carrying through
of what was really needed for the restoration of
the sinner. Do not live as if the cross of
Christ had never been, or as if you had never
sinned and had no connection with it. Strive to
learn what it means; strive to deal fairly with it
and fairly with your own transgressions and with
your present actual relation to God and His will.
CHAPTER III.
CAIN AND ABEL.
Genesis iv.
It is not the purpose of this narrator to write
the history of the world. It is not his purpose
to write even the history of mankind. His ob-
ject is to write the history of redemption. Start-
ing from the broad fact of man's alienation from
God, he means to trace that element in human
history which results in the perfect re-union of
God and man. The keynote has been struck in
the promise already given that the seed of the
woman should prevail over the seed of the ser-
pent, that the effects of man's voluntary dissoci-
ation from God should be removed. It is the
fulfilment of this promise which is traced by this
writer. He steadily pursues that one line of
history which runs directly towards this fulfil-
12
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
ment; turning aside now and again to pursue, to
a greater or less distance, diverging lines, but
always returning to the grand highway on which
the promise travels. His method is first to dis-
\pose of collateral matter and then to proceed
with his main theme. As here, he first disposes
of the line of Cain and then returns to Seth
through whom the line of promise is maintained.
The first thing we have to do with outside the
garden is death — the curse of sin speedily mani-
fests itself in its most terrible form. But the
sinner executes it himself. The first death is a
murder. As if to show that all death is a wrong
inflicted on us and proceeds not from God but
from sin, it is inflicted by sin and by the hand of
man. Man becomes his own executioner, and
takes part with Satan, the murderer from the be-
ginning. But certainly the first feeling pro-
duced by these events must have been one of
bitter disappointment, as if the promise were to
be lost in the curse.
The story of Cain and Abel was to all appear-
ance told in order to point out that from the
very first men have been divided into two great
classes, viewed in connection with God's promise
and presence in the world. Always there have
been those who believed in God's love and
waited for it, and those who believed more in
their own force and energy. Always there have
been the humble and self-dififident who hoped in
God, and the proud and self-reliant who felt
themselves equal to all the occasions of life.
And this story of Cain and Abel and the suc-
ceeding generations does not conceal the fact,
that for the purposes of this world there has
been visible an element of weakness in the godly
line, and that it is to the self-reliant and God-
defying energy of the descendants of Cain that
we owe much of the external civilisation of the
world. While the descendants of Seth pass
away and leave only this record, that they
" walked with God," there are found among
Cain's descendants, builders of cities, inventors
of tools and weapons, music and poetry and the
beginnings of culture.
These two opposed lines are in the first in-
stance represented by Cain and Abel. With
each child that comes into the world some fresh
hope is brought; and the name of Cain points to
the expectation of his parents that in him a
fresh start would be made. Alas! as the boy
grew they saw how vain such expectation was
and how truly their nature had passed into his,
and how no imparted experience of theirs,
taught him from without, could countervail the
strong propensities to evil which impelled him
from within. They experienced that bitterest
punishment which parents undergo, when they
see their own defects and infirmities and evil
passions repeated in their children and leading
them astray as they once led themselves; when
in those who are to perpetuate their name and
remembrance on earth they see evidence that
their faults also will be perpetuated; when in
those whom they chiefly love they have a mirror
ceaselessly held up to them forcing them to re-
member the follies and sins of their own youth.
Certainly in the proud, self-willed, sullen Cain
no redemption was to be found.
Both sons own the necessity of labour. Man
is no longer in the primitive condition, in which
he had only to stretch out his hand when hun-
gry, and satisfy his appetite. There are still
some regions of the earth in which the trees
shower fruit, nutritious and easily preserved, on
men who shun labour. Were this the case
throughout the world, the whole of life would be
changed. Had we been created self-sufficing or
in such conditions as involved no necessity of
toil, nothing would be as it now is. It is the
need of labour that implies occasional starvation
and frequent poverty, and gives occasion to
charity. It is the need of labour which involves
commerce and thereby sows the seed of greed,
worldliness, ambition, drudgery. The ultimate
physical wants of men, food and clothes, are the
motive of the greater part of all human activity.
Trace to their causes the various industries of
men, the wars, the great social movements, all
that constitutes history, and you find that the
bulk of all that is done upon earth is done be-
cause men must have food and wish to have it
as good and with as little labour as possible.
The broad facts of human life are in many re-
spects humiliating.
The disposition of men is consequently shown
in the occupations they choose and the idea of
life they carry into them. Some, like Abel,
choose peaceful callings that draw out feeling
and sympathy; others prefer pursuits which are
stirring and active. Cain chose the tillage of
the ground, partly no doubt from the necessity
of the case, but probably also with the feeling
that he could subdue nature to his own purposes
notwithstanding the curse that lay upon it. Do
we not all sometimes feel a desire to take the
world as it is, curse and all, and make the most
of it; to face its disease with human skill, its dis-
turbing and destructive elements with human
forethought and courage, its sterility and stub-
bornness with human energy and patience?
What is stimulating men still to all discovery
and invention, to forewarn seamen of coming
storms, to break a precarious passage for com-
merce through eternal ice or through malarious
swamps, to make life at all points easier and
more secure? Is it not the energy which oppo-
sition excites? We know that it will be hard
work; we expect to have thorns and thistles
everywhere, but let us see whether this may not
after all be a thoroughly happy world, whether
we cannot cultivate the curse altogether out of
it. This is indeed the very work God has given
man to do — to subdue the earth and make the
desert blossom as the rose. God is with us in
this work, and he who believes in God's pur-
pose and strives to reclaim nature and compel it
to some better products than it naturally yields,
is doing God's work in the world. The misery
is that so many do it in the spirit of Cain, in a
spirit of self-confident or sullen alienation from
God, willing to endure all hardship but unable to
lay themselves at God's feet with every capacity
for work and every field He has given them to
till for Him and in a spirit of humble love to co-
operate with Him. To this spirit of godless
energy, of merely selfish or worldly ambition
and enterprise, the world owes not only much of
its poverty and many of its greatest disasters,
but also the greater part of its present advan-
tages in external civilisation. But from this
spirit can never arise the meekness, the patience,
the tenderness, the charity which sweeten the life
of society and are more to be desired than gold:
from this spirit and all its achievements the
natural outcome is the proud, vindictive, self-
glorifying war-song of a Lamech.
The incompatibility of the two lines and the
Genesis iv.]
CAIN AND ABEL.
13
persecuting spirit of the godless are set forth by
the after history of Cain and Abel. The one
line is represented in Cain, who with all his
energy and indomitable courage, is depicted as
of a dark, morose, suspicious, jealous, violent
temper; a man born under the shadow of the fall.
Abel is described in contrast as guileless and
sunny, free from harshness and resentment.
What was in Cain was shown by what came out
of him, murder. The reason of the rejection of
his offering was his own evil condition of heart.
" If thou doest well, shalt not thou also be ac-
cepted;" implying that he was not accepted be-
cause he was not doing well. His offering was a
mere form; he complied with the fashion of the
family; but in spirit he was alienated from God,
cherishing thoughts which the rejection of his
offering brings to a head. He may have seen
that the younger son won more of the parents'
affection, that his company was more welcome.
Jealousy had been produced, that deep jealousy
of the humble and godly which proud men of the
world cannot help betraying and which has so
very often in the world's history produced perse-
cution.
This cannot be considered too weak a motive
to carry so enormous a crime. Even in a highly
civilised age we find an English statesman say-
ing: " Pique is one of the strongest motives in
the human mind. Fear is strong, but transient.
Interest is more lasting., perhaps, and steady, but
weaker; I will ever back pique against them
both. It is the spur the devil rides the noblest
tempers with, and will do more work with them
in a week, than with other poor jades in a
twelvemonth." And the age of Cain and Abel
was an age in which impulse and action lay close
together, and in which jealousy is notoriously
Strong. To this motive John ascribes the act:
" Wherefore slew he him? Because his own
works were evil, and his brother's righteous."
We have now learned better how to disguise
our feelings; and we are compelled to control
them better; but now and again we meet with a
deep-seated hatred of goodness which might
give rise to almost any crime. Few of us can
say that for our own part we have extinguished
within us the spirit that disparages and depre-
ciates and fixes the charge of hypocrisy or refers
good actions to interested motives, searches out
failings and watches for baitings and is glad
when a blot is found. Few are filled with un-
alloyed grief when the man who has borne an
extraordinary reputation turns out to be just like
the rest of us. Many of us have a true delight
in goodness and humble ourselves before it when
we see it, and yet we know also what it is to be
exasperated by the presence of superiority. I
have seen a schoolboy interrupt his brother's
prayers, and gird at him for his piety, and strive
to draw him into sin, and do the devil's work
with zest and diligence. And where goodness is
manifestly in the minority how constantly does
it excite hatred that pours itself out in sneers and
ridicule and ignorant calumny.
But this narrative significantly refers this
early quarrel to religion. There is no bitterness
to compare with that which worldly men who
profess religion feel towards those who cultivate
a spiritual religion. They can never really grasp
the distinction between external worship and
real godliness. They make their offerings, they
attend to the rites of the religion to which they
belong, and are beside themselves with indigna-
tion if any person or event suggests to them that
they might have saved themselves all their
trouble, because these do not at all constitute
religion. They uphold the Church, they admire
and praise her beautiful services, they use strong
but meaningless language about infidelity, and
yet when brought in contact with spirituality and
assured that regeneration and penitent humility
are required above all else in the kingdom of
God, they betray an utter ina;bility to compre-
hend the very rudiments of the Christian re-
ligion. Abel has always to go to the wall be-
cause he is always the weaker party, always in
the minority. Spiritual religion, from the very
nature of the case, must always be in the mi-
nority; and must be prepared to suffer loss,
calumny, and violence, at the hands of the
worldly religious, who have contrived for them-
selves a worship that calls for no humiliation be-
fore God and no complete surrender of heart
and will to Him. Cain is the type of the igno-
rant religious, of the unregenerate man who
thinks he merits God's favour as much as any
one else; and Cain's conduct is the type of the
treatment which the Christ-like and intelligent
godly are always likely to receive at such hands.
We never know where we may be led by jeal-
ousy and malice. One of the striking features
of this incident is the rapidity with which small
sins generate great ones. When Cain went in
the joy of harvest and offered his first fruits no
thought could be further from his mind than
murder. It may have come as suddenly on him-
self as on the unsuspecting Abel, but the germ
was in him. Great sins are not so sudden as
they seem. Familiarity with evil thought ripens
us for evil action; and a moment of passion, an
hour's loss of self-control, a tempting occasion,
may hurry us into irremediable evil. And even
though this does not happen, envious, uncharita-
ble, and malicious thoughts make our offerings
as distasteful as Cain's. He that loveth not his
brother knoweth not God. First be reconciled
to thy brother, says our Lord, and then come
and offer thy gift.
Other truths are incidentally taught in this
narrative.
(i) The acceptance of the offering depends on
the acceptance of the offerer. God had respect
to Abel and his offering — the man first and then
the offering. God looks through the offering to
the state of soul from which it proceeds; or even,
as the words would indicate, sees the soul first
and judges and treats the offering according to
the inward disposition. God does not judge of
what you are by what you say to Him or do for
Him, but He judges what you say to Him and
do for Him by what you are. " By faith," says
a New Testament writer, " Abel offered a more
acceptable sacrifice than Cain." He had the
faith which enabled him to believe that God is,
and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently
seek Him. His attitude towards God was
sound; his life was a diligent seeking to please
God; and from all such persons God gladly re-
ceives acknowledgment. When the offering is
the true expression of the soul's gratitude, love,
devotedness, then it is acceptable. When it is a
merely external offering, that rather veils than
expresses the real feeling; when it is not vivified
and rendered significant by any spiritual act on
the part of the worshipper, it is plainly of no
effect.
What is true of all sacrifices is true of the.
14
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
sacrifice of Christ. It remains invalid and_ of
none effect to those who do not through it yield
themselves to God. Sacrifices were intended to
be the embodiment and expression of a state of
feeling towards God, of a submission or offering
of men's selves to God; of a return to that right
relation which ought ever to subsist between
creature and Creator. Christ's sacrifice is valid
for us when it is that outward thing which best
expresses our feeling towards God and through
which we offer or yield ourselves to God. His
sacrifice is the open door through which God
freely admits all who aim at a consecration and
obedience like to His. It is valid for us when
through it we sacrifice ourselves. Whatever His
sacrifice expresses we desire to take and use as
the only satisfactory expression of our own aims
and desires. Did Christ perfectly submit to and
fulfil the will of God? So would we. Did He
acknowledge the infinite evil of sin and patiently
bear its penalties, still loving the Holy and
Righteous God? So would we endure all chas-
tening, and still resist unto blood striving against
sin.
(2) Again, we here find a very sharp and clear
statement of the welcome truth, that continuance
in sin is never a necessity, that God points the
way out of sin, and that from the first He has
been on man's side and has done all that could
be done to keep men from sinning. Observe
how He expostulates with Cain. Take note of
the plain, explicit fairness of the words in which
He expostulates with him — isntance, as it is, of
how absolutely in the right God always is, and
how abundantly He can justify all His dealings
with us. God says as it were to Cain; Come
now: and let us reason together. All God wants
of any man is to be reasonable; to look at the
facts of the case. " If thou doest well, shalt thou
not (as well as Abel) be accepted? and if thou
doest not well, sin lieth at the door," that is, if
thou doest not well, the sin is not Abel's nor
any one's but thine own, and therefore anger at
another is not the proper remedy, but anger at
yourself, and repentance.
No language could more forcibly exhibit the
unreasonableness of not meeting God with peni-
tent and humble acknowledgment. God has
fully met our case, and has satisfied all its de-
mands, has set Himself to serve us and laid
Himself out to save us pain and misery, and has
so entirely succeeded in making salvation and
blessedness possible to us, that if we continue in
sin we must trample not only upon God's love
and our own reason, but on the very means of
salvation. State your case at .the worst, bring
forward every reason why your countenance
should be fallen as Cain's and why your face
should lower with the gloom of eternal despair —
-say that you have as clear evidence as Cain had
, that your offerings are displeasing to God, and
that while others are accepted you receive no
token from Him, — in answer to all your argu-
ments, these words addressed to Cain rise up.
If not accepted already you have the means of
being so. If you do well to be hardened in sin it
is not because it is necessary, nor because God
desires it. If you are to continue in sin you
must put aside His hand. It can only be sin
which causes you either to despair of salvation
or keeps you any way separate from God — there
is no other thing worse than sin, and for sin
there is an offering provided. You have not
fallen into some lower grade of beings than that
which is designated sinners, and it is sinners
that God in His mercy hems in with this inevi-
table dilemma He presented to Cain.
If, therefore, you continue at war with God
it is not because you must not do otherwise: if
you go forward to any new thought, plan, or
action unpardoned; if acceptance of God's for-
giveness and entrance into a state of reconcilia-
tion with Him be not your first action, then you
must thrust aside His counsel, backed though it
is with every utterance of your own reason.
Some of us may be this day or this week in as
critical a position as Cain, having as truly as he
the making or marring of our future in our
hands, seeing clearly the right course, and all
that is good, humble, penitent, and wise in us
urging us to follow that course, but our pride
and self-will holding us back. How often do
men thus barter a future of blessing for some
mean gratification of temper or lust or pride;
how often by a reckless, almost listless and indif-
ferent continuance in sin do they let themselves
be carried on to a future as woful as Cain's; how
often when God expostulates with them do they
make no answer and take no action, as if there
were nothing to be gained by listening to God —
as if it were a matter of no importance what
future I go to — as if in the whole eternity that
lies in reserve there were nothing worth making
a choice about — nothing about which it is worth
my while to rouse the whole energy of which I
am capable, and to make, by God's grace, the
determination which shall alter my whole future
— to choose for myself and assert myself.
(3) The writer to the Hebrews makes a very
striking use of this event. He borrows from it
language in which to magnify the efficacy of
Christ's sacrifice, and affirms that the blood of
Christ speaketh better things, or, as it must
rather be rendered, crieth louder than the blood
of Abel. Abel's blood, we see, cried for ven-
geance, for evil things for Cain, called God to
make inquisition for blood, and so pled as to
secure the banishment of the murderer. The
Arabs have a belief that over the grave of a mur-
dered man his spirit hovers in the form of a
bird that cries " Give me drink, give me drink,"
and only ceases when the blood of the murderer
is shed. Cain's conscience told him the same
thing; there was no criminal law threatening
death to the murderer, but he felt that men
would kill him if they could. He heard the
blood of Abel crying from the earth. The blood
of Christ also cries to God, but cries not for
vengeance but for pardon. And as surely as the
one cry was heard and answered in very substan-
tial results; so surely does the other cry call
down from heaven its proper and beneficent
effects. It is as if the earth would not receive
and cover the blood of Christ, but ever exposes
it before God and cries to Him to be faithful and
just to forgive us our sins. This blood cries
louder than the other. If God could not over-
look the blood of one of His servants, but ad-
judged to it its proper consequences, neither is it
possible that He should overlook the blood of
His Son and not give to it its proper result.
If then you feel in your conscience that you
are as guilty as Cain, and if sins clamour around
you which are as dangerous as his, and which
cry out for judgment upon you, accept the assur-
ance that the blood of Christ has a yet louder
cry for mercy. If you had been Abel's mur-
derer, would you have been justly afraid of God's
Genesis iv. 12-24.J
CAIN'S LINE, AND ENOCH.
IS
anger? Be as sure of God's mercy now. If ever changed life to us, striving to see if there is
you had stood over his lifeless body and seen the no possibility of altering the past, but only to
earth refusing to cover his blood, if you felt the find we might quite as well try to raise the dead
stam of It crimson on your conscience and if by No voice responds to our cries of grief and dis-
night you started from your sleep striving vainly may and too late repentance. All life now seems
to wash It from your hands, if by every token but a reaping of the consequences of the past
you felt yourself exposed to a just punishment. We have put ourselves in every respect at a dis-
yonr fear would be just and reasonable were advantage. The earth seems cursed so that we
nothmg else revealed to you. But there is an- are hampered in our employments and cannot
other blood equally indelible, equally clamorous, make as much of them as we would had we been
In It you have in reality what is elsewhere pre- innocent. We have got out of right relations to
tended m fable, that the blood of the murdered our fellow-men and cannot feel the same to
man will not wash out, but through every them as we ought to feel; and the face of God is
cleansing oozes up again a dark stain on the hid from us, so that now and again as time after
oaken floor. This blood can really not be time our hopes are blighted, our life darkened
washed out, it cannot be covered up and hid and disturbed by the obvious results of our own
from Gods eye, its voice cannot be stifled, and past deeds, we are tempted to cry out with Cain-
'^\^^r\ ^t ^^' I°i mercy. " My punishment is greater than I can bear."
With how different a meaning then comes now Yet Cain's punishment was less than he ex-
to us this question of God's: "Where is thy pected. He was not put to death as he would
w? >- J Brother also is slain. Him have been at any later period of the world's his-
Whom God sent among us to reverse the curse, tory, but was banished. And even this punish-
to lighten the burden of this life, to be the lov- ment was lightened by his having a token from
ing member of the family on Whom each leans God, that he would not be put to death by any
for help and looks to for counsel and comfort— zealous avenger of Abel. He would experience
Him Who was by His goodness to be as the the hardships of a man entering unexplored ter-
dayspnng from on high in our darkness, we ritory, but to an enterprising spirit this would
found /oo good for our endurance and dealt with not be without its charms. As the fresh beauties
as Cain dealt with his more righteous brother, of the world's youth were disclosed to him and
±5ut He Whom we slew God has raised again to by their bright and peaceful friendliness allaved
give repentance and remission of sins, and the bitterness of his spirit, and as the mysteries
assures us that His blood cleanseth from all sin. and dangers of the new regions excited him and
.<?..17^''^ one therefore He repeats this question, called his thoughts from the past, some of the
Where is thy brother?' He repeats it to old delight in life may have been recovered by
every one who is living with a conscience stained him. Probably in many a lonely hour the recol-
with sin; to every one that knows remorse and lection of his crime would return and with it all
walks with the hanging head of shame; to every the horrors of a remorse which would drive rest
one whose whole life is saddened by the con- and peace from his soul, and render him the
sciousness that all is not settled between God most wretched of men. But busied as he was
and himself; to every one who is sinning reck- with his new enterprises, there is little doubt that
lessly as if Christ s blood had never been shed he would f^nd it, as it is still found, not impossi-
tor sin; and to every one who, though seeking to ble to banish such dreary thoughts and live in
be at peace with God, is troubled and downcast the measure of contentment which many enjoy
-to all God says, " Where is thy brother? " ten-
derly reminding us of the absolute satisfaction
for sin that has been made, and of the hope to-
wards God we have through the blood of His
Son.
CHAPTER IV.
CAIN'S LINE, AND ENOCH.
Genesis iv. 12-24.
" My punishment is greater than I can bear,"
so felt Cain as soon as his passion had spent
itself and the consequences of his wickedness be-
came apparent— and so feels every one who finds
he has now to live in the presence of the irrev-
ocable deed he has done. It seems too heavy
who are as far from God as Cain.
It is not difficult to detect the spirit he carried
with him, and the tone he gave to his line of the
race. The facts recorded are few but significant.
He begat a son, he built a city; and he gave to
both the name Enoch, that is " initiation," or
" beginning," as if he were saying in his heart.
" What so great harm after all in cutting short
one line in Abel? I can begin another and find
a new starting point for the race. I am driven
forth cursed as a vagabond, but a vagabond I
will not be; I will make for myself a settled
abode, and I will fence it round with knife-blade
thorns so that no man will be able to assault
me.
In this settling of Cain, however, we see not
any symptom of his ceasing to be a vagabond,
but the surest evidence that now he was content
a penalty to endure for the one hour of passion; to be a fugitive from God and had cut himself
11 / v^ "^ ^^ ^^^" ^°"'^ '■^"^^ ^^^ dead off from hope. His heart had found rest and
Abel so little can we revive the past we have de- had found it apart from God. Here, in this city
fitroyed. Ihoughtlessness has set in motion he would make a fresh beginning for himself and
agencies we are powerless to control; the whole for men. Here he abandoned all clinging mem-
world is changed to us. One can fancy Cain ories of former things, of his old home and of
turning to see if his victim gave no sign of life, the God there worshipped. He had wisdom
striving to reanimate the dead body, calling the enough not to call his city by his own name, and
familiar name, but only to see with growing dis- so invite men to consider his former career or
may that the one blow had finished all with trace back anything to his old life He cut it
which that name was associated, and that he had all off from him; his crime, his God also, all that
made himself a new world. So are we drawn was in it was to be no more to him and his com-
hack and back in thought to that which has for rades. He would make a clean start, and that
2— Vol. I.
i6
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
men might be led to expect a great future he
called his city, Enoch, a Beginning.
But it is one thing to forgive ourselves, an-
other thing to have God's forgiveness. It is one
thing to reconcile ourselves to the curse that
runs through our life, another thing to be recon-
ciled to God and so defeat the curse. It is some-
times, though by no means always, possible to
escape some of the consequences of sin: we can
change our front so as to lessen the breadth of
life that is exposed to them, or we can accustom
and harden ourselves to a very second-rate kind
of life. We can teach ourselves to live without
much love in our homes or in our connections
with those outside; we can learn to be satisfied
if we can pay our way and make the time pass
and be outwardly like other people; we can build
a little city, and be content to be on no very
friendly terms with any but the select few inside
the trench, and actually be quite satisfied if we
can defend ourselves against the rest of men; we
can forget the one commandment, that we
should love one another. We can all find much
in the world to comfort, to lull, to soothe sor-
rowful but wholesome remembrances; much to
aid us in an easy treatment of the curse; much to
shed superficial brightness on a life darkened and
debased by sin, much to hush up the sad echoes
that mutter from the dark mountains of vanity
we have left behind us, much that assures us we
have nothing to do but forget our old sins and
busily occupy ourselves with new duties. But
no David will say, nor will any man of true
spiritual discernment say, " Blessed is the man
whose transgression is forgotten;" but only,
" Blessed is the man whose transgression is for-
given." By all means make a fresh start, a new
beginning, but let it be in your own broken
heart, in a spirit humble and contrite, frankly ac-
knowledging your guilt and finding rest and
settlement for your soul in reconciliation with
God.
It is in the family of Lamech the characteris-
tics of Cain's line are most distinctly seen, and
the significance of their tendencies becomes ap-
parent. As Cain had set himself to cultivate the
curse out of the world, so have his children de-
rived from him the self-reliant hardiness and
hardihood which are resolute to make of this
world as bright and happy a home as may be.
They make it their task to subdue the world and
compel it to yield them a life in which they can
delight. They are so far successful that in a few
generations they have formed a home in which
all the essentials of civilised life are found — the
arts are cultivated and female society is appre-
ciated.
Of his three sons, Jabal — or " Increase " — was
" the father of such as dwell in tents and of such
as have cattle." He had originality enough to
step beyond all traditional habits and to invent
a new mode of life. Hitherto men had been tied
to one spot by their fixed habitations, or found
shelter when overtaken by storm in caves or
trees. To Jabal the idea first occurs, I can carry
my house about with me and regulate its move-
ments and not it mine. I need not return every
night this long weary way from the pastures, but
may go wherever grass is green and streams
run cool. He and his comrades would thus be-
come aware of the vast resources of other lands,
and would unconsciously lay the foundations
both of commerce and of wars of conquest. For
both in ancient and more modern times the most
formidable armies have been those vast moving
shepherd races bred outside the borders of civili-
sation and flooding as with an irresistible tide
the territories of more settled and less hardy
tribes.
Jubal again was, as his name denotes, the re-
puted father of all such as handle the harp and
the organ, stringed and wind instruments. The
stops of the reed or flute and the divisions of the
string being once discovered, all else necessarily
followed. The twanging of a bow-string in a
musical ear was enough to give the suggestion
to an observant mind; the varying notes of the
birds; the winds, expressing at one time un-
bridled fury and at another a breathing benedic-
tion, could not fail to move and stir the suscepti-
ble spirit. The spontaneous though untuned
singing of children, that follows no mere melody-
made by another to express his joy, but is the
instinctive expression of their own joy, could not
but give however meagrely the first rudiments of
music. But here was the man who first made a
piece of wood help him; who out of the com-
monest material of the physical world found for
himself a means of expressing the most impalpa-
ble moods of his spirit. Once the idea was
caught that matter inanimate as well as animate
was man's servant and could do his finest work
for him, Jabal and his brother Jubal would make
rapid work between them. If the rude matter
of the world could sing for them, what might it
not do for them? They would see that there
was a precision in machine-work which man's
hand could not rival — a regularity which no
nervous throb could throw out and no feeling
interrupt, and yet at the same time, when they
found how these rude instruments responded to
every finest shade of feeling, and how all exter-
nal nature seemed able to express what was in
man, must it not have been the birth of poetry
as well as of music? Jubal in short originates
what we now compendiously describe as the
Fine Arts.
The third brother again may be taken as the
originator of the Useful Arts — though not ex-
clusively— for being the instructor of every arti-
ficer in brass and iron, having something of his
brother's genius for invention and more than his-
brother's handiness and practical faculty for em-
bodying his ideas in material forms, he must
have promoted all arts which require tools for
their culture.
Thus among these three brothers we find dis-
tributed the various kinds of genius and faculty
which ever since have enriched the world. Here
in germ was really all that the world can do.
The great lines in which individual and social
activity have since run were then laid down.
This notable family circle was completed by
Naamah, the sister of Tubal-Cain. The strength
of female influence began to be felt contempo-
raneously with the cultivation of the arts. Very
early in the world's history it was perceived that
although debarred from the rougher activities of
life, women have an empire of their own. Men
have the making of civilisation, but women have
the making of men. It is they who form the
character of the individual and give its tone to
the society in which they live. It is natural to
men to consider the feelings and tastes of women
and to adapt their manners and conversation to
them; and it is for women to exercise worthily
the sway they thus possess. Practically and to
a large extent women settle what subjects shall
Genesis iv. 12-24.] CAIN'S LINE, AND ENOCH. 17
be spoken of, and in what tone, trifling or seri- "I have slain," he says, or suppose I slay, "a man for
ous; and each ought therefore to recognise her a y^ung"maf ™r hurting me :
own burden of responsibihty, and see to it that But if Cain shall be avenged seven-fold— then Lamech
the deference paid to her shall not lower him seventy and seven-fold."
who pays it, and that the respect shown to her
shall help him who shows it to respect what is That is, I take vengeance for myself with those
pure and true, charitable, just, and worthy. Let good weapons my son has forged for me. He
women show that it is worldly trifling or slan- has furnished me with a means of defence maay
derous malignity or empty tittle-tattle that de- times more efifectual than God's avenging of
lights them, then they act the part of Eve and Cain. This is the climax of the self-sufficiency
tempt to sin; let them show that they prize most to which the line of Cain has been tending,
highly the mirth that is innocent and the con- Cain besought God's protection; he needed God
versation that is elevating and helpful, and while for at least one purpose, this one thread bound
they win admiration for themselves they win it him yet to God. Lamech has no need of God
also for what is healthy and purifying. No ^or any purpose; what his sons can make and
woman can renounce her influence; helpful or his own right hand do is enough for him. This
hurtful she certainly is and must be, in propor- is what comes of finding enough in the world
tion as she is pleasing and attractive. without God — a boastful, self-sufficient man.
Thus early did it appear how much of what is dangerous to society, the incarnation of the
admirable and serviceable clung to human nature pride of life. In the long run separation from
apart from any recognition of God. The God becomes isolation from man and cruel self-
worldly life was then what it is now, a life not sufficiency.
wholly and obviously polluted by excess, nor The line of Seth is followed from father to son,
destroyed by violence, but displaying features for the sake of showing that the promise of a
which appeal to our sensibilities and provoke seed which should be victorious over evil was
applause; a life of manifold beauty, of great being fulfilled. Apparently it is also meant that
power and resource, of abundant promise, during this uneventful period long ages elapsed.
There is abundant material in the world for Nothing can be told of these old-world people
beautifying and elevating human life, and this but that they lived and died, leaving behind
material may be used and is used by men who them heirs to transmit the promise,
acknowledge neither its origin in God nor the Only once is the monotony broken; but this
ends He would serve by it. The interests of in so striking a manner as to rescue us from the
men may be advanced and the best work of the idea that the historian is mechanically copying
world done by three distinct classes of men — by a barren list of names. For in the seventh gen-
those who work as God's children in thorough eration, contemporaneous with the culmination
sympathy with His purposes; by those who do of Cain's line in the family of Lamech, we come
not know God but who are humble in heart and upon the simple but anything but mechanical
would sympathise with God's purposes, did they statement: " Enoch walked with God and he was
become acquainted with them; and by those who not; for God took him." The phrase is fuU
are proud and self-willed, positively alienated of meaning. Enoch walked with God because
from God, and who do the world's work for he was His friend and liked His company, be-
their own ends. And so far as the external work cause he was going in the same direction as God,
goes the last-named class of men may be most and had no desire for anything but what lay in
efficient. In mental endowment, social and po- God's path. We walk with God when He is in
litical wisdom, scientific aptitude, and all that all our thoughts; not because we consciously
tends to substantial utility, it is quite possible think of Him at all times, but because He is
they may excel the godly, for " not many noble, naturally suggested to us by all we think of; as
not many wise are called." But we have noth- when any person or plan or idea has become im-
ing to measure permanent success by, save con- portant to us, no matter what we think of, our
formity with God's will; and we have nothing thought is always found recurring to this favour-
by which we can estimate how character will ite object, so with the godly man everything has
endure and how deeply it is rooted save con- a connection with God and must be ruled by
formity with the nature of God. If a man be- that connection. When some change in his cir-
lieves in God, in one Supreme Who rules and cumstances is thought of, he has first of all to
orders all things for just, holy, and wise ends; if determine how the proposed change will affect
he is in sympathy with the nature and will of his connection with God — will his conscience be
God and finds his truest satisfaction in forward- equally clear, will he be able to live on the same
ing the purposes of God, then you have a guar- friendly terms with God, and so forth. When he
antee for this man's continuance in good and for falls into sin he cannot rest till he has resumed
his ultimate success. his place at God's side and walks again with
The precarious nature of all godless civilisa- Him. This is the general nature of walking with
tion and the real tendency of self-sufficing pride God; it is a persistent endeavour to hold all our
are shown in Lamech. life open to God's inspection and in conformity
It is in Lamech the tendency culminates and to His will; a readiness to give up what we find
in him the issue of all this brilliant but godless does cause any misunderstanding between us and
life is seen. Therefore though he is the father, God; a feeling of loneliness if we have not some
the historian speaks of him after his children, satisfaction in our efforts at holding fellowship
In his one recorded utterance his character leaps with God, a cold and desolate feeling when we
to view definite and complete — a character of are conscious of doing something that displeases
boundless force, self-reliance, and godlessness. Him. This walking with God necessarily tells
It is a little uncertain whether he means that he on the whole life and character. As you m-
has actually slain a man, or whether he is put- stinctively avoid subjects which you know will
ting a hypothetical case — the character of his jar upon the feelings of your friend, as you natu-
speech is the same whichever view is taken. rally endeavour to suit yourself to your com-
I
z8
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
pany, so when the consciousness of God's pres-
ence begins to have some weight with you, you
are found instinctively endeavouring to please
Him, repressing the thoughts you know He dis-
approves, and endeavouring to educate such dis-
positions 'as reflect His own nature.
It is easy then to understand how we may
practically walk with God — it is to open to Him
all our purposes and hopes, to seek His judg-
ment on our scheme of life and idea of happiness
— it is to be on thoroughly friendly terms with
God. Why then do any not walk with God?
Because they seek what is wrong. You would
walk with Him if the same idea of good pos-
sessed you as possesses Him; if you were as
ready as He to make no deflexion from the
straight path. Is not the very crown of life
depicted in the testimony given to Enoch, that
" he pleased God "? Cannot you take your way
through life with a resolute and joyous spirit if
you are conscious that you please Him Who
judges not by appearances, not by your manners,
but by your real state, by your actual character
and the eternal promise it bears? Things were
not made easy to Enoch. In evil days, with
much to mislead him, with everything to oppose
him, he had by faith and diligent seeking, as the
Epistle to the Hebrews says, to cleave to the
path on which God walked, often left in dark-
ness, often thrown ofif the track, often listening
but unable to hear the footfall of God or to hear
his own name called upon, receiving no sign but
still diligently seeking the God he knew would
lead him only to good. Be it yours to give such
diligence. Do not accept it as a thing fixed that
you are to be one of the graceless and ungodly,
always feeble, always vacillating, always with-
out a character, always in doubt about your
state, and whether life might not be some other
and better thing to you.
" Enoch was not, for Gpd took him." Sud-
denly his place on earth was empty and men
drew their own conclusions. He had been
known as the Friend of God, where could he be
but in God's dwelling-place? No sickness had
slowly worn him to the grave, no mark of decay
had been visible in his unabated vigour. His
departure was a favour conferred and as such
men recognised it. " God has taken him," they
said, and their thoughts followed upward, and
essayed to conceive the finished bliss of the man
whom God has taken away where blessing may
be more fully conferred. His age corresponded
to our thirty-three, the age when the world has
usually got fair hold of a man, when a man has
found his place in life and means to live and see
good days. The awkward, unfamiliar ways of
youth that keep him outside of much of life are
past, and the satiety of age is not yet reached; a
man has begun to learn there is something he
can do, and has not yet learned how little. It
is an age at which it is most painful to relinquish
life, but it was at this age God took him away,
and men knew it was in kindness.^ Others had
begun to gather round him, and depend upon
him, hopes were resting in him, great things
were expected of him, life was strong in him.
But let life dress itself in its most attractive
guise, let it shine on a man with its most fasci-
nating smile, let him be happy at home and the
pleasing centre of a pleasing circle of friends, let
him be in that bright summer of life when a man
begins to fear he is too prosperous and happy,
and yet there is for man a better thing than ail
this, a thing so immeasurably and independently
superior to it tliat all this may be taken away and
yet the man be far more blessed. If God would
confer His highest favours, He must take a man
out of all this and bring him closer to Himself.
CHAPTER V.
THE FLOOD.
Genesis v.-ix.
The first great event "which indelibly im-
pressed itself on the memory of the primeval
world was the Flood. There is every reason to
believe that this catastrophe was co-extensive
with the human population of the world. In
every branch of the human family traditions of
the event are found. These traditions need not
be recited, though some of them bear a remark-
able likeness to the Biblical story, while others
are very beautiful in their construction, and sig-
nificant in individual points. Local floods hap-
pening at various times in different ■ countries
could not have given birth to the minute coinci-
dences found in these traditions, such as the
sending out of the birds, and the number of per-
sons saved. But we have as yet no material for
calculating how far human population had
spread from the original centre. It might ap-
parently be argued that it could not have spread
to the sea-coast, or that at any rate no ships had
as yet been built large enough to weather a
severe storm; for a thoroughly nautical popula-
tion could have had little difficulty in surviving
such a catastrophe as is here described. But all
that can be affirmed is that there is no evidence
that the waters extended beyond the inhabited
part of the earth; and from certain details of the
narrative, this part of the earth may be identi-
fied as the great plain of the Euphrates and
Tigris.
Some of the expressions used in the narrative
might indeed lead us to suppose that the writer
understood the catastrophe to have extended
over the whole globe; but expressions of similar
largeness elsewhere occur in passages where
their meaning must be restricted. Probably the
most convincing evidence of the limited extent
of the Flood is furnished by the animals of Aus-
tralia. The animals that aboimd in that island
are different from those found in other parts of
the world, but are similar to the species which
are found fossilised in the island itself, and which
therefore must have inhabited these same
regions long anterior to the Flood. If then the
Flood extended to Australia and destroyed all
animal life there, what are we compelled to sup-
pose as the order of events? We must suppose
that the creatures, visited by some presentiment
of what was to happen many months after, se-
lected specimens of their number, and that these
specimens by some unknown and quite incon-
ceivable means crossed thousands of miles of
sea, found their way through all kinds of perils
from unaccustomed climate, food, and beasts of
prey; singled out Noah by some inscrutable in-
stinct, and surrendered themselves to his keep-
ing. And after the year in the ark expired, they
turned their faces homewards, leaving behind
them no progeny, again preservin,g themselves
intact, and transporting themselves by some un-
known means to their island home. This, if the
Cciiesis ix. 20-27.]
THE FLOOD.
19
Deluge was universal, must have been going on
with thousands of animals from all parts of the
globe; and not only were these animals a stu-
pendous miracle in themselves, but wherever
they went they were the occasion of miracle in
others, all the beasts of prey refraining from
their natural food. The fact is, the thing will
not bear stating.
But it is not the physical but the moral aspects
of the Flood with which we have here to do.
And, first, this narrator explains its cause. He
ascribes it to the abnormal wickedness of the
antediluvians. To describe the demoralised con-
dition of society before the Flood, the strongest
language is used. " God saw that the wicked-
ness of man was great," monstrous in acts of
violence, and in habitual courses and established
usages. " Every imagination of the thoughts of
his heart was only evil continually," — there was
no mixture of good, no relentings, no repent-
ances, no visitings of compunction, no hesita-
tions and debatings. It was a world of men
fierce and energetic, violent and lawless, in per-
petual war and turmoil; in which if a man sought
to live a righteous life, he had to conceive it of
his own mind and to follow it out unaided and
without the countenance of any.
This abnormal wickedness again is accounted
for by the abnormal marriages from which the
leaders of these ages sprang. Everything
seemed abnormal, huge, inhuman. As there are
laid bare to the eye of the geologist in those
archaic times vast forms bearing a likeness to
forms we are now familiar with, but of gigantic
proportions and wallowing in dim, mist-covered
regions; so to the eye of the historian there
loom through the obscurity colossal forms per-
petrating deeds of more than human savagery,
and strength, and daring; heroes that seem
formed in a different mould from common men.
However we interpret the narrative, its signifi-
cance for us is plain. There is nothing prudish
in the Bible. It speaks with a manly frankness
of the beauty of women and its ensnaring power.
The Mosaic law was stringent against inter-
marriage with idolatresses, and still in the New
Testament something more than an echo of the
old denunciation of such marriages is heard.
Those who were most concerned about preserv-
ing a pure morality and a high tone in society
were keenly alive to the dangers that threatened
from this quarter. It is a permanent danger to
character because it is to a permanent_^ element
in human nature that the temptation' appeals.
To many in every generation, perhaps to the
majority, this is the most dangerous form in
which worldliness presents itself; and to resist
this the most painful test of principle. With
natures keenly sensitive to beauty and super-
ficial attractiveness, some are called upon to
make their choice between a conscientious
cleaving to God and an attachment to that which
in the form is perfect but at heart is defective,
depraved, godless. Where there is great out-
ward attraction a man fights against the grow-
ing sense of inward uncongeniality, and per-
suades himself he is too scrupulous and uncharit-
able, or that he is a bad reader of character.
There may be an undercurrent of warning; he
may be sensible that his whole nature is not
satisfied, and it may seem to him ominous that
what is best within him does not flourish in his
new attachment, but rather what is inferior, if
not what is worst. But all such omens and
warnings are disregarded and stifled by some
such silly thought as that consideration and cal-
culation are out of place in such matters. And
what is the result? The result is the same as it
ever was. Instead of the ungodly rising to the
level of the godly, he sinks to hers. The worldly
style, the amusements, the fashions once dis-
tasteful to him, but allowed for her sake, become
familiar, and at last wholly displace the old and
godly ways, the arrangements that left room for
acknowledging God in the family; and there is
one household less as a point of resistance to the
incursion of an ungodly tone in society, , one
deserter more added to the already too crowded
ranks of the ungodly, and the life-time if not the
eternity of one soul embittered. Not withpiit a
consideration of the temptations that do actually
lead men astray did the law enjoin:' "Thou. Shalt
not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the
land, nor take of their daughters unto thy sons."
It seems like a truism to say that a greater
amount of Unhappiness has been produced by
mismanagement, folly, and wickedness, "in the
relation subsisting between men and worheii than
by any other cause. God has given us the ca-
pacity of love to regulate this relation and be
our safe guide in all matters connected with it.
But frequently, from one cause or another, the
government and direction of this relation are
taken out of the hands of love and put into the
thoroughly incompetent hands of convenience,
or fancy, or selfish lust. A marriage contracted
from any such motive is sure to bring unhappi-
ness of a long-continued, wearing, and often
heart-breaking kind. Such a marriage is. often
the form in which retribution comes for youth-
ful selfishness and youthful licentiousness. .' You
cannot cheat nature. Just in so far as you allow
yourself to be ruled in youth by a selfish love of
pleasure, in so far do you incapacitate yourself
for love. You sacrifice what is genuine and
satisfying, because provided by nature, to. what
is spurious, unsatisfying, and shameful.' You
cannot afterwards, unless by a long and. bitter
discipline, restore the capacity of warm and. pure
love in your heart. Every indulgence in which
true love is absent is another blow given to the
faculty of love within you — you make yourself
in that capacity decrepit, paralyzed, dead. You
have lost, you have killed the faculty that should
be your guide in all these matters, and so you
are at last precipitated without this guidance
into a marriage formed from some other motive,
formed therefore against nature, and in which
you are the everlasting victim of nature's re-
lentless justice. Remember that you cannot
have both things, a youth of loveless pleasure
and a loving marriage — you must make your
choice. For as surely as genuine love kills all
evil desire; so surely does evil desire kill the very
capacity of love, and blind utterly its wretched
victim to the qualities that ought to excite love.
The language used of God in relation tq; this
universal corruption strikes every one as re-
markable. " It repented the Lord that He had
made man on the earth,, and it grieved Him at
His heart." This is what is usually termed
anthropomorphism, i. e., the presenting of God
in terms applicable only to man; it is an instance
of the same mode of speaking as is used when
we speak of God's hand or eye or heart. These
expressions are not absolutely true, but they are
useful and convey to us a meaning which could
scarcely otherwise be expressed. Some persons
20
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
think that the use of these expressions proves
that in early times God was thought of as wear-
ing a body and as being very like ourselves in
His inward nature. And even in our day we
have been ridiculed for speaking of God as a
magnified man. Now in the first place the use
of such expressions does not prove that even the
earliest worshippers of God believed Him to
have eyes and hands and a body. IVe freely use
the same expressions though we have no such
belief. We use them because our language is
formed for human uses and on a human level,
and we have no capacity to frame a better. And
in the second place, though not absolutely true
they do help us towards the truth. We are told
that it degrades God to think of Him as hearing
prayer and accepting praise; nay, that to think
of Him as a Person at all, is to degrade Him.
We ought to think of Him as the Absolutely
Unknowable. But which degrades God most,
and which exalts Him most? If we find that it
is impossible to worship an absolutely unknow-
able, if we find that practically such an idea is a
mere nonentity to us, and that we cannot in
point of fact pay any homage or show any con-
sideration to such an empty abstraction, is not
this really to lower God? And if we find that
when we think of Him as a Person, and ascribe
to Him all human virtue in an infinite degree,
we can rejoice in Him and worship Him with
true adoration, is not this to exalt Him? While
we call Him our Father we know that this title
is inadequate; while we speak of God as planning
and decreeing we know that we are merely mak-
ing shift to express what is inexpressible by us —
we know that our thoughts of Him are never
adequate and that to think of Him at all is to
lower Him, is to think of Him inadequately; but
when the practical alternative is such as it is, we
find we do well to think of Him with the highest
personal attributes we can conceive. For to re-
fuse to ascribe such attributes to Him because
this is degrading Him, is to empty our minds of
any idea of Him which can stimulate either to
worship or to duty. If by ridding our minds of all
anthropomorphic ideas and refusing to think
of God as feeling, thinking, acting as men do, we
could thereby get to a really higher conception
of Him, a conception which would practically
make us worship Him more devotedly and serve
Him more faithfully, then by all means let us do
so. But if the result of refusing to think of Him
as in many ways like ourselves, is that we cease
to think of Him at all or only as a dead imper-
sonal force, then this certainly is not to reach a
higher but a lower conception of Him. And
until we see our way to some truly higher con-
ception than that which we have of a Personal
God, we had better be content with it.
In short, we do well to be humble, and con-
sidering that we know very little about existence
of any kind, and least of all about God's, and
that our God has been presented to us in human
form, we do well to accept Christ as our God, to
worship, love, and serve Him, finding Him suffi-
cient for all our wants of this life, and leaving it
to other times to get the solution of anything
that is not made plain to us in Him. This is one
boon that the science and philosophy of our day
have unintentionally conferred upon us. They
have laboured to make us feel how remote and
inaccessible God is, how little we can know Him,
how truly He is past finding out: they have
laboured to make us feel how intangible and in-
visible and incomprehensible God is, but the re-
sult of this is that we turn with all the strongei
longing to Him who is the Image of the Invisi-
ble God, and on whom a voice has fallen from
the excellent glory, " This is My beloved Son; heav
Him."
The Flood itself we need not attempt to de-
scribe. It has beeix remarked that though the
narrative is vivid and forcible, it is entirely want-
ing in that sort of description which in a modern
historian or poet would have occupied the
largest space. " We see nothing of the death-
struggle; we hear not the cry of despair; we are
not called upon to witness the frantic agony of
husband and wife, and parent and child, as they
fled in terror before the rising waters. Nor is
a word said of the sadness of the one righteous
man, who, safe himself, looked upon the destruc-
tion which he could not avert." The Chaldean
tradition which is the most closely allied to the
Biblical account is not so reticent. Tears are
shed in heaven over the catastrophe, and even
consternation afTected its inhabitants, while
within the ark itself the Chaldean Noah says,
" When the storm came to an end and the ter-
rible water-spout ceased, I opened the window
and the light smote upon my face. I looked at
the sea attentively observing, and the whole of
humanity had returned to mud, like seaweed the
corpses floated. I was seized with sadness; I
sat down and wept and my tears fell upon my
face."
There can be little question that this is a true
description of Noah's feeling. And the sense of
desolation and constraint would rather increase
in Noah's mind than diminish. Month after
month elapsed; he was coming daily nearer the
end of his food, and yet the waters were un-
abated. He did not know how long he was to
be kept in this dark, disagreeable place. He was
left to do his daily work without any super-
natural signs to help him against his natural
anxieties. The floating of the ark and all that
went on in it had no mark of God's hand upon
it. He was indeed safe while others had been
destroyed. But of what good was this safety
to be? Was he ever to get out of this prison-
house ? To what straits was he to be first re-
duced? So it is often with ourselves. We are
left to fulfil God's \vill without any sensible
tokens to set over against natural difficulties,
painful and pinching circumstances, ill health,
low spirits, failure of favorite projects, and old
hopes— "So that at last we come to think that per-
haps safety is all we are to have in Christ, a
mere exemption from sufTering of one kind pur-
chased by the endurance of much suffering of
another kind ; that we are to be thankful for par-
don on any terms ; and escaping with our (t/e,
must be content though it be bare. Why, how
often does a Christian wonder whether, after all,
he has chosen a life that he can endure, whether
the monotony and the restraints of the Chris-
tian life are not inconsistent with true enjoy-
ment ?
This strife between the felt restriction of the
Christian life and the natural craving for abun-
dant life, for entrance into all that the world can
show us, and experience of all forms of enjoy-
ment— this strife goes on unceasingly in the
heart of many of us as it goes on from age to
age in the world. Which is the true view of
life, which is the view to guide us in choosing
and refusing the enjoyments and pursuits that
Genesis v-ix.]
NOAH'S FALL.
il
are presented to us? Are we to believe that the
ideal man for this life is he who has tasted all
culture and delight, who believes in nature,
recognising no fall and seeking for no redemp-
tion, and makes enjoyment his end; or he who
sees that all enjoyment is deceptive till man is
set right morally, and who spends himself on
this, knowing that blood and misery must come
before peace and rest, and crowned as our King
and Leader, not with a garland of roses, but with
the crown of Him Who is greatest of all, because
servant of all — to Whom the most sunken is not
repulsive, and Who will not abandon the most
hopeless? This comes to be very much the
question, whether this life is final or prepara-
tory?— whether, therefore, our work in it should
be to check lower propensities and develop and
train all that is best in character, so as to be fit
for highest life and enjoyment in a world to
come — or should take ourselves as we find our-
selves, and delight in this present world?
whether this is a placid eternal state, in which
things are very much as they should be, and in
which therefore we can live freely and enjoy
freely; or whether it is a disordered, initial con-
dition in which our main task should be to do a
little towards putting things on a better rail and
getting at least the germ and small beginnings
of future good planted in one another? So that
in the midst of all felt restriction, there is the
highest hope, that one day we shall go forth
from the narrow precincts of our ark. and step
out into the free bright sunshine, in a world
where there is nothing to oflfend, and that the
time of our deprivation will seem to have been
well spent indeed, if it has left within us a ca-
pacity permanently to enjoy love, noliness. jus-
tice, and all that is delighted in by God Himself.
The use made of this event in the New Testa-
ment is remarkable. It is compared by Peter to
baptism, and both are viewed as illustrations of
salvation by destruction. The eight souls, he
says, who were in the ark, " were saved by
water." The water which destroyed the rest
saved them. When there seemed little hope of
the godly line being able to withstand the influ-
ence of the ungodly, the Flood came and left
Noah's family in a new world, with freedom to
order all things according to their own ideas.
In this Peter sees some analogy to baptism. In
baptism, the penitent who believes in the effi-
cacy of Christ's blood to purge away sin, lets
his defilement be washed away and rises new and
clean to the life Christ gives. In Christ the sin-
ner finds shelter for himself and destruction for
his sins. It is God's wrath against sin that
saves us by destroying our sins; just as it was
the Flood which devastated the world, that at
the same time, and thereby, saved Noah and his
family.
In this event, too, we see the completeness of
God's work. Often we feel reluctant to surren-
der our sinful habits to so final a destruction as
is implied in being one with Christ. The ex-
pense at which holiness is to be bought seems
almost too great. So much that has given us
pleasure must be parted with; so many old ties
sundered, a condition of holiness presents an
aspect of dreariness and hopelessness; like the
world after the flood, not a moving thing on the
surface of the earth, everything levelled, pros-
trate, and washed even with the ground; here
the corpse of a man, there the carcase of a beast;
here mighty forest timber swept prone like the
rushes on the banks of a flooded stream, and
there a city without inhabitants, eve^j(^thing
dank, dismal, and repellent. But this livonly
one aspect of the work; the beginning, necessary
if the work is to be thorough. If any part of
the sinful life remain it will spring up to mar
what God means to introduce us to. Only that
is to be preserved which we can take with us
into our ark. Only that is to pass on into our
life which we can retain while we are in true con-
nection with Christ, and which we think can help
us to live as His friends, and to serve Him
zealously.
This event then gives us some measure by
which we can know how much God will do to
maintain holiness upon earth. In this catas-
trophe every one who strives after godliness may
find encouragement, seeing in it the Divine ear-
nestness of God for good and against evil.
There is only one other event in history that so
conspicuously shows that holiness among men
is the object for which God will sacrifice every-
thing else. There is no need now of any further
demonstration of God's purpose in this world
and His zeal for carrying it out. And may it
not be expected of us His children, that we stand
in presence of the cross until our cold and frivol-
ous hearts catch something of the earnestness,
the " resisting unto blood striving against sin,"
which is exhibited there? The Flood has not
been forgotten by almost any people under
heaven, but its moral result is nil. But he whose
memory is haunted by a dying Redeemer, by the
thought of One Whose love found its most ap-
propriate and practical result in dying for him,
is prevented from much sin, and finds in that
love the spring of eternal hope, that which his
soul in the deep privacy of his most sacred
thoughts can feed upon with joy, that which he
builds himself round and broods over as his in-
alienable possession.
CHAPTER VI.
NOAH'S FALL.
Genesis ix. 20-27.
Noah in the ark was in a position of present
safety but of much anxiety. No sign of any
special protection on God's part was given. The
waters seemed to stand at their highest level still;
and probablj' the risk of the ark's grounding on
some impracticable peak, or precipitous hill-side,
would seem as great a danger as the water itself.
Five months had elapsed, and though the rain
had ceased the sky was heavy and threatening,
and every day now was worth many measures of
corn in the coming harvest. A reflection of the
anxiety within the ark is seen in the expression,
" And God remembered Noah." It was needful
to say so, for there was as yet no outward sign
of this.
To such anxieties all are subject who have
availed themselves of the salvation God pro-
vides. At the first there is an easy faith in God's
aid; there are many signs of His presence; the
subjects in whom salvation operates have no
disposition or temptation to doubt that God is
with them and is working for them. But this
initial stage is succeeded by a very different state
of things. We seem to be left to ourselves to
2i
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
cope with the world and all its difficulties and
temptations in our own strength. Much as we
crave some sign that God remembers us, no sign
is given. We no longer receive the same urgent
impulses to holiness of life; we have no longer
the same freshness in devotion as if speaking to
a God at hand. There is nothing which of itself
and without reasoning about it says to us, Here
is God's hand upon me.
In fact, the great part of our life has to be
spent under these conditions, and we need to
hold some well-ascertained principle regarding
God's dealings, if our faith is to survive. And
here in God's treatment of Noah we see that
God may as certainly be working for us when
not working directly upon us, as when His pres-
ence is palpable. His absence from us is as
needful as His presence. The clouds are as
requisite for our salvation as the sunny sky.
When therefore we find that salvation from sin
is a much slower and more anxious matter than
we once expected it to be, we are not to suppose
that God is not hearing our prayers. When
Noah day by day cried to God for relief, and yet
night after night found himself " cribb'd, cabin'd,
and confined," with no sign from God but such
as faith could apprehend, depend upon it he had
very different feelings from those with which he
first stepped into the ark. And when we are left
to one monotonous rut of duty and to an un-
changing and dry form of devotion, when we are
called to learn to live by faith, not by sight, to
learn that God's purposes with us are spiritual,
and that slow and difficult growth in self-com-
mand and holiness is the best proof that He
hears our prayers, we must strive to believe that
this also, is a needful part of our salvation; and
we must especially be on our guard against sup-
posing that as God has ceased to disclose Him-
self to us, and so to make faith easy, we may
cease to disclose ourselves to Him.
For this is the natural and very frequent result
of such an experience. Discouraged by the ob-
scurity of God's ways and the difficulty of be-
lieving when the mind is not sustained by suc-
cess or by new thoughts or manifest tokens of
God's presence, we naturally cease to look for
any clear signs of Gdd's concernment about our
state, and rest from all anxious craving to know
God's will about us. To this temptation the
majority of Christian people yield, and allow
themselves to become indifferent to spiritual
truth and increasingly interested in the non-
mysterious facts of the present world, attending
to present duties in a mechanical way, seeing
that their families have enough to eat and that
all in their little ark are provided for. But to
this temptation Noah did not yield. Though to
all appearance abandoned by God, he did what
he could to ascertain what was beyond his im-
mediate sight and present experience. He sent
out his raven and his dove. Not satisfied with
his first enquiry by the raven, which could flit
from one piece of floating garbage to another,
he sent out the dove, and continued to do so at
intervals of seven days.
Noah sent out the raven first, probably because
it had been the most companionable bird and
seemed the wisest, preferable to " the silly
dove;" but it never came back with God's mes-
sage. And so has one often found that an en-
quiry into God's will, the examination, for ex-
ample, of some portion of Scripture, undertaken
with a prospect of success and with good human
helps, has failed, and has failed in this peculiar
ravenlike way; the enquiry has settled down en
some worthless point, on some rotting carcase,
on some subject of passing interest or world'y
learning, and brings back no message of God to
us. On the other hand, the continued use, Sab-
bath after Sabbath, of God's appointed means,
and the patient waiting for some message of
God to come to us through what seems a most
unlikely messenger, will often be rewarded. It
may be but a single leaf plucked ofif that we get^
but enough to convince us that God has been
mindful of our need, and is preparing for us a
habitable world.
Many a man is like the raven, feeding himself
on the destruction of others, satisfied with know-
ing how God has dealt with others. He thinks
he has done his part when he has found out who
has been sinning and what has been the result.
But the dove will not settle on any such resting-
place, and is dissatisfied until for herself she can
pluck off some token that God's anger is turned
away and that now there is peace on earth. And
if only you wait God's time and renew your en-
deavours to find such tokens, some assurance
will be given you, some green and growing
thing, some living part, however small, of the
new creation which will certify you of your hope.
On the first day of the first month. New Year's
day, Noah removed the covering of the ark,
which seems to have stranded on the Armenian
tableland, and looked out upon the new world.
He cannot but have felt his responsibility, as a
kind of second Adam. And many questionings
must have arisen in his mind regarding the rela-
tion of the new to the old. Was there to be any
connection with the old world at all, or was all
to begin afresh? Were the promises, the tradi-
tions, the events, the genealogies of the old
world of any significance now? The Flood dis-
tinctly marked the going out of one order of
things and the establishment of another. Man's
career and development, or what we call his-
tory, had not before the Flood attained its goal.
If this development was not to be broken short
off, and if God's purpose in creation was to be
fulfilled, then the world must still go on. Some
worlds may perhaps die young, as individuals die
young. Others endure through hair-breadth es-
capes and constant dangers, find their way like
our planet through showers of fire, and pass
without collision the orbits of huge bodies,
carrying with them always, as our world does,
the materials of their destruction within them-
selves. But catastrophes do not cut short, but
evolve God's purposes. The Flood came that
God's purpose might be fulfilled. The course of
nature was interrupted, the arrangements of
social and domestic life were overturned, all the
works of men were swept away that this purpose
might be fulfilled. It was expedient that one
generation should die for all generations; and
this generation having been taken out of the
way, fresh provision is made for the co-operation
of man with God. On man's part there is an
emphatic acknowledgment of God by sacrifice;
on God's part there is a renewed grant to man of
the world and its fulness, a renewed assurance
of His favour.
This covenant with Noah was on the plane of
nature. It is man's natural life in the world
which is the subject of it. The sacredness of life
is its great lesson. Men might well wonder
whether God did not hold life cheap. In the
Genesis ix. 20-27.]
NOAH'S FALL.
old world violence had prevailed. But while
Lamech's sword may have slain its thousands,
God had in the Flood slain tens of thousands.
The covenant, therefore, directs that human life
must be reverenced. The primal blessing is re-
newed. Men are to multiply and replenish the
earth; and the slaughter of a man was to be reck-
oned a capital crime; and the maintenance of
life was guaranteed by a special clause, securing
the regularity of the seasons. If, then, you ask.
Was this just a beginning again where Adam be-
gan? Did God just wipe out man as a boy
wipes his slate clean, when he finds his calcula-
tion is turning out wrong? Had all these gen-
erations learned nothing; had the world not
grown at all since its birth? — the answer is, it
had grown, and in two most important respects,
— it had come to the knowledge of the uni-
formity of nature and the necessity of human
law. This great departure from the uniformity
of nature brought into strong relief its normal
uniformity, and gave men their first lesson in
the recognition of a God who governs by fixed
laws. And they learned also from the Flood
that wickedness must not be allowed to grow
unchecked and attain dimensions which nothing
short of a flood can cope with.
Fit symbol of this covenant was the rainbow.
Seeming to unite heaven and earth, it pictured
to those primitive people the friendliness exist-
ing between God and man. Many nations have
looked upon it as not merely one of the most
beautiful and striking objects in nature, but as
the messenger of heaven to men. And arching
over the whole horizon, it exhibits the all-
embracing universality of the promise. They
accepted it as a sign that God has no pleasure in
destruction, that He does not give way to
moods, that He does not always chide, that if
weeping may endure for a night joy is sure to
follow. If any one is under a cloud, leading a
joyless, hopeless, heartless life, if any one has
much apparent reason to suppose that God has
given him up to catastrophe, and lets things run
as they may, there is some satisfaction in read-
ing this natural emblem and recognising that
without the cloud, nay, without the cloud break-
ing into heavy sweeping rains, there cannot be
the bow, and that no cloud of God's sending is
permanent, but will one day give place to un-
clouded joy. Let the prayer of David be yours,
" I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are
right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted
me. Let, I pray Thee, Thy merciful kindness be
for my comfort according to Thy word unto Thy
servant."
It may be felt that the matters about which
God spoke to Noah were barely religious, cer-
tainly not spiritual. But to take God as our
God in any one particular is to take Him as our
God for all. If we can eat our daily bread as
given to us by our Father in heaven, then we are
heirs of the righteousness which is by faith. It
is because we wait for some wonderful. and out-
of-the-way proofs that God is keeping faith with
us that we so much lack a real and living faith.
If you think of God only in connection with
some spiritual difflculty, or if you are waiting for
some critical spiritual experience about which
you may- deal with God, — if you are not transact-
ing with Him about your daily work, about your
temporal wants and difficulties, about your
friendships and your tastes, about that which
makes up the bulk of your thought, feeling, and
action, — then you have yet to learn what living
with God means. You have yet to learn that
God the Infinite Creator of all is present in all
your life. We are not in advance of Noah, but
behind him, if we cannot speak to God about
common things.
Besides, the relation of man to God was suffi-
ciently determined by this covenant. When any
man in that age began to ask himself the ques-
tion which all men in all ages ask. How shall I
win the favour of God? it must, or it might, at
once have struck him, Why, God has already
favoured me and has bound Himself to me by
express and solemn pledges. And radically this
is all that any one needs to know. It is not a
change in God's attitude towards you that is re-
quired. What is required is that you believe
what is actually the case, that the Holy God
loves you already and is already seeking to bless
you by making you like Himself. Believe that,
and let the faith of it sink more and more deeply
into your spirit, and you will find that you are
saved from your sin.
What remains to be told of Noah is full of
moral significance. Rare indeed is a wholly
good man; and happy indeed is he who through-
out his youth, his manhood, and his age lets
principle govern all his actions. The righteous
and rescued Noah lying drunk on his tent-floor
is a sorrowful spectacle. God had given him the
earth, and this was the use he made of the gift;
melancholy presage of the fashion of his pos-
terity. He had God to help him to bear his re-
sponsibilities, to refresh and gladden him; but
he preferred the fruit of his vineyard. Can the
most sacred or impressive memories secure a
man against sin? Noah had the memory of a
race drowned for sin and of a year in solitude
with God. Can the dignity and weight of re-
sponsibility steady a man? This man knew that
to him God had declared His purpose and that
he only could carry it forward to fulfilment. In
that heavy, helpless figure, fallen insensible in
his tent, is as significant a warning as in the
Flood.
Noah's sin brings before us two facts about
sin. First, that the smaller temptations are
often the most effectual. The man who is in-
vulnerable on the field of battle amidst declared
and strong enemies falls an easy prey to the
assassin in his own home. When all the world
was against him, Noah was able to face single-
handed both scorn and violence, but in the midst
of his vineyard, among his own people who
understood him and needed no preaching or
proof of his virtue, he relaxed.
He was no longer in circumstances so difficult
as to force him to watch and pray, as to drive
him to God's side. The temptations Noah had
before known were mainly from without; he
now learnt that those from within are more seri-
ous. Many of us find it comparatively easy to
carry clean hands before the public, or to de-
mean ourselves with tolerable seemliness in cir-
cumstances where the temptation may be very
strong but is also very patent; but how careless
are we often in our domestic life, and how little
strain do we put upon ourselves in the company
of those whom we can trust. What petulance
and irritability, what angry and slanderous
words, what sensuality and indolence could our
own homes witness to! Noah is not the only
man who has walked uprightly and kept his gar-
ment unspotted from the world so long as the
24
THE BOOK OF GExNESIS.
eye of man was on him, but who has lain un-
covered on his own tent-floor.
Secondly, we see here how a man may fall into
new forms of sin, and are reminded especially
of one of the most distressing facts to be ob-
served in the world, viz., that men in their prime
and even in their old age are sometimes over-
taken in sins of sensuality from which hitherto
they have kept themselves pure. We are very
ready to think we know the full extent of
wickedness to which we may go; that by certain
sins we shall never be much tempted. And in
some of our predictions we may be correct; our
temperament or our circumstances may abso-
lutely preclude some sins from mastering us.
Yet who has made but a slight alteration in his
circumstances, added a little to his business,
made some new family arrangements, or
changed his residence, without being astonished
to find how many new sources of evil seem to
have been opened within him? While therefore
you rejoice over sins defeated, beware of think-
ing your work is nearly done. Especially let
those of us who have for years been fighting
mainly against one sin beware of thinking that
if only that were defeated we should be free from
sin. As a man who has long suffered from one
bodily disease congratulates himself that at least
he knows what he may expect in the way of pain,
and will not suffer as some other man he has
heard of does suffer; whereas though one dis-
ease may kill others, yet some diseases only
prepare the body for the assault of worse ail-
ments than themselves, and the constitution at
last breaks up under a combination of ills that
make the sufferer a pity to his friends and a per-
plexity to his physicians. And so is it in the
spirit; you cannot say that because you are so
consumed by one infirmity, others can find no
room in you. In short, there is nothing that
can secure us against the unspeakable calamity
of falling into new sins, except the direction
given by our Lord, " Watch and pray, lest ye
enter into temptation." There is need of watch-
ing, else this precept had never been uttered; too
many things absolutely needful for us to do have
to be enjoined upon us to leave any room for
the injunction of precepts that are unnecessary,
and he who is not watching has no security that
he shall not sin so as to be a scandal to his
friends and a shame to himself.
Noah's sin brought to light the character of
his three sons — the coarse irreverence of Ham,
the dignified delicacy and honour of Shem and
Japheth. The bearing of men towards the sins
of others is always a touch-stone of character.
The full exposure of sin where good is expected
to come of the exposure and when it is done
with sorrow and with shame is one thing, and
the exposure of sin to create a laugh and merely
to amuse is another. They are the true descend-
ants of Ham, whether their faces be black or
white, and whether they, go with no clothes or
with clothes that are the product of much
thought and anxiety, who find pleasure in the
mere contemplation of deeds of shame, in real
life, on the boards of the theatre, in daily jour-
nals, or in works of fiction. Extremes meet,
and the savage grossness of Ham is found in
many who count themselves the last and finest
product of culture. It is found also in the
harder and narrower set of modern investigators,
who glory in exposing the scientific weakness
of our forefathers, and make a jest of the mis-
takes of men to whom they owe much of their
freedom, and whose shoe latchet they are not
worthy to tie, so far as the deeper moral quali-
ties go.
But neither is religious society free from this
same sin. The faults and mistakes and sins of
others are talked over, possibly with some show
of regret, but with, as we know, very little real
shame and sadness, for these feelings prompt
us, not to talk them over in companies where no
good can be done in the way of remedy, but
to cover them as these sorrowing sons of Noah,
with averted eye and humbled head. Charity is
the prime grace enjoined upon us and charity
covers a multitude of sins. And whatever ex-
cuses for exposing others we may make, how-
ever we may say it is only a love of truth and
fair play that makes us drag to light the infirmi-
ties of a man whom others are praising, we may
be very sure that if all evil motives were absent
this kind of evil speaking would cease amdng us.
But there is a malignity in sin that leaves its
bitter root in us all, and causes us to be glad
when those whom we have been regarding as
our superiors are reduced to our poor level.
And there is a cowardliness in sin which cannot
bear to be alone, and eagerly hails every symp-
tom of others being in the same condemnation.
Before exposing another, think first whether
your own conduct could bear a similar treat-
ment, whether you have never done the thing
you desire to conceal, said the thing you would
blush to hear repeated, or thought the thought
you could not bear another to read. And if you
be a Christian, does it not become you to re-
member what you yourself have learnt of the
slipperiness of this world's ways, of your liability
to fall, of your sudden exposure to sin from
some physical disorder, or some slight mistake
which greatly extenuates your sin, but which
you could not plead before another? And do
you know nothing of the difficulty of conquering
one sin that is rooted in your constitution, and
the strife that goes on in a man's own soul and
in secret though he show little immediate fruit
of it in his life before men? Surely it becomes
us to give a man credit for much good resolu-
tion and much sore self-denial and endeavour,
even when he fails and sins still, because such
we know to be our own case, and if we disbe-
lieve in others until they can walk with perfect
rectitude, if we condemn them for one or two
flaws and blemishes, we shall be tempted to show
the same want of charity towards ourselves, and
fall at length into that miserable and hopeless
condition that believes in no regenerating spirit
nor in any holiness attainable by us.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
Genesis xi. 27-xii. 5.
With Abraham there opens a new chapter in
the history of the race; a chapter of the pro-
foundest significance. The consequences of
Abraham's movements and beliefs have been
limitless and enduring. All succeeding, time has
been influenced by him. And yet there is in his
life a remarkable simplicity, and an entire ab-
sence of such events as impress contemporaries.
Among all the forgotten millions of his own
Genesis xi. 27-xii. 5.]
THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
time he stands alone a recognisable and mem-
orable figure. But around his figure there
gathers no throng of armed followers; with his
name, no vast territorial dominion, no new legis-
lation, not even any work of literature or art is
associated. The significance of his life was not
military, nor legislative, nor literary, but re-
ligious. To him must be carried back the belief
in one God. We find him born and brought up
among idolaters; and although it is certain there
were others besides himself who here and there
upon earth had dimly arrived at the same be-
lief as he, yet it is certainly from him the Mono-
theistic belief has been diffused. Since his day
the world has never been without its explicit ad-
vocacy. It is his belief in the true God, in a
God who manifested His existence and His
nature by responding to this belief, it is this be-
lief and the place he gave it as the regulating
principle of all his movements and thoughts, that
have given him his everlasting influence.
With Abraham there is also introduced the
first step in a new method adopted by God in the
training of men. The dispersion of men and the
divergence of their languages are now seen to
have been the necessary preliminary to this new
step in the education of the world — the fencing
round of one people till they should learn to
know God and understand and exemplify His
government. It is true, God reveals Himself to
all men and governs all; but by selecting one
race with special adaptations, and by giving to
it a special training, God might more securely
and more rapidly reveal Himself to all. Each
nation has certain characteristics, a national
character which grows by seclusion from the in-
fluences which are forming other races. There
is a certain mental and moral individuality
stamped upon every separate people. Nothing-
is more certainly retained; nothing more cer-
tainly handed down from generation to genera-
tion. It would therefore be a good practical
means of conserving and deepening the knowl-
edge of God, if it were made the national interest
of a people to preserve it. and if it were closely
identified with the national characteristics. This
was the method adopted by God. He meant to
combine allegiance to Himself with national ad-
vantages, and spiritual with national character,
and separation in belief with a distinctly outlined
and defensible territory.
This method, in common with all Divine
methods, was in strict keeping with the natural
evolution of history. The migration of Abra-
ham occurred in the epoch of migrations. But
although for centuries before Abraham new
nations had been forming, none of them had be-
lief in God as its formative principle. Wave
upon wave of warriors, shepherds, colonists have
left the prolific plains of Mesopotamia. Swarm
after swarm has left that busy hive, pushing one
another further and further west and east, but
all have been urged by natural impulses, by hun-
ger, commerce, love of adventure and conquest.
By natural likings and dislikings, by policy, and
by dint of force the multitudinous tribes of men
were finding their places in the world, the
weaker being driven to the hills, and being
schooled there by hard living till their descend-
ants came down and conquered their conquerors.
All this went on without regard to any very high
motives. As it was with the Goths who in-
vaded Italy for her wealth, as it is now with
those who people America and Africa because
there is land or room enough, so it was then.
But at last God selects one man and says, " / will
make of thee a great nation." The origin of
this nation is not facile love of change nor lust
of territory, but belief in God. Without this be-
lief this people had not been. No other account
can be given of its origin. Abraham is himself
already the member of a tribe, well-off and likely
to be well-ofif; he has no large family to provide
for, but he is separated from his kindred and
country, and led out to be himself a new begin-
ning, and this because, as he himself through-
out his life said, he heard God's call and re-
sponded to it.
The city which claims the distinction of being
Abraham's birthplace, or at least of giving its
name to the district where he was born, is now
represented by a few mounds of ruins rising out
of the flat marshy ground on the western bank
of the Euphrates, not far above the point where
it joins its waters to those of the Tigris and
glides on to the Persian gulf. In the time of
Abraham, Ur was the capital city which gave its
name to one of the most populous and fertile
regions of the earth. The whole land of Accad
which ran up from the sea-coast to Upper Meso-
potamia (or Shinar), seems to have been known
as Ur-ma, the land of Ur. This land was of no
great extent, being little if at all larger than
Scotland, but it was the richest of Asia. The
high civilisation which this land enjoyed even in
the time of Abraham has been disclosed in the
abundant and multifarious Babylonian remains
which have recently been brought to light.
What induced Terah to abandon so prosper-
ous a land can only be conjectured. It is pos-
sible that the idolatrous customs of the inhabit-
ant's may have had something to do with his
movements. For while the ancient Babylonian
records reveal a civilisation surprisingly ad-
vanced, and a social order in some respects ad-
mirable, they also make disclosures regarding
the worship of the gods which must shock even
those who are familiar with the immoralities
frequently fostered by heathen religions. The
city of Ur was not only the capital, it was the
holy city of the Chaldeans. In its northern
quarter rose high above the surroundipg build-
ings the successive stages of the temple of the
moon-god, culminating in a platform on which
the priests could both accurately observe the
motions of the stars and hold their night-
watches in honour of their god. In the courts
of this temple might be heard breaking the
silence of midnight one of those magnificent
hymns, still preserved, in which idolatry is seen
in its most attractive dress, and in which the
Lord of Ur is invoked in terms not unworthy of
the living God. But in these same temple-
courts Abraham may have seen the firstborn led
to the altar, the fruit of the body sacrificed to
atone for the sin of the soul; and here too he
must have seen other sights even more shocking
and repulsive. Here he was no doubt taught
that strangely mixed religion which clung for
generations to some members of his family.
Certainly he was taught in common with the
whole community to rest on the seventh day: as
he was trained to look to the stars with rever-
ence and to the moon as something more than
the light which was set to rule the night.
Possibly then Terah may have been induced to
move northwards by a desire to shake himself
free from customs he disapproved. The He-
26
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
brews themselves seem always to have con-
sidered that his migration had a religious
motive. " This people," says one of their old
writings, " is descended from the Chaldeans, and
they sojourned heretofore in Mesopotamia be-
cause they would not follow the gods of their
fathers which were in the land of Chaldea. For
they left the way of their ancestors and wor-
shipped the God of heaven, the God whom they
knew; so they cast them out from the face of
their gods, and they fled into Mesopotamia and
sojourned there many days. Then their God
commanded them to depart from the place where
they sojourned and to go into the land of Ca-
naan." But if this is a true account of the origin
of the movement northwards, it must have been
Abraham rather than his father who was the
moving spirit of it; for it is certainly Abraham
and not Terah who stands as the significant
figure inaugurating the new era.
If doubt rests on the moving cause of the mi-
gration from Ur, none rests on that which
prompted Abraham to leave Charran and jour-
ney towards Canaan. He did so in obedience
to what he believed to be a Divine command,
and in faith on what he understood to be a
Divine promise. How he became aware that a
Divine command thus lay upon him we do not
know. Nothing could persuade him that he
was not commanded. Day by day he heard in
his soul what he recognised as a Divine voice,
saying: " Get thee out of thy country and from
thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto a
land that I will show thee! " This was God's
first revelation of Himself to Abraham. Up to
this time Abraham to all appearance had no
knowledge of any God but the deities wor-
shipped by his fathers in Chaldea.* Now,* he
finds within himself impulses which he cannot
resist and which he is conscious he ought not to
resist. He believes it to be his duty to adopt a
course which may look foolish and which he
can justify only by saying that his conscience
bids him. He recognises, apparently for the
first time, that through his conscience there
speaks to him a God Who is supreme. In de-
pendence on this God he gathered his posses-
sions together and departed.
So far, one may be tempted to say, no very
unusual faith was required. Many a poor girl
has followed a weakly brother or a dissipated
father to Australia or the wild west of America;
many a lad has gone to the deadly west coast of
Africa with no such prospects as Abraham. For
Abraham had the double prospect which makes
migration desirable. Assure the colonist that
he will find land and have strong sons to till and
hold and leave it to, and you give him all the
motive he requires. These were the promises
made to Abraham — a land and a seed. Neither
was there at this period much difficulty in be-
lieving that both promises would be fulfilled.
The land he no doubt expected to find in some
unoccupied territory. And as regards the chil-
dren, he had not yet faced the condition that
only through Sarah was this part of the promise
to be fulfilled.
But the peculiarity in Abraham's abandon-
ment of present certainties for the sake of a
future and unseen good is, that it was prompted
not by family afifection or greed or an adven-
turous disposition, but by faith in a God Whom
no one but himself recognised. It was the first
step in a life-long adherence to an Invisible,
Spiritual Supreme. It was that first step which
committed him to life-long dependence upon and
intercourse with One Who had authority to
regulate his movements and power to bless him.
From this time forth all that he sought in life
was the fulfilment of God's promise. He staked
his future upon God's existence and faithfulness.
Had Abraham abandoned Charran at the com-
mand of a widely ruling monarch who prom-
ised him ample compensation, no record would
have been made of so ordinary a transaction.
But this was an entirely new thing and well
worth recording, that a man should leave coun-
try and kindred and seek an unknown land under
the impression that thus he was obeying the
command of the unseen God. While others
worshipped sun, moon, and stars, and recog-
nised the Divine in their brilliance and power,
in their exaltation above earth and control of
earth and its life, Abraham saw that there was
something greater than the order of nature and
more worthy of worship, even the still small
voice that spoke within his own conscience or
right and wrong in human conduct, and that
told him how his own life must be ordered.
While all around him were bowing down to the
heavenly host and sacrificing to them the highest
things in human nature, he heard a voice falling
from these shining ministers of God's will, which
said to him, " See thou do it not, for we are thy
fellow-servants; worship thou God! " This was
the triumph of the spiritual over the material;
the acknowledgment that in God there is some-
thing greater than can be found in nature; that
man finds his true affinity not in the things that
are seen but in the unseen Spirit that is over all.
It is this that gives to the figure of Abraham its
simple grandeur and its permanent significance.
Under the simple statement " The Lord said
unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country,"
there are probably hidden years of questioning
and meditation. God's revelation of Himself to
Abram in all probability did not take the de-
terminate form of articulate command without
having passed through many preliminary stages
of surmise and doubt and mental conflict. But
once assured that God is calling him, Abraham
responds quickly and resolutely. The revelation
has come to a mind in which it will not be lost.
As one of the few theologians who have paid
attention to the method of revelation has said:
" A Divine revelation does not dispense with a
certain character and certain qualities of mind
in the person who is the instrument of it. A
man who throws ofif the chains of authority and
association must be a man of extraordinary in-
dependence and strength of mind, although he
does so in obedience to a Divine revelation; be-
cause no miracle, no sign or wonder which ac-
companies a revelation can by its simple stroke
force human nature from the innate hold of cus-
tom and the adhesion to and fear of established
opinion; can enable it to confront the frowns of
men, and take up truth opposed to general preju-
dice, except there is in the man himself, who is
the recipient of the revelation, a certain strength
of mind and independence which concurs with
the Divine intention."
That Abraham's faith triumphed over excep-
tional difficulties and enabled him to do what
no other motive would have been strong enough
to accomplish, there is therefore no call to assert.
During his after-life his faith was severely tried,
but the mere abandonment of his country in the
Genesis xi. 27-xii. 5.]
THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.
27
hope of gaining a better was the ordinary motive
of his day. It was the ground of this hope, the
behef in God, which made Abraham's conduct
original and fruitful. That sufficient inducement
was presented to him is only to say that God is
reasonable. There is always sufficient induce-
ment to obey God; because life is reasonable.
No man was ever commanded or required to do
anything which it was not for his advantage to
do. Sin is a mistake. But so weak are we, so
liable to be moved by the things present to us
and by the desire for immediate gratification,
that it never ceases to be wonderful and admi-
rable when a sense of duty enables a man to
forego present advantage and to believe that
present loss is the needful preliminary of eter-
nal gain.
Abraham's faith is chosen by the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews as an apt illustration of
his definition of Faith, that it is " the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen." One property of faith is that it gives to
things future, and which are as yet only hoped
for, all the reality Oi actual present existence.
Future things may be said to have no existence
for those who do not believe in them. They are
not taken into account. Men do not shape their
conduct with any reference to them. But when
a man believes in certain events that are to be,
this faith of his lends to these future things the
reality, the " substance " which things actually
existing in the present have. They have the
same weight with him, the same influence upon
his conduct.
Without some power to realise the future and
to take account of what is to be as well as of
what already is, we could not carry on the com-
mon affairs of life. And success in life very
greatly depends on foresight, or the power to
see clearly what is to be and give it due weight.
The man who has no foresight makes his plans,
but being unable to apprehend the future his
plans are disconcerted. Indeed it is one of the
most valuable gifts a man can have, to be able
to say with tolerable accuracy what is to happen
and what is not; to be able to sift rumours, com-
mon talk, popular impressions, probabilities,
chances, and to be able to feel sure what the
future will really be; to be able to weigh the
character and commercial prospects of the men
he deals with, so as to see what must be the
issue of their operations and whom he may trust.
Many of our most serious mistakes in life arise
from our inability to imagine the consequences
of our actions and to forefeel how these conse-
quences will afifect us.
Now faith largely supplies the want of this
imaginative foresight. It lends substance to
things future. It believes the account given of
the future by a trustworthy authority. In many
ordinary matters all men are dependent on the
testimony of others for their knowledge of the
result of certain operations. The astronomer,
the physiologist, the navigator, each has his de-
partment within which his predictions are ac-
cepted as authoritative. But for what is beyond
the ken of science no faith in our fellow-men
avails. Feeling that if there is a life beyond the
grave, it must have important bearings on the
present, we have yet no data by which to calcu-
late what will then be, or only data so difficult
to use that our calculations are but guesswork.
But faith accepts the testimony of God as un-
hesitatingly as that of man and gives reality to
the future He describes and promises. It be-
lieves that the life God calls us to is a better life,
and it enters upon it. It believes that there is a
world to come in which all things are new and
all things eternal; and, so believmg, it cannot
but feel less anxious to cling to this world's
goods. That which embitters all loss and
deepens sorrow is the feeling that this world is
all; but faith makes eternity as real as time and
gives substantial existence to that new and limit-
less future in which we shall have time to forget
the sorrows and live past the losses of this pres-
ent world.
The radical elements of greatness are identi-
cal from age to age, and the primal duties which
no good man can evade do not vary as the world
grows older. What we admire in Abraham we
feel to be incumbent on ourselves. Indeed the
uniform call of Christ to all His followers is
even in form almost identical with that which
stirred Abraham, and made him the father of the
faithful. " Follow Me," says our Lord, " and
every one that forsaketh houses, or brethren, or
sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children,
or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive an
hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life."
And there is something perennially edifying in
the spectacle of a man who believes that God has
a place and a use for him in the world, and who
puts himself at God's disposal; who enters upon
life refusing to be bound by the circumstances of
his upbringing, by the expectations of his
friends, by prevailing customs, by prospect of
gain and advancement among men; and resolved
to listen to the highest voice of all, to discover
what God has for him to do upon earth and
where he is likely to find most of God; who vir-
tually and with deepest sincerity says, Let God
choose my destination: I have good land here,
but if God wishes me elsewhere, elsewhere I go:
who, in one word, believes in the call of God to
himself, who admits it into the springs of his
conduct, and recognises that for him also the
highest life his conscience can suggest is the
only life he can live, no matter how cumbrous
and troublesome and expensive be the changes
involved in entering it. Let the spectacle take
hold of your imagination — the spectacle of a man
believing that there is something more akin to
himself and higher than the material life and the
great laws that govern it, and going calmly and
hopefully forward into the unknown, because he
knows that God is with him, that in God is our
true life, that man liveth not by bread only, but
by every word that cometh out of the mouth of
God.
Even thus then may we bring our faith to a
true and reliable test. All men who have a con-
fident expectation of future good make sacrifices
or run risks to obtain it. Mercantile life pro-
ceeds on the understanding that such ventures
are reasonable and will always be made. Men
might if they liked spend their money on present
pleasure, but they rarely do so. They prefer to
put it into concerns or transactions from which
they expect to reap large returns. They have
faith, and as a necessary consequence they make
ventures. So did these Hebrews — they ran a
great risk, they gave up the sole means of liveli-
hood they had any experience of and entered
what they knew to be a bare desert, because they
believed in the land that lay beyond and in God's
promise. What then has your faith done?
What have you ventured that you would not
28
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
have ventured but for God's promise. Suppose
Christ's promise failed, in what would you be
the losers? Of course you would lose what you
call your hope of heaven — but what would you
find you had lost in this world? When a mer-
chant's ships are wrecked or when his invest-
ment turns out bad, he loses not only the gain
he hoped for, but the means he risked. Suppose
then Christ were declared bankrupt, unable to
fulfil your expectations, would you really find
that you had ventured so much upon His promise
that you are deeply involved in His bankruptcy,
and are much worse ofif in this world and now
than you would otherwise have been? Or may
I not use the words of one of the most cautious
and charitable of men, and say, " I really
fear, when we come to examine, it will be
found that there is nothing we resolve,
nothing we do, nothing we do not do, noth-
ing we avoid, nothing we choose, nothing
we give up, nothing we pursue, which we should
not resolve, and do, and not do, and avoid, and
choose, and give up, and pursue, if Christ had
not died and heaven were not promised us." If
this be the case — if you would be neither much
better nor much worse though Christianity were
a fable — if you have in nothing become poorer
in this world that your reward in heaven may
be greater, if you have made no investments and
run no risks, then really the natural inference is
that your faith in the future inheritance is small.
Barnabas sold his Cyprus property because he
believed heaven was his, and his bit of land sud-
denly became a small consideration; useful only
in so far as he could with the mammon of un-
righteousness make himself a mansion in heaven.
Paul gave up his prospects of advancement in
the nation, of which he would of course as cer-
tainly have become the leader and first man as
he took that position in the Church, and plainly
tells us that having made so large a venture on
Christ's word, he would if his word failed be a
great loser, of all men most miserable because
he had risked his all in this life on it. People
sometimes take oiifence at Paul's plain way of
speaking of the sacrifices he had made, and of
Peter's plain way of saying " we have left all and
followed Thee, what shall we have therefore? "
but when people have made sacrifices they know
it and can specify them, and a faith that makes
no sacrifices is no good either in this world's
affairs or in religion. Self-consciousness may
not be a very good thing: but self-deception is a
worse.
Here as elsewhere a clear hope sprang from
faith. Recognising God, Abraham knew that
there was for men a great future. He looked
forward to a time when all men should believe
as he did, and in him all families of the earth be
blessed. No doubt in these early days, when all
men were on the move and striving to make a
name and a place for themselves, an onward look
might be common. But the far-reaching extent,
the certainty, and the definiteness of Abraham's
view of the future were unexampled. There far
back in the hazy dawn he stood while the morn-
ing mists hid the horizon from every other eye,
and he alone discerns what is to be. One clear
voice and one only rings out in unfaltering tones
and from amidst the babel of voices that utter
either amazing follies or misdirected yearnings,
gives the one true forecast and direction — the
one living word which has separated itself from
and survived all the prognostications of Chal-
dean soothsayers and priests of Ur, because it
has never ceased to give life to men. It has
created for itself a channel and you can trace it
through the centuries by the living green of its
banks and the life it gives as it goes. For tliis
hope of Abraham has been fulfilled; the creed
and its accompanying blessing which that day
lived in the heart of one man only has brought
blessing to all the families of the earth.
CHAPTER VIII.
/I BR AM IN EGYPT.
Genesis xii. 6-20.
Abram still journeying southward, and not as
yet knowing where his shifting camp was finally
to be pitched, came at last to what may be called
the heart of Palestine, the rich district o!^
Shechem. Here stood the oak of Moreh, a well-
known landmark and favourite meeting-place.
In after years every meadow in this plain was
owned and occupied, every vineyard on the
slopes of Ebal fenced off, every square yard
specified in some title-deed. But as yet the
country seems not to have been densely popu-
lated. There was room for a caravan like
Abraham's to move freely through the country,
liberty for a far-stretching encampment such as
his to occupy the lovely vale that lies between
Ebal and Gerizim. As he rested here and en-
joyed the abundant pasture, or as he viewed the
land from one of the neighbouring hills, the
Lord appeared to him and made him aware that
this was the land designed for him. Here ac-
cordingly, under the spreading oak round whose
boughs had often clung the smoke of idolatrous
sacrifice, Abram erects an altar to the living
God in devout acceptance of the gift, taking pos-
session as it were of the land jointly for God and
for himself. Little harm will come of worldly
possessions so taken and so held.
As Abram traversed the land, wondering what
were the limits of his inheritance, it may have
seemed far too large for his household. Soon
he experiences a difficulty of quite the opposite
kind; he is unable to find in it sustenance for his
followers. Any notion that God's friendship
would raise him above the touch of such troubles
as were incident to the times, places, and cir-
cumstances in which his life was to be spent, is
quickly dispelled. The children of God are not
exempt from any of the common calamities;
they are only expected and aided to be calmer
and wiser in their endurance and use of them.
That we suffer the same hardships as all other
men is no proof that we are not eternally asso-
ciated with God, and ought never to persuade us
our faith has been in vain.
Abram, as he looked at the bare, brown,
cracked pastures and at the dry watercourses
filled only with stones, thought of the ever-fresh
plains of Mesopotamia, the lovely gardens of
Damascus, the rich pasturage of the northern
borders of Canaan; but he knew enough of his
own heart to make him very careful lest these
remembrances should make him turn back. No
doubt he had come to the promised land expect-
ing it to be the real Utopia, the Paradise which
had haunted his thoughts as he lay among the
hills of Ur watching his flocks under the brilliant
midnight sky. No doubt he expected that here
Genesis xi\. 6-20]
ABRAM IN EGYPT.
all would be easy and bright, peaceful and
luxurious. His first experience is of famine.
He has to look on his herd melting away, his
favourite cattle losing their appearance, his
servants murmuring and obliged to scatter. In
his dreams he must have night after night seen
the old country, the green breadth of the land
that Euphrates watered, the heavy-headed corn
bending before the warm airs of his native land;
but morning by morning he wakes to the same
anxieties, to the sad reality of parched and
burnt-up pastures, shepherds hanging about with
gloomy looks, his own heart distressed and fail-
ing. He was also a stranger here who could not
look for the help an old resident might have
counted on. It was probably years since God
had made any sign to him. Was the promised
land worth having, after all? Might he not be
better of? among his old friends in Charran?
Should he not brave their ridicule and return?
He will not so much as make it possible to re-
turn. He will not even for temporary relief go
north towards his old country, but will go to
Egypt, where he cannot stay, and from Avhich he
must return to Canaan.
Here, then, is a man who plainly believes that
God's promise cannot fail ; that God will magnify
His promise, and that it above all else is worth
waiting for. He believes that the man who
seeks without flinching, and through all disap-
pointment and bareness, to do God's will, shall
one day have an abundantly satisfying reward,
and that meanwhile association with God in car-
rying forward His abiding purposes with men is
more for a man to live upon than the cattle upon
a thousand hills. And thus famine rendered to
Abram no small service>if it quickened within
him the consciousness that the call of God was
not to ease and prosperity, to land-owning and
cattle-breeding, but to be God's agent on earth
for the fulfilment of remote but magnificent pur-
poses. His life might seem to be down among
the commonplace vicissitudes, pasture might fail,
and his well-stocked camp melt away, but out of
his mind there could not fade the future God
had revealed to him. If it had been his ambi-
tion to give his name to a tribe and be known as
a wide-ruling chief, that ambition is now eclipsed
by his desire to be a step towards the fulfilment
of that real end for which the whole world is.
The belief that God has called him to do His
work has lifted him above concern about per-
sonal matters; life has taken a new meaning in
his eyes by its connection with the Eternal.
The extraordinary country to which Abram
betook himself, and which was destined to exer-
cise so profound an influence on his descendants,
had even at this early date attained a high de-
gree of civilisation. The origin of this civilisa-
tion is shrouded in obscurity, as the source of
the great river to which the country owes its
prosperity for many centuries kept the secret of
its birth. As yet scholars are unable to tell us
with certainty what Pharaoh was on the throne
when Abram went down into Egypt. The
monuments have preserved the effigies of two
distinct types of rulers; the one simple, kindly,
sensible, stately, handsome, fearless, as of men
long accustomed to the throne. These are the
faces of the native Egyptian rulers. The other
type of face is heavy and massive, proud and
strong but full of care, with neither the hand-
some features nor the look of kindliness and
culture which belong to the other. These are
the faces of the famous Shepherd kings who held
Egypt in subjection, probably at the very time
when Abram was in the land.
For our purposes it matters little whether
Abram's visit occurred while the country was
under native or under foreign rule, for long be-
fore the Shepherd kings entered Egypt it en-
joyed a complete and stable civilisation. What-
ever dynasty Abram found on the throne, he
certainly found among the people a more re-
fined social life than he had seen in his native
city, a much purer religion, and a much more
highly developed moral code. He must have
kept himself entirely aloof from Egyptian society
if he failed to discover that they believed in a
judgment after death, and that thi^ judgment
proceeded upon a severe moral code. Before
admis'^inn into the Egyptian heaven the deceased
must swear that " he has not stolen nor slain any
one intentionally; that he has not allowed his
devotions to be seen; that he has not been guilty
of hypocrisy or lying ; that he has not calum-
niated any one nor fallen into drunkenness or
adultery ; that he has not turned away his ear
from the words of triith ; that he has been no
idle talker; that he has not slighted the king or
his father." To a man in Abram's state of mind
the Egyptian creed and customs must have con-
veyed many valuable suggestions.
But virtuous as in many respects the Egyp-
tians were, Abram's fears as he approached their
country were by no means groundless. The
event proved that whatever Sarah's age and ap-
pearance at this time were, his fears were some-
thing more than the fruit of a husband's par-
tiality. Possibly he may have heard the ugly
story which has recently been deciphered from
an old papyrus, and which tells how one of the
Pharaohs, acting on the advice of his princes,
sent armed men to fetch a beautiful woman and
make away with her husband. But knowing the
risk he ran. why did he go? He contemplated
the possibility of Sarah's being taken from him.
but, if this should happen, what became of the
promised seed? We cannot suppose that, driven
by famine from the promised land, he had lost
all hope regarding the fulfilment of the other
part of the promise. Probably his idea was that
some of the great men might take a fancy to
Sarah, and that he would so temporise with them
and ask for her such large gifts as would hold
them off for a while until he could provide for
his people and get clear out of the land. It had
not occurred to him that she might be taken to
the palace. Whatever his idea of the probable
course of events was, his proposal to guide them
by disguising his true relationship to Sarah was
unjustifiable. And his feelings during these
weeks in Egypt must have been far from envi-
able as he learned that of all virtues the Egyp-
tians set greatest store by truth, and that lying;
Avas the vice they held in greatest abhorrence.
Here then was the whole promise and purpose
of God in a most precarious position; the land
abandoned, the mother of the promised seed in
a harem through whose guards no force on earth
could penetrate. Abram could do nothing but
go helplessly about, thinking what a fool he had
been, and wishing himself well back among the
parched hills of Bethel. Suddenly there is a
panic in the royal household; and Pharaoh is
made aware that he was on the brink of what he
himself considered a great sin. Besides effect-
ing its immediate purpose, this visitation might
3°
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
have taught Pharaoh that a man cannot safely
sin within limits prescribed by himself. He had
not intended such evil as he found himself just
saved from committing. But had he lived with
perfect purity, this liability to fall into transgres-
sion, shocking to himself, could not have existed.
Many sins of most painful consequence we com-
mit, not of deliberate purpose, but because our
previous life has been careless and lacking in
moral tone. We are mistaken if we suppose that
we can sin within a certain safe circle and never
go beyond it.
By this intervention on God's part Abram was
saved from the consequences of his own scheme,
but he was not saved from the indignant rebuke
of the Egyptian monarch. This rebuke indeed
did not prevent him from a repetition of the
same conduct in another country, conduct which
was met with similar indignation: " What have I
offended thee, that thou hast brought on me and
on my kingdom this great sin? Thou hast done
deeds unto me that ought not to be done. What
sawest thou that thou hast done this thing? "
This rebuke did not seem to sink deeply into the
conscience of Abram's descendants, for the Jew-
ish history is full of instances in which leading
men do not shrink from manoeuvre, deceit, and
lying. Yet it is impossible to suppose that
Abram's conception of God was not vastly en-
larged by this incident, and this especially in
two particulars.
(i) Abram must have received a new impres-
sion regarding God's truth. It would seem that
as yet he had no very clear idea of God's holi-
ness. He had the idea of God which Moham-
medans entertain, and past which they seem un-
able to get. He conceived of God as the
Supreme Ruler: he had a firm belief in the unity
of God and probably a hatred of idolatry and a
profound contempt for idolaters. He believed
that this Supreme God could always and easily
accomplish His will, and that the voice that in-
wardly guided him was the voice of God. His
own character had not yet been deepened and
dignified by prolonged intercourse with God and
by close observation of His actual ways; and so
as yet he knows little of what constitutes the
true glory of God.
For learning that truth is an essential attri-
bute of God he could not have gone to a better
school than Egypt. His own reliance on God's
promise might have been expected to produce
in him a high esteem for truth and a clear recog-
nition of its essential place in the Divine char-
acter. Apparently it had only partially had this
effect. The heathen, therefore, must teach him.
Had not Abram seen the look of indignation and
injury on the face of Pharaoh, he might have left
the land feeling that his scheme had succeeded
admirably. But as he went at the head of his
vastly increased household, the envy of many
who saw his long train of camels and cattle, he
would have given up all could he have blotted
from his mind's eye the reproachful face of
Pharaoh and nipped out this entire episode from
his life. He was humbled both by his falseness
and his foolishness. He had told a lie, and told
it when truth would have served him better.
For the very precaution he took in passing of¥
Sarai as his sister was precisely what encouraged
Pharaoh to take her, and produced the whole
misadventure. It was the heathen monarch who
taught the father of the faithful his first lesson in
God's holiness.
What he so painfully learned we must all learn,
that God does not need lying tor the attainment
of His ends, and that double-dealing is always
short-sighted and the proper precursor of shame.
Frequently men are tempted like Abram to seek
a God-protected and God-prospered life by con-
duct that is not thoroughly straightforward.
Some of us who statedly ask God to bless our
endeavours, and who have no doubt that God
approves the ends we seek to accomplish, do yet
adopt such means of attaining our ends as not
even men with any high sense of honour would
countenance. To save ourselves from trouble,
inconvenience, or danger, we are tempted to
evasions and shifts which are not free from guilt.
The more one sees of life, the higher value does
he set on truth. Let lying be called by what-
ever flattering title men please — let it pass for
diplomacy, smartness, self-defence, policy, or
civility — it remains the device of the coward, the
absolute bar to free and healthy intercourse, a
vice which difTuses itself through the whole
character and makes growth impossible. Trade
and commerce are always hampered and re-
tarded, and often overwhelmed in disaster, by the
determined and deliberate doubleness of those
who engage in them: charity is minimised and
v.'ithheld from its proper objects by the suspi-
ciousness engendered in us by the almost uni-
versal falseness of men; and the habit of making
things seem to others what they are not, reacts
upon the man himself and makes it dif^cult for
him to feel the abiding effective reality of any-
thing he has to do with or even of his own soul.
If then we are to know the living and true God
we must ourselves be true, transparent, and liv-
ing in the light as He is the Light. If we are to
reach His ends we must adopt His means and
abjure all crafty contrivances of our own. If
we are to be His heirs and partners in the work
of the world, we must first be His children, and
show that we have attained our majority by
manifesting an indubitable resemblance to His
own clear truth.
(2) But whether Abram fully learned this les-
son or not, there can be little doubt that at this
time he did receive fresh and abiding impres-
sions of God's faithfulness and suf^ciency. In
Abram's first response to God's call he ex-
hibited a remarkable independence and strength
of character. His abandonment of home and
kindred, on account of a religious faith which he
alone possessed, was the act of a man who relied
much more on himself than on others, and who
had the courage of his convictions. This quali-
fication for playing a great part in human affairs
he undoubtedly had. But he had also the de-
fects of his qualities. A weaker man would have
shrunk from going into Egypt and would have
preferred to see his flocks dwindle rather than
take so venturesome a step. No such hesita-
tions could trammel Abram's movements. He
felt himself equal to all occasions. That part of
his character which was reproduced in his
grandson Jacob, a readiness to rise to every
emergency that called for management and
diplomacy, an aptitude for dealing with men and
using them for his purposes — this came to the
front now! To all the timorous suggestions of
his household he had one reply: Leave it all to
me; I will bring you through. So he entered
Egypt confident that, single-handed, he could
cope with their Pharaohs, priests, magicians,
guards, judges, warriors; and find his way
Genesis xiii.]
LOT'S SEPARATION FROM ABRAM.
31
through the finely-meshed net that held and ex-
amined every person and action in the land.
He left Egypt in a much more healthy state of
mind, practically convinced of his own inability
to work his way to the happiness God had prom-
ised him, and equally convinced of God's faith-
fulness and power to bring him through all the
embarrassments and disasters into which his
own folly and sin might bring him. His own
confidence and management had placed God's
promise in a position of extreme hazard; and
without the intervention of God Abram saw that
he could neither recover the mother of the
promised seed nor return to the land of promise.
Abram is put to shame even in the eyes of his
household slaves; and with what burning shame
must he have stood before Sarai and Pharaoh,
and received back his wife from him whose
wickedness he had feared, but who so far from
meaning sin, as Abram suspected, was indig-
nant that Abram should have made it even pos-
sible. He returned to Canaan humbled and very
little disposed to feel confident in his own
powers of managing in emergencies; but quite
assured that God might at all times be relied on.
He was convinced that God was not depending
upon him, but he upon God. He saw that God
did not trust to his cleverness and craft, no, nor
even to his willingness to do and endure God's
will, but that He was trusting in Himself, and
that by His faithfulness to His own promise, by
His watchfulness and providence. He would
bring Abram through all the entanglements
caused by his own poor ideas of the best way to
work out God's ends and attain to His blessing.
He saw, in a word, that the future of the world
lay not with Abram but with God.
This certainly was a great and needful step in
the knowledge of God. Thus early and thus un-
mistakably was man taught in how profound and
comprehensive a sense God is his Saviour.
Commonly it takes a man a long time to learn
that it is God who is saving him, but one day he
learns it. He learns that it is not his own faith
but God's faithfulness that saves him. He per-
ceives that he needs God throughout, from first
to last; not only to make him ofifers, but to en-
able him to accept them; not only to incline him
to accept theni to-day, but to maintain within
him at all times this same inclination. He learns
that God not only makes him a promise and leaves
him to find his own way to what is promised;
but that He is with him always, disentangling
h'm day by day from the results of his own folly
and securing for him not only possible but actual
blessedness.
Few discoveries are so welcome and gladden-
ing to the soul. Few give us the same sense of
God's nearness and sovereignty; few make us
feel so deeply the dignity and importance of our
own salvation and career. This is God's affair ;
a matter in which are involved not merely our
personal interests, but God's responsibility and
)'>urposes. God calls us to be His, and He does
not send us a-warring on our own charges, but
throughout furnishes us with everything we need.
When we go down to Egypt, when we quite di-
verge from the path that leads to the promised
land and worldly straits tempt us to turn our
back UDon God's altar and seek relief by our own
arrangements and devices, when we forget for a
while how God has identified our interests with
His own and tacitly abjure the vows we have
silently registered before Him, even then He
a-Voi. I.
follows us and watches over us and lays His
hand upon us and bids us back. And this only
is our hope. Not in any determination of our
own to cleave to Him and to live in faith on His
promise can we trust. If we have this determi-
nation, let us cherish it, for this is God's present
means of leading us onwards. But should this
determination fail, the shame with which you
recognise your want of steadfastness may prove
a stronger bond to hold you to Him than the
bold confidence with which to-day you view the
future. The waywardness, the foolishness, the
obstinate depravity that cause you to despair,
God will conquer. With untiring patience, with
all-foreseeing love, He stands by you and will
bring you through. His gifts and calling are
without repentance.
CHAPTER IX.
LOT'S SEPARATION FROM ABRAM.
Genesis xiii.
Abram left Egypt thinking meanly of himself,
highly of God. This humble frame of mind is
disclosed in the route he chooses; he went
straight back " unto the place where his tent had
been at the beginning, unto the altar which he
had made there at the first." With a childlike
simplicity he seems to own that his visit to
Egypt had been a mistake. He had gone there
supposing that he was thrown upon his own re-
sources, and that, in order to keep himself and
his dependants alive, he must have recourse to
craft and dishonesty. By retracing his steps and
returning to the altar at Bethel, he seems to ac-
knowledge that he should have remained there
through the famine in dependence on God.
Whoever has attempted a similar practical re-
pentance, visible to his own household and af-
fecting their place of abode or daily occupations,
will know how to estimate the candour and
courage of Abram. To own that some dis-
tinctly marked portion of our life, upon which
we entered with great confidence in our own
wisdom and capacity, has come to nothing and
has betrayed us into reprehensible conduct, is'
mortifying indeed. To admit that we have erred
and to repair our error by returning to our old
way and practice, is what few of us have the
courage to do. If we have entered on some
branch of business or gone into some attractive
speculation, or if we have altered our demean-
our towards some friend, and if we are finding
that we are thereby tempted to doubleness, to
equivocation, to injustice, our only hope lies in
a candid and straightforward repentance, in a
manly and open return to the state of things
that existed in happier days and which we should
never have abandoned. Sometimes we are
aware that a blight began to fall on our spiritual
life from a particular date, and we can easily and
distinctly trace an unhealthy habit of spirit to a
well-marked passage in our outward career; but
we shrink from the sacrifice and shame involved
in a thoroughgoing restoration of the old state
of things. We are always so ready to fancy we
have done enough, if we get one heartfelt word
of confession uttered; so ready, if we merely
turn our faces towards God, to think our restora-
tion complete. Let us make a point of getting
through mere beginnings of repentance, mere
3«
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
intention to recover God's favour and a sound
condition of life, and let us return and return till
we bow at God's very altar again, and know that
His hand is laid upon us in blessing as at the
first.
Out of Egypt Abram brought" vastly increased
wealth. Each time he encamped, quite a town
of black tents quickly rose round the spot where
his fixed spear gave the signal for halting. And
along with him there journeyed his nephew, ap-
parently of almost equal, or at least considerable
wealth; not dependent on Abram, nor even a
partner with him. for " Lot also had flocks and
herds and tents." So rapidly was their sub-
stance increasing that no sooner did they be-
come stationary than they found that the land
was not able to furnish them with sufificient
pasture. The Canaanite and the Perizzite would
not allow them unlimited pasture in the neigh-
bourhood of Bethel; and as the inevitable re-
sult of this the rival shepherds, eager to secure
the best pasture for their own flocks and the
best wells for their own cattle and camels, came
to high words and probably to blows about their
respective rights.
To both Abram and Lot it must have oc-
curred that this competition between relatives
was unseemly, and that some arrangement must
be come to. And when at last some unusually
blunt quarrel took place in presence of the chiefs,
Abram divulges to Lot the scheme which had
suggested itself to him. This state of things, he
says, must come to an end; it is unseemly, un-
wise, and unrighteous. And as they walk on
out of the circle of tents to discuss the matter
without interruption, they come to a rising
ground where the wide prospect brings them
naturally to a pause. Abram looking north and
south and seeing with the trained eye of a large
flock-master that there was abundant pasture for
both, turns to Lot with a final proposal: "Is
not the whole land before thee? Separate thy-
self, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the
left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou
depart to the right hand, then I will go to the
left."
Thus early did wealth produce quarrelling
, among relatives. The men who had shared one
anoiher's fortunes while comparatively poor, no
sooner become wealthy than they have to sepa-
rate. Abram prevented quarrel by separation.
" Let us," he says, " come to an understanding.
And rather than be separate in heart, let us be
separate in habitation." It is always a sorrow-
ful time in family history when it comes to this,
that those who have had a common purse and
have not been careful to know what exactly is
theirs and what belongs to the other members of
the family, have at last to make a division and
to be as precise and documentary as if dealing
with strangers. It is always painful to be com-
pelled to own that law can be more trusted than
love, and that legal forms are a surer barrier
against quarrelling than brotherly kindness. It
is a confession we are sometimes compelled to
make, but never without a mixture of regret and
shame.
As yet the character of Lot has not been ex-
hibited, and we can only calculate from the rela-
tion he bears to Abram what his answer to the
proposal will probably be. We know that
Abram has been the making of his nephew, and
that the land belongs to Abram: and we should
expect that in common decency Lot would set
aside the generous offer of his uncle and demand
that he only should determine the matter. " It
is not for me to make choice in a land which is
wholly yours. My future does not carry in it
the import of yours. It is- a small matter what
kind of subsistence I secure or where I find it.
Choose for yourself, and allot to me what is
right." We see here what a safeguard of happi-
ness in life right feeling is. To be in right and
pleasant relations with the persons around us
will save us from error and sin even when con-
science and judgment give no certain decision.
The heart v/hich feels gratitude is beyond the
need of being schooled and compelled to do
justly. To the man who is affectionately dis-
posed it is superfluous to insist upon the rights
of other persons. The instinct which tells a
man what is due to others and makes him sensi-
tive to their wrongs will preserve him from many
an ignominious action which would degrade his
whole life. But si^ch instinct was a-wanting in
Lot. His character, though in some respects ad-
mirable, had none of the generosity of Abram's
in it. He had allowed himself on countless pre-
vious occasions to take advantage of Abram's
unselfishness. Generosity is not always infec-
tious; often it encourages selfishness in child,
relative, or neighbour. And so Lot, instead of
rivalling, traded on his uncle's magnanimity;
and chose him all the plains of Jordan because
in his eye it was the richest part of the land.
This choice of Sodom as a dwelling-place was
the great mistake of Lot's life. He is the type
of that very large class of men who have but one
rule for determining them at the turning points
of life. He was swayed solely by the considera-
tion of worldly advantage. He has nothing
deep, nothing high in him. He recognises no
duty to Abram, no gratitude, no modesty; he
has no perception of spiritual relations, no sense
that God should have something to say in the
partition of the land. Lot may be acquitted of
a good deal which at first sight one is prompted
to lay to his charge, but he cannot be acquitted
of showing an eagerness to better himself, re-
gardless of all considerations but the promise of
wealth afforded by the fertility of the Jordan
valley. He saw a quick though dangerous road
to wealth. There seemed a certainty of success
in his earthly calling, a risk only of moral dis-
aster. He shut his eyes to the risk that he might
grasp the wealth; and so doing, ruined both him-
self and his family.
The situation is one which is ceaselessly re-
peated. To men in business or in the cultivation
of literature or art, or in one of the professions,
there are presented opportunities of attaining a
better position by cultivating the friendship or
identifying oneself with the practice of men
whose society is not in itself desirable. Society
is made up of little circles, each of which has its
own monopoly of some social or commercial or
political advantage, and its own characteristic
cone and enjoyments and customs. And if a man
will not join one of these circles and accommo-
date himself to the mode of carrying on business
and to the style of living it has identified with
itself, he must forego the advantages which en-
trance to that circle would secure for him. As
clearly as Lot saw that the well-watered plain
stretching away under the sunshine was the right
place to exercise his vocation as a flock-master,
so do we see that associated with such and such
persons and recognised as one of them, we shall
Genesis xiii J
l.OTS SEPARATION FROM ABRAM.
33
be able more effectively than in any other posi-
tion to use whatever natural gifts we have, and
win the recognition and the profit these gifts
seem to warrant. There is but one drawback.
"The men of Sodom were wicked and sinners be-
fore the Lord exceedingly." There is a tone you
do not like; you hesitate to identify yourself with
men who live solely and with cynical frankness
only for gain; whose every sentence betrays the
contemptible narrowness of soul to which world-
liness condemns men; who live for money and
who glory in their shame.
The very nature of the world in which we live
makes such temptation universal. And to yield
is common and fatal. We persuade ourselves we
need not enter into close relations with the per-
sons we propose to have business connections
with. Lot would have been horrified, that day
he made his choice, had it been told him his
daughters would marry men of Sodom. But
the swimmer who ventures into the outer circle
of the whirlpool finds that his own resolve not
to go further presents a very weak resistance to
the water's inevitable suction. We fancy per-
haps that to refuse the companionship of any
class of men is pharisaic; that we have no busi-
ness to condemn the attitude towards the
Church, or the morality, or the style of living
adopted by any class of men among us. This is
the mere cant of liberalism. We do not con-
demn persons who suffer from smallpox, but
a smallpox hospital would be about the last place
we should choose for a residence. Or possibly
we imagine we shall be able to carry some better
influences into the societj* we enter. A vain
imagination; the motive for choosing the society
has already sapped our power for good.
Many of the errors of worldly men only re-
veal their most disastrous consequences in the
second generation. Like some virulent diseases
they have a period of incubation. Lot's family
grew up in a very different atmosphere from that
which had nourished his own youth in Abram's
tents. An adult and robust Englishman can
withstand the climate of India: but his children
who are born in it cannot. And the position in
society which has been gained in middle life by
the carefully and hardily trained child of a God-
fearing household may not very visibly damage
his own character, but may yet be absolutely
fatal to the morality of his children. Lot may
have persuaded himself he chose the dangerous
prosperity of Sodom mainly for the sake of his
children; but in point of fact he had better have
seen them die of starvation in the most barren
and parched desolation. And the parent who
disregards conscience and chooses wealth or
position, fancying that thus he benefits his chil-
dren, will find to his life-long sorrow that he has
entangled them in unimagined temptations.
But the man who makes Lot's choice not only
does a great injury to his children, but cuts him-
self off from all that is best in life. We are safe
to say that after leaving Abram's tents Lot never
again enjoyed unconstrainedly happy days. The
men born and brought up in Sodom were pos-
sibly happy after their kind and in their fashion;
but Lot was not. His soul was daily vexed.
Many a time while hearing the talk of the men
his daughters had married, mu.=;t Lot have gone
out with a sore heart, and looked to the dis-
tant hills that hid the tents of Abram, and longed
for an hour of the company he used to enjoy.
And the society to which you are tempted to
join yourself may not be unhappy, but you can
take no surer means of beclouding, embittering,
and ruining your whole life than by joining it.
You cannot forget the thoughts you once had.
the friendships you once delighted in, the hopes
that shed brightness through all your life.
You cannot blot out the ideal that once yon
cherished as the most animating element of your
life. Every day there will be that rising in youi
mind which is in the sharpest contrast to the
thoughts of those with whom you are associated.
You will despise them for their shallow, worldly
ideas and ways; but you will despise yourself
still more, being conscious that what they arc-
through ignorance and upbringing, you are in
virtue of your own foolish and mean choice.
There is that in you which rebels against the
.superficial and external measure by which they
judge things, and yet you have deliberately
chosen these as your associates, and can only
think with heart-broken regret of the high
thoughts that once visited you and the hopes
you have now no means of fulfilling. Your life
is taken out of your own hands; you find your-
self in bondage to the circumstances you have
chosen; and you are learning in bitterness, dis-
appointment, and shame, that indeed " a man's
life consisteth not in the abundance of the things
which he possesseth." To determine your life
solely by the prospect of worldly success is to
risk the loss of the best things in life. To sacri-
fice friendship or conscience to success in your
calling is to sacrifice what is best to what is
lowest, and to bind yourself to the highest hu-
man happiness. For happily the essential ele-
ments of the highest happiness are as open to
the poor as to the rich, to the unsuccessful as ro
the successful — love of wife and children, con-
genial and educating friendships, the knowledge
of what the best men have done and the wisest
men have said; the pleasure and impulse, the
sentiments and beliefs which result from our
knowledge of the heroic deeds done from year
to year among men; the enlivening influence of
examples that tell on all men alike, young and
old, rich and poor; the insight and strength of
character that are won in the hard wrestle with
life; the growing consciousness that God is in
human life, that He is ours and that we are His
— these things and all that makes human life of
value are universal as air and sunshine, but must
be missed by those who make the world their
object.
Though in point of fact Lot cut himself off by
his choice from direct participation in the special
inheritance to which Abram was called by God.
it might perhaps be too much to say that his
choice of the valley of Jordan was an explicit
renunciation of the special blessedness of those
who find their joy in responding to God's call
and doing His work in the world. It might also
be extravagant to say that his choice of the
richest land was prompted by the feeling that he
was not included in the promise to Abram, and
might as well make the most of his present op-
portunities. But it is certain that Abram's gen-
erosity to Lot arose out of his sense that in God
he himself had abundant possession. In Egypt
he had learned that in order to secure all that is
worth having a man need never resort to du-
plicity, trickery, bold lying. He now learns that
in order to enter on his own God-provided lot.
he need shut no other man out of his. He is
taught that to acknowledge amply the rights of
34
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
other men is the surest road to the enjoyment of
his own rights. He is taught that there is room
in God's plan for every man to follow his most
generous impulses and the highest views of life
that visit him.
It was Abram's simple belief that God's
promise was meant and was substantial, that made
him indifferent as to what Lot might choose.
His faith was judged in this scene, and was
proved to be sound. This man, whose very call-
ing it was to own this land, could freely allow
Lot to choose the best of it. Why? Because he
has learned that it is not by any plan of his own
he is to come into possession; that God Who
promised is to give him the land in His own
way, and that his part is to act uprightly, merci-
fully, like God. Wherever there is faith, the
same results will appear. He who believes that
God is pledged to provide for him cannot be
greedy, anxious, covetous; can only be liberal,
even magnanimous. Any one can thus test his
own faith. If he does not find that what God
promises weighs substantially when put in the
scales with gold; if he does not find that the ac-
complishment of God's purpose with him in the
world is to him the most valuable thing, and
actually compels him to think lightly of worldly
position and ordinary success; if he does not
find that in point of fact the gains which content
a man of the world shrivel and lose interest, he
may feel tolerably certain he has no faith and is
not counting as certain what God has promised.
It is commonly observed that wealth pursues
the men who part with it most freely. Abram
had this experience. No sooner had he allowed
Lot to choose his portion than God gave him
assurance that the whole would be his. It is
" the meek " who " inherit the earth." Not only
have they, in their very losses and while suflfer-
ing wrong at the hands of their fellows, a purer
joy than those who wrong them; but they know
themselves heirs of God with the certainty of en-
joying all His possessions that can avail for their
advantage. Declining to devote themselves as
living sacrifices to business they hold their soul
at leisure for what brings truest happiness, for
friendship, for knowledge, for charity. Even in
this life they may be said to inherit the earth, for
all its richest fruits are theirs — the ground may
belong to other men, but the beauty of the land-
scape is theirs without burden— and ever and
anon they hear such words as were now uttered
to Abram. They alone are inclined or able to
receive renewed assurances that God is mindful
of His promise and will abundantly bless them.
It is they who are in no haste to be rich, and are
content to abide in the retired hill-country where
they can freely assemble round God's altar; it is
they who seek first the kingdom of God and
make sure of that, whatever else they put in
hazard, to whom God's encouragements come.
You wonder at the certainty with which others
speak of hearing God's voice and that so seldom
you have the joy of knowing that God is direct-
ing and encouraging you. Why should you
wonder, if you very well know that your atten-
tion is directed mainly to the world, that your
heart trembles and thrills with all the fluctua-
tions of your earthly hopes, that you wait for
news and listen to every hint that can affect your
position in life? Can you wonder that an ear
trained to be so sensitive to the near earthly
sounds, should quite have lost the range of heav-
enly voices?
Of the assurance here given him Abram was
probably much in need when Lot had withdrawn
with his flocks and servants. When the warmth
of feeling cooled and allowed the somewhat un-
pleasant facts of the case to press upon his mind;
and when he heard his shepherds murmuring
that, after all the strife they had maintained for
their master's rights, he should have weakly
yielded these to Lot; and when he reflected, as
now he inevitably would reflect, how selfish and
ungrateful Lot had shown himself to be, he
must have been tempted to think he had possibly
made a mistake in dealing so generously with
such a man. This reflection on himself might
naturally grow into a reflection upon God, Who
might have been expected so to order matters as
to give the best country to the best man. All
such reflections are precluded by the renewed
grant he now receives of the whole land.
It is always as difficult to govern our heart
wisely after as before making a sacrifice. It is
as difficult to keep the will decided as to make
the original decision; and it is more difficult to
think affectionately of those for whom the sacri-
fice has been made, when the change in their
condition and our own is actually accomplished.
There is a natural reaction after a generous
action which is not always sufficiently resisted.
And when we see that those who refuse to make
any sacrifices are more prosperous and less
ruffled in spirit than ourselves we are tempted to
take matters into our own hand, and, without
waiting upon God, to use the world's quick ways.
At such times we find how difficult it is to hold
an advanced position, and how much unbelief
mingles with the sincerest faith, and what vile
dregs of selfishness sully the clearest generosity;
we find our need of God and of those encourage-
ments and assistances He can impart to the
soul. Happy are we if we receive them and are
enabled thereby to be constant in the good we
have begun; for all sacrifice is good begun.
And as Abram saw, when the cities of the plain
were destroyed, how kindly God had guided
him; so when our history is complete, we shall
have no inclination to grumble at any passage of
our life which we entered by generosity and
faith in God, but shall see how tenderly God has
held us back from much that our soul has been
ardently desiring, and which we thought would
be the making of us.
CHAPTER X.
ABRAM'S RESCUE OF LOT.
Genesis xiv.
This chapter evidently incorporates a contem-
porary account of the events recorded. So an-
tique a document was it even when it found its
place in this book, that the editor had to mod-
ernise some of its expressions that it might be
intelligible. The places mentioned were no
longer known by the names here preserved — ■
Bela, the vale of Siddim, En-mishpat, the valley
of Shaveh, all these names were unknown even
to the persons who dwelt in the places once so
designated. It can scarcely have been Abram
who wrote down the narrative, for he himself is
spoken of as Abram the Hebrew, the man born
beyond the Euphrates, which is a way of speak-
ing of himself no one would naturally adopt
Genesis xiv ]
ABRAM'S RESCUE OF LOT.
35
From the clear outline given of the route fol-
lowed by the expedition of Chedorlaomer, it
might be supposed that some old staff-secretary
had reported on the campaign. However that
may be, the discoveries of the last two or three
years have shed light on the outlandish names
that have stood for four thousand years in this
document, and on the relations subsisting be-
tween Elam and Palestine.
On the bricks now preserved in our own Brit-
ish Museum the very names we read in this
chapter can be traced, in the slightly altered
form which is always given to a name when pro-
nounced by different races. Chedorlaomer is
the Hebrew transliteration of Kudur Lagamar;
Lagamar was the name of one of the Chaldean
deities, and the whole name means Lagamar's
son, evidently a name of dignity adopted by the
king of Elam. Elam comprehended the broad
and rich plains to the east of the lower course of
the Tigris, together with the mountain range
(8,000 to 10,000 feet high) that bounds them.
Elam was always able to maintain its own
against Assyria and Babylonia, and at this time
it evidently exercised some kind of supremacy
not only over these neighbouring powers, but as
far west as the valley of the Jordan. The im-
portance of keeping open the valley of the Jor-
dan is obvious to every one who has interest
enough in the subject to look at a map. That
valley was the main route for trading caravans
and for military expeditions between the Eu-
phrates and Egypt. Whoever held that valley
might prove a most formidable annoyance and
indeed an absolute interruption to commercial
or political relations between Egypt and Elam,
or the Eastern powers. Sometimes it might
serve the purpose of East and West to have a
neutral power between them, as became after-
wards clear in the history of Israel, but oftener
it was the ambition of either Egypt or of the
East to hold Canaan in subjection. A rebellion
therefore of these chiefs occupying the vale of
Siddim was sufficiently important to bring the
king of Elam from his distant capital, attach-
ing to his army as he came his tributaries Am-
raphel king of Shinar or northern Chaldea,
Arioch king of a district on the east of the Eu-
phrates, and finally Tidal, or rather Tur-gal, i. e.,
the great chief, who ruled over the nations or
tribes to the north of Babylonia.
Susa, the capital of Elam, lies almost on the
same parallel as the vale of Siddim, but between
them lie many hundred miles of impracticable
desert. Chedorlaomer and his army followed
therefore much the same route as Terah in his
emigration, first going northwest up the Eu-
phrates and then crossing it probably at Carche-
mish, or above it, and coming southward to-
wards Canaan. But the country to the east of
the Jordan and the Dead Sea was occupied by
warlike and marauding tribes who would have
liked nothing better than to swoop down on a
rich booty-laden Eastern army. With the sa-
gacity of an old soldier therefore, Chedorlaomer
makes it his first business to sweep this rough
ground, and so cripple the tribes in his passage
southwards, that when he swept round the lower
end of the Dead Sea and up the Jordan valley he
should have nothing to fear at least on his right
flank. The tribe that first felt his sword was that
of the Rephaim, or giants. Their stronghold
was Ashteroth Karnaim, or Ashteroth of the
two horns, a town dedicated to the goddess
Astarte, whose symbol was the crescent or two-
horned moon. The Zuzims and the Emims, " a
people great and many and tall," as we read in
Deuteronomy, next fell before the invading
host. The Horites, i. e., cave-dwellers or troglo-
dytes, would scarcely hold Chedorlaomer long,
though from their hilly fastnesses they might do
him some damage. Passing through their
mountains he came upon the great road between
the Dead Sea and the Elanitic Gulf — but he
crossed this road and still held westward till he
reached the edge of what is roughly known as
the Desert of Sinai. Here, says the narrative
(ver. 7), they returned, that is, this was their
furthest point south and west, and here they
turned and made for the vale of Siddim, smiting
the Amalekites and the Amorites on their route.
This is the only part of the army's route that
is at all obscure. The last place they are spoken
of as touching before reaching the vale of Sid-
dim is Hazezon-Tamar, or as it was afterwards
and is still called, Engedi. Now Engedi lies on
the western shore of the Dead Sea about half-
way up from south to north. It lies on a very
steep, indeed artificially made, pass and is a place
of much greater importance on that account than
its size would make it. The road between Moab
and Palestine runs by the western -margin of the
Dead Sea up to this point, but beyond this point
the shore is impracticable, and the only road is
through the Engedi pass on to the higher
ground above. If the army chose this route
then they were compelled to force this pass; if on
the other hand they preferred during their whole
march from Kadesh to keep away west of the
Dead Sea on the higher ground, then they
would only detail a company to pounce upon
Engedi, as the main army passed behind and
above. In either case the main body rnust have
been if not actually within sight of, yet only a
few miles from, the encampment of Abram.
At length, as they dropped down through the
practicable passes into the vale of Siddim, their
grand object became apparent, and the kings of
the five allied towns, probably warned by the
hill-tribes weeks before, drew out to meet them.
But it is not easy to check an army in full
career, and the wells of bitumen, which those
who knew the ground might have turned to
good purpose against the foreigners, actually
hindered the home troops and became a trap to
them. The rout was complete. No second
stand or rally was attempted. The towns were
sacked, the fields swept, and so swift were the
movements of the invaders that although Abram
was barely twenty miles off, and no doubt started
for the rescue of Lot the hour he got the news,
he did not overtake the army, laden as it was
with spoil and retarded by prisoners and
wounded, until they had reached the s®urces of
Jordan.
But well-conceived and brilliantly executed as
this campaign had been, the experienced warrior
had failed to take account of the most formidable
opponent he would have to reckon with. Those
that escaped from the slaughter at Sodom took
to the hills, and either knowing they would find
shelter with Abram or more probably blindly
running on, found themselves at nightfall within
sight of the encampment at Hebron. There is
no delay on Abram's part; he hastily calls out
his men, each snatching his bow, his sword, and
his spear, and slinging over his shoulders a few
days' provision. The neighbouring, Amoritc
36
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
chiefs Aner, Mamre, and Eschol join them,
probably with a troop each, and before many
hours are lost they are down the passes and in
hot pursuit. Not however till they had trav-
ersed a hundred and twenty miles or more do
they overtake the Eastern army. But at Dan, at
the very springs of the Jordan, they find them,
.and making a night attack throw them into utter
'onfusion and pursue them as far as Hobah, a
village near Damascus, that retains to this day
the same name.
One is naturally curious to see how Abram
will conduct himself in circumstances so unac-
customed. From leading a quiet pastoral life
he suddenly becomes the most important man in
the country, a man who can make himself felt
from the Nile to the Tigris. From a herd he
becomes a hero. But, notoriously, power tries
a man, and, as one has often seen persons make
very glaring mistakes in such altered circum-
stances and alter their characters and beliefs to
suit and take advantage of the new material and
opportunities presented to them, we are inter-
ested in seeing how a man whose one rule of
action has hitherto been faith in a promise given
him by God, will pass through such a trial. Can
a spiritual quality like faith be of much service
in rough carspaigning and when the man of
faith is mixed up with persons of doubtful char-
acter and unscrupulous conduct, and brought
into contact with considerable political powers?
Can we trace to Abram's faith any part of his
action at this time? No sooner is the question
put than we see that his faith in God's promise
was precisely that which gave him balance and
dignity, courage and generosity in dealing with
the three prominent persons in the narrative.
He could afford to be forgiving and generous to
his grand competitor Lot, precisely because he
felt sure God would deal generously with him-
self. He could afford to acknowledge Mel-
chizedek and any other authority that might ap-
pear, as his superior, and he would not take ad-
vantage, even when at the head of his men eager
for more fighting, of the peaceful king who came
out to propitiate him, because he knew that God
would give him his land without wronging other
people. And he scorned the wages of the king
of Sodom, holding himself to be no mercenary
captain, nor indebted to any one but God. In
a word, you see faith producing all that is of
importance in his conduct at this time.
Lot is the person v/ho of all others might have
been expected to be forward in his expressions
of gratitude to Abram — not a word of his is re-
corded. Ashamed he cannot but have been, for
if Abram said not a word of reproach, there
would be plenty of Lot's old friends among
Abram's men who could not lose so good an
opportunity of twitting him about the good
choice he had made. And considering how hu-
miliating it would have been for him to go back
with Abram and abandon the district of his
adoption, we can scarcely wonder that he should
have gone quietly back to Sodom, well as he
must by this time have known the nature of the
risks he ran there. For, after all, this warning
was not very loud. The same thing, or a similar
thing, might have happened had he remained
with Abram. The warning was unobtrusive, as
the warnings in life mostly are; audible to the
ear that has been accustomed to listen to the still
small voice of conscience, inaudible to the ear
that is trained to hear quite other voices. God
does not set angels and flaming swords in every
man's path. The little whisper that no one
hears but ourselves only, and that says quite
quietly that we are continuing in a wrong
course, is as certain an indication that we are in
danger, as if God were to proclaim our case from
heaven with thunder or the voice of an arch-
angel. And when a man has persistently re-
fused to listen to conscience it ceases to speak,
and he loses the power to discern between good
and evil and is left wholly without a guide. He
may be running straight to destruction and he
does not know it. You cannot live under two
principles of action, regard to worldly interest
and regard to conscience. You can train your-
self to great acuteness in perceiving and follow-
ing out what is for your worldly advantage, or
you can train yourself to great acuteness of con-
science; but you must make your choice, for in
proportion as you gain sensitiveness in the one
direction you lose it in the other. If your eye
is single your whole body is full of light; but if
the light that is in thee be darkness, how great
is that darkness!
Melchizedek is generally recognised as the
most mysterious and unaccountable of historical
personages; appearing here in the King's Vale
no one knows whence, and disappearing no one
knows whither, but coming with his hands full
of substantial gifts for the wearied household of
Abram, and the captive women that were with
him. Of each of the patriarchs we can tell the
paternity; the date of his birth, and the date of
his death; but this man stands with none to
claim him, he forms no part of any series of
links by which the oldest and the present times
are connected. Though possessed of the knowl-
edge of the Most High God, his name is not
found in any of those genealogies which show us
how that knowledge passed from father to son.
Of all the other great men whose history is re-
corded a careful genealogy is given; but here
the writer breaks his rule, and breaks it where,
had there not been substantial reason, he would
most certainly have adhered to it. For here is
the greatest man of the time, a man before whom
Abram the father of the faithful, the honoured of
all nations, bowed and paid tithes; and yet he
appears and passes away likest to a vision of the
night. Perhaps even in his own time there was
none that could point to the chamber where first
he was cradled, nor show the tent round which
first he played in his boyhood, nor hoard up a
single relic of the early years of the man that
had risen to be the first man upon earth in those
days. So that the Apostle speaks of him as a
very type of all that is mysterious and abrupt in
appearance and disappearance, " without father,
without mother, without descent, having neither
beginning of days, nor end of life," and as he
significantly adds, " made like unto the Son of
God." For as Melchizedek stands thus on the
page of history, so our Lord in reality — as the
one has no recorded pedigree, and holds an
office beginning and ending in his own person,
so our Lord, though born of a woman, stands
separate from sinners and quite out of the ordi-
nary line of generations, and exercises an ofPce
which he received hereditarily from none, and
which he could commit to no successor. As the
one stands apparently disconnected from all be-
fore and after him, so the Other in point of fact
did thus suddenly emerge from eternity, a prob-
lem to all who saw Him; owning the authority
Genesis xiv.J
ABRAM'S RESCUE OF LOT.
37
of earthly parents, yet claiming an antiquity
greater than Abram's; appearing suddenly to the
captivity led captive, with His hands full of gifts,
and His lips dropping words of blessing.
Melchizedek is the one personage on earth
whom Abram recognises as his spiritual superior.
Abram accepts his blessing and pays him tithes;
apparently as priest of the Most High God; so
that in paying to him, Abram is giving the tenth
of his spoils to God. This is not any mere cour-
tesy of private persons. It was done in presence
of various parties of jealously watchful retainers.
Men of rank and office and position consider
how they should act to one another and who
should take precedence. And Abram did de-
liberately, and with a perfect perception of what
he was doing, whatever he now did. Manifestly
therefore God's revelation of Himself was not as
yet confined to the one line running from Abram
to Christ. Here was a man of whom we really
do not know whether he was a Canaanite, a son
of Ham or a son of Shem; yet Abram recognises
him as having knowledge of the true God, and
even bows to him as his spiritual superior in
of^ce, if not in experience. This shows us how
little jealousy Abram had of others being fav-
oured by God, how little he thought his connec-
tion with God would be less secure if other men
enjoyed a similar connection, and how heartily
he welcomed those who with diflferent rites and
different prospects yet worshipped the living
God. It shows us also how apt we are to limit
God's ways of working; and how little we under-
stand of the connections He has with those who
are not situated as we ourselves are. Here while
all our attention is concentrated on Abram as
carrying the whole spiritual hope of the world,
there emerges from an obscure Canaanite valley
a man nearer to God than Abram is. From how
many unthought-of places such men may at any
time come out upon us, we really can never tell.
Again Melchizedek is evidently a title, not a
name — the word means King of Righteousness,
or Righteous King. It may have been a title
adopted by a line of kings, or it may have been
peculiar to this one man. But these old Ca-
naanites, if Canaanites they were, had got hold
of a great principle when they gave this title to
the king of their city of Salem or Peace. They
perceived that it was the righteousness, the jus-
tice, of their king that could best uphold their
peaceful city. They saw that the .right king for
them was a man not grinding his neighbours by
war and taxes, not overriding the rights of
others and seeking always enlargement of his
own dominion; nor a merely merciful man, in-
clined to treat sin lightly and leaning always to
laxity; but the man they would choose to give
them peace was the righteous man who might
sometimes seem overscrupulous, sometimes over-
stern, who would sometimes be called romantic
and sometimes fanatical, but through all whose
dealings it would be obvious that justice to all
parties was the aim in view. Some of them
might not be good enough to love a ruler who
made no more of their special interest than he
did of others, but all would possibly have wit
enough to see that only by justice could they
have peace. It is the reflex of God's govern-
ment in which righteousness is the foundation of
peace, a righteousness unflinching and invaria-
ble, promulgating holy laws and exacting pun-
ishment from all who break them. It is this that
gives us hope of eternal peace, that we know
God has not left out of account facts that must
yet be reckoned with, nor merely lulled the un-
quiet forebodings of conscience, but has let every
righteous law and principle find full scope, has
done righteously in offering us pardon so that
nothing can ever turn up to deprive us of our
peace. And it is quite in vain that any indi-
vidual holds before his mind the prospect
of peace, t. e., of permanent satisfaction, so long
as he is not seeking it by righteousness. In so
far as he is keeping his conscience from interfer-
ing, in so far is he making it impossible to him-
self to enter into the condition for the sake of
which he is keeping conscience from regulating
his conduct.
Lastly, Abram's refusal of the king of Sodom's
offers is significant. Naturally enough, and
probably in accordance with well-established
usage, the king proposes that Abram should re-
ceive the rescued goods and the spoil of the in-
vading army. But Abram knew men, and knew
that although now Sodom was eager to show
that he felt himself indebted to Abram, the time
would come when he would point to this occa-
sion as laying the foundation of Abram's fortune.
When a man rises in the world every one will
tell you of the share he had in raising him, and
will convey the impression that but for assist-
ance rendered by the speaker he would not have
been what he now is. Abram knows that he is
destined to rise, and knows also by Whose help
he is to rise. He intends to receive all from
God; and therefore not a thread from Sodom.
He puts his refusal in the form adopted by the
man whose mind is made up beyond revisal. He
has " vowed " it. He had anticipated such offers
and had considered their bearing on his relations
to God and man; and taking advantage of the
unembarrassed season in which the offer was as
yet only a possibility he had resolved that when
it was actually made he would refuse it, no
matter what advantages it seemed to offer. So
should we in our better seasons and when we
know we are viewing things healthily, consci-
entiously, and righteously, determine what our
conduct is to be, and if possible so commit our-
selves to it that when the right frame is passed
we cannot draw back from the right conduct.
Abram had done so, and however tempting the
spoils of the Eastern kings were, they did not
move him. His vow had been made to the Pos-
sessor of heaven and earth, in Whose hand were
riches beyond the gifts of Sodom.
Here again it is the man of faith that appears.
He shows a noble jealousy of God's prerogative
to bless him. He will not give men occasion to
say that any earthly monarch has enriched him.
It shall be made plain that it is on God he is de-
pending. In all men of faith there will be some-
thing of this spirit. They cannot fail so to frame
their life as to let it come clearly out that for
happiness, for success, for comfort, for joy, they
are in the main depending on God. That this
cannot be done in the complex life of modern
society, no one will venture to say in presence of
this incident. Could we more easily have shown
our reliance upon God in the hurry of a sudden
foray, in the turmoil and intense action of a mid-
night attack and hand-to-hand conflict, in the
excitement and elation of a triumphal progress,
the kings of the country vying with one another
to do us honour and the rescued captives lauding
our valour and generosity? No one fails to see
what it was that balanced Abram in this intoxi-
38
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
eating march. No one asks what enabled him,
while leading his armed followers flushed with
success through a land weakened by recent dis-
may and disaster, to restrain them and himself
from claiming the whole land as his. No one
asks what gave him moral perception to see that
the opportunity given him of winning the land
by the sword was a temptation, not a guiding
providence. To every reader it is obvious that
his dependence on God was his safeguard and
his light. God would bring him by fair and
honourable means to his own. There was no
need of violence, no need of receiving help from
doubtful allies. This is true nobility; and this,
faith always produces. But it must be a faith
like Abram's; not a quick and superficial growth,
but a deeply-rooted principle. For against all
temptations this only is our sure defence, that
already our hearts are so filled with God's
promise that other oflfers find no craving in us,
no empty, dissatisfied spot on which they can
settle. To such faith God responds by the ele-
vating and strengthening assurance, " I am thy
shield, and thy exceeding great reward."
CHAPTER XI.
COVENANT WITH ABRAM.
Genesis xv.
Of the nine Divine manifestations made during
Abram's life this is the fifth. At Ur, at Kharran,
at the oak of Moreh, at the encampment be-
tween Bethel and Ai, and now at Mamre, he re-
ceived guidance and encouragement from God.
Different terms are used regarding these mani-
festations. Sometimes it is said " The Lord ap-
peared unto him;" here for the first time in the
course of God's revelation occurs that expres-
sion which afterwards became normal, " The
word of the Lord came unto Abram." Through-
out the subsequent history this word of the Lord
continues to come, often at long intervals, but
always meeting the occasion and needs of His
people and joining itself on to what had already
been declared, until at last the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us, giving thus to all men
assurance of the nearness and profound sym-
pathy of their God. To repeat this revelation
is impossible. A repetition of it would be a
denial of its reality. For a second life on earth
is allowed to no man; and were our Lord to
live a second human life it were proof He was
no true man, but an anomalous, unaccountable,
uninstructive, appearance or simulacrum of a
man.
But though these revelations of God are fin-
ished, though complete knowledge of God is
given in Christ, God comes to the individual still
through the Spirit Whose ofSce it is to take of
the things of Christ and show them to us. And
in doing so the law is observed which we see
illustrated here. God comes to a man with
further encouragement and light for a new step
when he has conscientiously used the light he
already has. The temper that " seeks for a
sign," and expects that some astounding provi-
dence should be sent to make us religious is by
no means obsolete. Many seem to expect that
before they act on the knowledge they have, they
will receive more. They put ofif giving them-
selves to the service of God under some kind of
impression that some striking event or much
more distinct knowledge is required to give them
a decided turn to a religious life. In so doing
they invert God's order. It is when we have
conscientiously followed such light as we have,
and faithfully done all that we know to be right,
that God gives us further light. It was imme-
diately on the back of faithful action that Abram .
received new help to his faith.
The time was seasonable for other reasons.
Never did Abram feel more in need of such
assurance. He had been successful in his mid-
night attack and had scattered the force from be-
yond Euphrates, but he knew the temper of
these Eastern monarchs well enough to be aware
that there was nothing they hailed with greater
pleasure than a pretext for extending their con-
quests and adding to their territory. To Abram
it must have appeared certain that the next cam-
paigning season would see his country invaded
and his little encampment swept away by the
Eastern host. Most appropriate, therefore, are
the words: " Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield."
But another train of thoughts occupied
Abram's mind perhaps even more unceasingly
at this time. After busy engagement comes dul-
ness; after triumph, flatness and sadness. I
have pursued kings, got myself a great name,
led captivity captive. Men are speaking of me
in Sodom, and finding that in me they have a
useful and important ally. But what is all this
to my purpose? Am I any nearer my inherit-
ance? I have got all that men might think I
needed; they may be unable to understand why
now, of all times, I should seem heartless; but,
O Lord, Thou knowest how empty these things
seem to me, and what wilt Thou give me?
Abram could not understand why he was kept
so long waiting. The child given when he was
a hundred years old might equally have been
given twenty-five years before, when he first
came to the land of Canaan. All Abram's serv-
ants had their children, there was no lack of
young men born in his encampment. He could
not leave his tent without hearing the shouts of
other men's children, and having them cling to
his garments — but " to me Thou hast given no
seed; and lo! one born in mine house, a slave, is
mine heir."
Thus it often is that while a man is receiving
much of what is generally valued in the world,
the one thing^he himself most prizes is beyond
his reach. He has his hope irremovably fixed
on something which he feels would complete his
life and make him a thoroughly happy man;
there is one thing which, above all else, would
be a right and helpful blessing to him. He
speaks of it to God. For years it has framed a
petition for itself when no other desire could
make itself heard. Back and back to this his
heart comes, unal le to find rest in anything so
long as this is withheld. He cannot help feeling
that it is God who is keeping it from him. He
is tempted to say, " What is the use of all else
to me, why give me things Thou knowest I care
little for, and reserve the one thing on which my
happiness depends? " As Abram might have
have said; " Why make me a great name in the
land, when there is no one to keep it alive in
men's memories; why increase my possessions
when there is none to inherit but a stranger? "
Is there then any resulting benefit to character
in this so common experience of delayed expec-
tations? In Abram's case there certainly was.
Genesis xv.]
COVENANT WITH ABRAM.
39
It was in these years he was drawn close enough
to God to hear Him say, "/ am thy exceed-
ing great reward." He learned in the multitude
of his debating about God's promise and the
delay of its fulfilment, that God was more
than all His gifts. He had started as a mere
hopeful colonist and founder of a family;
these twenty-five years of disappointment made
him the friend of God and the Father of the
Faithful. Slowly do we also pass from delight
in God's gifts to delight in Himself, and often
by a similar experience. From what have you
received truest and deepest pleasure in life? Is
it not from your friendships? Not from what
your friends have given you or done for you;
rather from what you have done for them- but
chiefly from your affectionate intercourse. You,
being persons, must find your truest joy in per-
sons, in personal love, personal goodness and
wisdom. But friendship has its crown m the
friendship of God. The man who knows God
as his friend and is more certain of God s good-
ness and wisdom and steadfastness than he cari
be of the worth of the man he has loved and
trusted and delighted in from his boyhood, the
man who is always accompanied by a latent
sense of God's observation and love, is truly liv-
ing in the peace of God that passeth understand-
ing. This raises him above the touch of worldly
losses and restores him in all distresses, even to
the surprise of observers; his language is,
" There may be many that will say. Who will
show us any good? Lord, lift Thou up the
light of Thy countenance upon us. Thou hast
put gladness in my heart more than in the time
that their corn and their wine increased."
But evidently there was still another feeling
in Abram's heart at this particular point in his
career. He could not bear to think he was to
miss that very thing which God had promised
him. The keen yearning for an heir which
God's promise had stirred in him was not lost
sight of in the great saying, " / am thy exceed-
ing great reward." When he was journeying
back to his encampment not a shoestring richer
than he left, and while he heard his men, disap-
pointed of booty, murmuring that he should be
so scrupulous, he cannot but have felt sorne
soreness that he should be set before his little
world as a man who had the enjoyment neither
of this world's rewards nor of God. And here
must have come the strong temptation that
comes to every man: Might it not be as well to
take what he could get, to enjoy what was put
fairly within his reach, instead of waiting for
what seemed so uncertain as God's gift? It is
painful to be exposed to the observation of
others or to our own observation, as persons
who, on the one hand, refuse to seek happiness
in the world's way, and yet are not finding it in
God. You have possibly with some magna-
nimity rejected a tempting offer because there
were conditions attached to which conscience
could not reconcile itself; but you find that you
are in consequence suffering greater privations
than you expected and that no providential in-
tervention seems to be made to reward your con-
scientiousness. Or you suddenly become aware
that though you have for years refused to be
mirthful or influential or successful or comforta-
ble in the world's way and on the world's terms,
you are yet getting no substitute for what you
refuse. You will not join the world's mirth, but
then you are morose and have no joy of. any
kind. You will not use means you disapprove of
for influencing men, but neither have you the
influence of a strong Christian character. In
fact by giving up the world you seem to have
contracted and weakened instead of enlarging
and deepening your life.
In such a condition we can but imitate Abram
and cast ourselves more resolutely on God. If
you find it most weary and painful to deny your-
self in these special ways which have fallen to be
your experience, you can but utter your com-
plaint to God, assured that in Him you will find
consideration. He knows why He has called
you. why He has given you strength to abandon
worldly hopes; He appreciates your adherence
to Him and He will renew your faith and hope.
If day by day you are saying, " Lead Thou me
on," if you say, "What wilt Thou give me?'
not in complaint but in lively expectation, en-
couragement enough will be yours.
The means by which Abram's faith was re-
newed were appropriate. He has been seeing in
the tumult and violence and disappointment of
the world much to suggest the thought that
God's promise could never work itself out in
the face of the rude realities around him. So
God leads him out and points him to the stars,
each one called by his name, and thus reminds
the Chaldsan who had so often gazed at .and
studied them in their silent steady courses, that
his God has designs of infinite sweep and corn-
prehension; that throughout all space His
worlds obey His will and all harmoniously play
their part in the execution of His vast design;
that we and all our affairs are in a strong hand,
but moving in orbits so immense that small por-
tions of them do not show us their direction and
may seem to be out of course. Abram is led out
alone with the mighty God, and to every saved
soul there comes such a crisis when before God s
majesty we stand awed and humbled, all com-
plaints hushed, and indeed our personal inter-
ests disappear or become so merged in God s
purposes that we think only of Him; our mis-
takes and wrong-doing are seen now not so
much as bringing misery upon ourselves as in-
terrupting and perverting His purposes, and His
word comes home to our hearts as stable and
satisfying. , u ^■ a
It was in this condition that Abram believed
God and He counted it to him for righteous-
ness.' Probably if we read this without Paul s
commentary on it in the fourth of Romans, we
should suppose it meant no more than that
Abram's faith, exercised as it was in trying cir-
cumstances, met with God's cordial approval.
The faith or belief here spoken of was a resolute
renewal of the feeling which had brought him
out of Chaldasa. He put himself fairly and
finally into God's hand to be blessed in God s
way and in God's time, and this act of resigna-
tion, this resolve that he would not force his
own' way in the world but would wait upon God,
was looked upon by God as deserving the name
of righteousness, just as much as honesty and
integrity in his conduct with Lot or with his
servants. Paul begs us to notice that an act of
faith accepting God's favour is a very different
thing from a work done for the sake of winning
God's favour. God's favour is always a matter
of grace, it is favour conferred on the undeserv-
ing; it is never a matter of debt, it is never favour
conferred because it has been won. To put this
beyond doubt he appeals to this righteousness of
40
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
Abram's. How, he asks, did Abram achieve
righteousness? Not by observing ordinances
and commandments; for there were none to ob-
serve; but by trusting God, by believing that al-
ready without any working or winning of his,
God loved him and designed blessedness for him;
in short by referring his prospect of happiness
and usefulness wholly to God and not at all to
himself. This is the essential quality of the
godly; and having this, Abram had that root
which produced all actual righteousness and like-
ness to God.
It is sufificiently obvious in such a life as
Abram's why faith is the one thing needful.
Faith is required because it is only when a man
believes God's promise and rests in His love that
he can co-operate with God in severing himself
from iniquitous prospects and in so living for
spiritual ends as to enter the life and the blessed-
ness God calls him to. The boy who does not
believe his father, when he comes to him in the
midst of his play and tells him he has something
for him which will please him still better, suffers
the penalty of unbelief by losing what his father
would have given him. All missing of true en-
joyment and blessedness results from unbelief
in God's promise. Men do not walk in God's
ways because they do not believe in God's ends.
They do not believe that spiritual ends are as
substantial and desirable as those that are
physical.
Abram's faith is easily recognised, because not
only had he not wrought for the blessing God
promised him, but it was impossible for him
even to see how it could be achieved. That
which God promised was apparently quite be-
yond the reach of human power. It serves then
as an admirable illustration of the essence of
faith; and Paul uses it as such. It is not be-
cause faith is the root of all actual righteousness
that Paul describes it as " imputed for righteous-
ness." It is because faith at once gives a man
possession of what no amount of working could
ever achieve. God now offers in Christ right-
eousness, that is to say, justification, the forgive-
ness of sins and acceptance with God with all
the fruits of this acceptance, the indwelling
Divine Spirit and life everlasting. He oflfers
this freely as he offered to Abram what Abram
could never have won for himself. And all that
we are asked to do is to accept it. This is all
we are asked to do in order to our becoming the
forgiven and accepted children of God. After
becoming so, there of course remains an infinite
amount of service to be rendered, of work to be
done, of self-discipline to be undergone. But in
answer to the awakened sinner's enquiry, " What
must I do to be saved," Paul replies, " You are
to do nothing; nothing you can do can win God's
favour, because that favour is already yours;
nothing you can do can achieve the rectification
of your present condition, but Christ has
achieved it. Believe that God is with you and
that Christ can deliver you and commit yourself
cordially to the life you are called to, hopeful
that what is promised will be fulfilled."
Abram's faith, cordial as it was, yet was not
independent of some sensible sign to maintain
it. The sign given was twofold: the smoking
furnace and a prediction of the sojourn of
Abram's posterity in Egypt. The symbols were
similar to those by which on other occasions the
presence of God was represented. Fire, cleans-
ing, consuming, and unapproachable, seemed to
be the natural emblem of God's holiness. In the
present instance it was especially suitable, be-
cause the manifestation was made after sundown
and when no other could have been seen. The
cutting up of the carcases and passing between
the pieces was one of the customary forms of
contract. It was one of the many devices men
have fallen upon to make sure of one another's
word. That God should condescend to adopt
these modes of pledging Himself to men is sig-
nificant testimony to His love; a love so resolved
on accomplishing the good of men that it re-
sents no slowness of faith and accommodates
itself to unworthy suspicions. It makes itself
as obvious and pledges itself with as strong
guarantees to men as if it were the love of a
mortal whose feelings might change and who
had not clearly foreseen all consequences and
issues.
The prediction of the long sojourn of Abram's
posterity in Egypt was not only helpful to those
who had to endure the Egyptian bondage, but
also to Abram himself. He no doubt felt the
temptation, from which at no time the Church
has been free, to consider himself the favourite
of heaven before whose interests all other inter-
ests must bow. He is here taught that other
men's rights must be respected as well as his,
and that not one hour before absolute justice re-
quires it, shall the land of the Amorites be given
to his posterity. And that man is considerably
past the rudimentary knowledge of God who
understands that every act of God springs from
justice and not from caprice, and that no crea-
ture upon earth is sooner or later unjustly dealt
with, by the Supreme Ruler. In the life of
Abram it becomes visible, how, by living with
God and watching for every expression of His
will, a man's knowledge of the Divine nature
enlarges; and it is also interesting to observe
that shortly after this he grounds all his plead-
ing for Sodom on the truth he had learned
here: " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right?"
The announcement that a long interval must
elapse before the promise was fulfilled must no
doubt have been a shock to Abram; and yet it
was sobering and educative. It is a great step
we take when we come clearly to understand
that God has a great deal to do with us before
we can fully inherit the promise. For God's
promise, so far from making everything in the
future easy and bright, is that which above all
else discloses how stern a reality life is; how
severe and thorough that discipline must be
which makes us capable of achieving God's pur-
poses with us. A horror of great darkness may
well fall upon the man who enters into covenant
with God, who binds himself to that Being
whom no pain nor sacrifice can turn aside from
the pursuance of aims once approved. When
we look forward and consider the losses, the pri-
vations, the self-denials, the delays, the pains,
the keen and real discipline, the lowliness of the
life to which fellowship with God leads men,
darkness and gloom and smoke darken our
prospect and discourage us; but the smoke is
that which arises from a purifying fire that
purges away all that prevents us from living
spiritually; a darkness very different from that
which settles over the life which amidst much
present brightness carries in it the consciousness
that its course is downwards, that the blows it
suffers are deadening, that its sun is steadily
Genesis xvi.]
BIRTH OF ISHMAEL.
41
nearing its setting and that everlasting night
awaits it.
But over all other feelings this solemn trans-
acting with God must have produced in Abram
a humble ecstasy of confidence. The wonderful
mercy and kindness of God in thus binding
Himself to a weak and sinful man cannot but
have given him new thoughts of God and new
thoughts of himself. With fresh elevation of
mind and superiority to ordinary difficulties and
temptations would he return to his tent that
night. In how different a perspective would all
things stand to him now that the Infinite God
had come so near to him. Things which yester-
day fretted or terrified him seemed now remote:
matters which had occupied his thought he did
not now notice or remember. He was now the
Friend of God, taken up into a new world of
thoughts and hopes; hiding in his heart the
treasure of God's covenant, brooding over the
infinite significance and hopefulness of his posi-
tion as God's ally.
For indeed this was a most extraordinary and
a most encouraging event. The Infinite God
drew near to Abram and made a contract with
him. God as it were said to him, I wish you to
count upon Me, to make sure of Me: I there-
fore pledge Myself by these accustomed forms
to be your Friend.
But it was not as an isolated person, nor for
his own private interests alone that Abram was
thus dealt with by God. It was as a medium of
universal blessing that he was taken into cove-
nant with God. The kindness of God which he
experienced was merely an intimation of the
kindness all men would experience. The laying
aside of unapproachable dignity and entrance
into covenant with a man was the proclamation
of His readiness to be helpful to all and to bring
Himself within reach of all. That you may have
a God at hand He thus brought Himself down
to men and human ways, that your life may not
be vain and useless, dark and misguided, and
that you may find that you have a part in a well-
ordered universe in which a holy God cares for
all and makes His strength and wisdom avail-
able for all. Do not allow these intimations of
His mercy to go for nothing, but use them as
intended for your guidance and encouragement.
CHAPTER XII.
BIRTH OF ISHMAEL.
Genesis xvi.
In this unpretending chapter we have laid bare
to us the origin of one of the most striking facts
in the history of religion: namely, that from the
one person of Abram have sprung Christianity
and that religion which has been and still is its
most formidable rival and enemy, Mohamme-
danism. To Ishmael, the son of Abram, the
Arab tribes are proud to trace their pedigree.
Through him they claim Abram as their father,
and affirm that they are his truest representa-
tives, the sons of his first-born. In Mohammed,
the Arabian, they see the fulfilment of the bless-
ing of Abram, and they have succeeded in per-
suading a large part of the world to believe
along with them. Little did Sarah think when
she persuaded Abram to take Hagar that she
was originating a rivalry which has run with
keenest animosity through all ages and which
oceans of blood have not quenched. The do-
mestic rivalry and petty womanish spites and re-
sentments so candidly depicted in this chapter,
have actually thrown on the world from that day
to this one of its darkest and least hopeful
shadows. The blood of our own countrymen,
it may be of our own kindred, will 'yet flow in
this unappeasable quarrel. So great a matter
does a little fire kindle. So lasting and disas-
trous are the issues of even slight divergences
from pure simplicity.
It is instructive to observe how long this mat-
ter of obtaining an heir for Abram occupies the
stage of sacred history and in how many aspects
it is shown. The stage is rapidly cleared of
whatever else might naturally have invited at-
tention, and interest is concentrated on the heir
that is to be. The risks run by the appointed
mother, the doubts of the father, the surrender
now of the mother's rights, — all this is trivial if
it concerned only one household, important
only when you view it as significant for the race.
It was thus men were taught thoughtfully tO'
brood upon the future and to believe that,
though Divine, blessing and salvation would
spring from earth: man was to co-operate with
God, to recognise himself as capable of uniting
with God in the highest of all purposes. At the
same time, this long and continually deferred
expectation of Abram was the simple means
adopted by God to convince men once for all
that the promised seed is not of nature but of
grace, that it is God who sends all effectual and
determining blessing, and that we must learn to
adapt ourselves to His ways and wait upon Him.
The first man, then, whose religious experi-
ence and growth are recorded for us at any
length, has this one thing to learn, to trust God's
word and wait for it. In this everything is in-
cluded. But gradually it appears to us all that
this is the great difficulty, to wait; to let God
take His own time to bless us. It is hard to be-
lieve in God's perfect love and care when we are
receiving no present comfort or peace; hard to
believe we shall indeed be sanctified when we
seem to be abandoned to sinful habit; hard 10
pass all through life with some pain, or some
crushing trouble, or some harassing anxiety, or
some unsatisfied craving. It is easy to start
with faith, most trying to endure patiently to the
end. It is thus God educates His children.
Compelled to wait for some crowning gift, we
cannot but study God's ways. It is thus we are
forced to look below the surface of life to its
hidden meanings and to construe God's dealings
with ourselves apart from the experience of
other men. It is thus we are taught actually to
loosen our hold of things temporal and to lay
hold on what is spiritual and real. He who
leaves himself in God's hand will one day de-
clare that the pains and sorrows he suffered were
trifling in comparison with what he has won
from them.
But Sarah could not wait. She seems to have
fixed ten years as the period during which she
would wait; but at the expiry of this term she
considered herself justified in helping forward
God's tardy providence by steps of her own.
One cannot severely blame her. When our
hearts are set upon some definite blessing
things seem to move too slowly, and we can
scarcely refrain from urging them on without
too scrupulously enquiring into the character of.
42
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
our methods. We are willing to wait for a cer-
tain time, but beyond that we must take the
matter into our own hand. This incident showsf,
what all life shows, that whatever be the boon
you seek, you do yourself an injury if you cease
to seek it in the best possible form and manner,
and decline upon some lower thing which, you
can secure by some easy stratagem of your own.
The device suggested by Sarah was so com-
mon that the wonder is that it had not long be-
fore been tried. Jealousy or instinctive reluct-
ance may have prevented her from putting it in
force. She might no doubt have understood
that God, always working out His purposes in
consistency with all that is most honourable and
pure in human conduct, requires of no one to
swerve a hair's-breadth from the highest ideal of
what a human life should be, and that just in
proportion as we seek the best gifts and the
most upright and pure path to them does God
find it easy to bless us. But in her case it was
difficult to continue in this belief; and at length
she resolved to adopt the easy and obvious
means of obtaining an heir. It was unbelieving
and foolish, but not more so than our adoption
of practices common in our day and in our busi-
ness which we know are not the best, but which
we nevertheless make use of to obtain our ends
because the most righteous means possible do
not seem workable in our circumstances. Are
you not conscious that you have sometimes used
a means of effecting your purpose, which you
would shrink from using habitually, but which
you do not scruple to use to tide you over a
difficulty, an extraordinary device for an ex-
traordinary emergency, a Hagar brought in for
a season to serve a purpose, not a Sarah ac-
cepted from God and cherished as an eternal
helpmeet. It is against this we are here warned.
From a Hagar can at the best spring only an
Ishmael, while in order to obtain the blessing
God intends we must betake ourselves to God's
barren-looking means.
The evil consequences of Sarah's scheme were
apparent first of all in the tool she made use of.
Agur the son of Jakeh says: " For three things
the earth is disquieted, and for four which it can-
not bear. For a servant when he reigneth, and
a fool when he is filled with meat; for an odious
woman when she is married, and an handmaid
that is heir to her mistress." Naturally this half-
heathen girl, when she found that her son would
probably inherit all Abram's possessions, forgot
herself, and looked down on her present, nomi-
nal mistress. A flood of new fancies possessed
her vacant mind and her whole demeanour be-
comes insulting to Sarah. The slave-girl could
not be expected to sympathise with the purpose
which Abram and Sarah had in view when they
made use of her. They had calculated on find-
ing only the unquestioning, mechanical obedi-
ence of the slave, even while raising her prac-
tically to the dignity of a wife. They had fan-
cied that even to the deepest feelings of her
woman's heart, even in maternal hopes, she
would be plastic in their hands, their mere
passive instrument. But they have entirely mis-
calculated. The slave has feelings as quick and
tender as their own, a life and a destiny as tena-
ciously clung to as their God-appointed destiny.
Instead of simplifying their life they have merely
added to it another source of complexity and
annoyance. It is the common fate of all who
use others to satisfy their own desires and pur-
poses. The instruments they use are never so
soulless and passive as it is wished. If persons
cannot serve you without deteriorating in their
own character, you have no right to ask them to
serve you. To use human beings as if they were
soulless machines is to neglect radical laws and
to inflict the most serious injury on our fellow-
men. Mistresses who do not treat their servants
with consideration, recognising that they are as
truly women as themselves, with all a woman's
hopes and feelings, and with a life of their own
to live, are committing a grievous wrong, and
evil will come of it.
In such an emergency as now arose in
Abram's household, character shows itself
clearly. Sarah's vexation at the success of her
own scheme, her recrimination and appeal for
strange justice, her unjustifiable treatment of
Hagar, Abram's Bedouin disregard of the jeal-
ousies of the women's tent, his Gallio-like re-
pudiation of judgment in such quarrels, his
regretful vexation and shame that through
such follies, mistakes, and wranglings, God
had to find a channel for His promise to
flow — all this discloses the painful ferment
into which Abram's household was thrown.
Sarah's attempt to rid herself with a high
hand of the consequences of her scheme was
signally unsuccessful. In the same inconsider-
ate spirit in which she had put Hagar in her
place, she now forces her to flee, and fancies
that she has now rid herself and her household
of all the disagreeable consequences of her ex-
periment. She is grievously mistaken. The
slave comes back upon her hands, and comes
back with the promise of a son who should be
a continual trouble to all about him. All
through Ishmael's boyhood Abram and Sarah
had painfully to reap the fruits of what they had
sown. We only make matters worse when we
endeavour by injustice and harshness to crush
out the consequences of wrong-doing. The
difficulties into which sin has brought us can
only be effectually overcome by sincere contri-
tion and humiliation. It is not all in a moment
nor by one happy stroke you can rectify the
sin or mistake of a moment. If by your wise
devices you have begotten young Ishmaels, if
something is every day grieving you and saying
to you, " This comes of your careless incon-
siderate conduct in the past," then see that in
your vexation there is real penitence and not a
mere indignant resentment against circumstances
or against other people, and see that you are not
actually continuing the fault which first gave
birth to your present sorrow and entanglement.
When Hagar fled from her mistress she natu-
rally took the way to her old country. Instinct-
ively her feet carried her to the land of her birth.
And as she crossed the desert country where
Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia meet, she halted
by a fountain, spent with her flight and awed by
the solitude and stillness of the desert. Her
proud spirit is broken and tamed, the fond mem-
ories of her adopted home and all its customs
and ways and familiar faces and occupations,
overtake her when she pauses and her heart
reacts from the first excitement of hasty purpose
and reckless execution. To whom could she
go in Egypt? Was there one there who would
remember the little slave girl or who would care
to show her a kindness? Has she not acted
madly in fleeing from her only protectors? The
desolation around her depicts her own condi-
Genesis xvi.]
BIRTH OF ISHMAEL.
43
tion. No motion stirs as far as her eye can
reach, no bird flies, no leaf trembles, no cloud
floats over the scorching sun, no sound breaks
the death-like quiet; she feels as if in a tomb,
severed from all life, forgotten of all. Her spirit
is breaking under this sense of desolation, when
suddenly her heart stands still as she hears a
voice utter her own name " Hagar, Sarai's
maid." As readily as every other person when
God speaks to them, does Hagar recognise Who
it is who has followed her into this blank soli-
tude. In her circumstances to hear the voice of
God left no room for disobedience. The voice
of God made audible through the actual circum-
stances of our daily life acquires a force and an
authority we never attached to it otherwise.
Probably, too, Hagar would have gone back
to Abram's tents at the bidding of a less authori-
tative voice than this. Already she was soften-
ing and repenting. She but needed some one to
say, " Go back." You may often make it easier
for a proud man to do a right thing by giving
him a timely word. Frequently men stand in
the position of Hagar, knowing the course they
ought to adopt and yet hesitating to adopt it
until it is made easy to them by a wise and
friendly word.
In the promise of a son which was here given
to Hagar and the prediction concerning his
destiny, while there was enough to teach both
her and Abram that he was not to be the heir of
the promise, there was also much to gratify a
mother's pride and be to Hagar a source of con-
tinual satisfaction. The son was to bear a name
which should commemorate God's remembrance
of her in her desolation. As often as she mur-
mured it over the babe or called it to the child
or uttered it in sharp remonstrance to the re-
fractory boy, she was still reminded that she had
a helper in God who had heard and would hear
her. The prediction regarding the child has
been strikingly fulfilled in his descendants; the
three characteristics by which they are distin-
guished being precisely those here mentioned.
" He will be a wild man," literally, " a wild ass
among men," reminding us of the description of
this animal in Job: "Whose house I have made
the wilderness, and the barren land his dwelling.
He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither
regardeth he the crying of the driver. The
range of the mountains is his pasture, and he
searcheth after every green thing." Like the
zebra that cannot be domesticated, the Arab
scorns the comforts of civilised life, and adheres
to the primitive dress, food, and mode of life, de-
lighting in the sensation of freedom, scouring
the deserts, sufficient with his horse and spear for
every emergency. His hand also is against
€very man, looking on all as his natural ene-
mies or as his natural prey; in continual feud of
tribe against tribe and of the whole race against
all of different blood and different customs.
And yet he " dwells in the presence of his
brethren;" though so warlike a temper would
bode his destruction and has certainly destroyed
other races, this Ishmaelite stock continues in
its own lands with an uninterrupted history. In
the words of an authoritative writer: "They have
roved like the moving sands of their deserts;
but their race has been rooted while the indi-
vidual wandered. That race has neither been
dissipated by conquest, nor lost by migration,
nor confounded with the blood of other coun-
tries. They have continued to dwell in the
presence of all their brethren, a distinct nation,
wearing upon the whole the same features and
aspects which prophecy first impressed upon
them."
What struck Hagar most about this interview
was God's presence with her in this remote soli-
tude. She awakened to the consciousness that
duty, hope, God, are ubiquitous, universal,
carried in the human breast, not confined to any
place. Her hopes, her haughtiness, her sorrows,
her flight, were 11 known. The feeling pos-
sessed her which was afterwards expressed by
the Psalmist: "Thou knowest my down-sitting,
and mine uprising. Thou understandest my
thoughts afar off. Thou compassest my path
and my lying down, and art acquainted
with all my ways. Thou tellest my wander-
ings; put Thou my tears in Thy bottle; are
they not in Thy book? " Even here where
I thought to have escaped every eye, have
I been following and at length found Him
that seeth me. As truly and even more
perceptibly than in Abram's tents, God is
with her here in the desert. To evade duty, to
leave responsibility behind us, is impossible.
In all places we are God's children, bound to
accept the responsibilities of our nature. In all
places God is with us, not only to point out our
duty but to give us the feeling that m adhering
to duty we adhere to Him, and that it is because
He values us that He presses duty upon us.
With Him is no respect of persons; the servant
is in his sight as vivid a personality as the mis-
tress, and God appears not to the overbearing
mistress but to the overborne servant.
Happy they who when God has thus met them
and sent them back on their own footsteps, a
long and weary return, have still been so filled
with a sense of God's love in caring for them
through all their errors, that they obey and re-
turn. All round about His people does God
encamp, all round about His flock does the faith-
ful Shepherd watch and drive back upon the
fold each wanderer. Not only to those who are
consciously seeking Him does God revea! Him-
self, but often to us at the very farthest point of
our wandering, at our extremity, when another
day's journey would land us in a region from
which there is no return. When our regrets for
the past become intolerably poignant and bitter;
when we see a waste of years behind us barren as
the sand of the desert, with nothing done but
what should but cannot be undone; when the
heart is stupefied with the sense of its madness
and of the irretrievable loss it has sustained, or
when we look to the future and are persuaded
little can grow up in it out of such a past, when
we see that all that would have prepared us for
it has been lightly thrown aside or spent reck-
lessly for nought, when our hearts fail us, this
is God besetting us behind and before. And
may He grant us strength to pray, " Show me
Thy ways, O Lord, teach me Thy paths. Lead
me in Thy truth and teach me: for Thou art the
God of my salvation; on Thee do I wait all the
day."
The quiet glow of hopefulness with which
Hagar returned to Abram's encampment should
possess the spirit of every one of us. Hagar's
prospects were not in all respects inviting. She
knew the kind of treatment she was likely to re-
ceive at the hands of Sarah. She was to be a
bondwoman still. But God had persuaded her
of His care and had given her a hope large
44
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
enough to fill her heart. That hope was to be
fulfilled by a return to the home she had fled
from, by a humbling and painful experience.
There is no person for whom God has not simi-
lar encouragement. Frequently persons forget
that God is in their life, fulfilling His purposes.
They flee from what is painful; they lose their
bearings in life and know not which way to turn;
they do not fancy there is help for them in God.
Yet God is with them; by these very circum-
r-tances that reduce them to desolateness and
despair He leads them to hope in Him. Each
one of us has a place in His purpose; and that
place we shall find not by fleeing from what is
distressing but by submitting ourselves cheer-
fully to what He appoints. God's purpose is
real, and life is real, meant to accomplish not
our present passing pleasure, but lasting good in
conformity with God's purpose. Be sure that
when you are bidden back to duties that seem
those of a slave, you are bidden to them by God,
Whose purposes are worthy of Himself and
Whose purposes include you and all that con-
cerns you.
There are, I think, few truths more animating
than this which is here taught us, that God has
a purpose with each of us; that however insig-
nificant we seem, however friendless, however
hardly used, however ousted even from our
natural place in this world's households, God
has a place for us; that however we lose our
way in life we are not lost from His eye; that
even when we do not think of choosing Him He
in His Divine, all-embracing love chooses us,
and throws about us bonds from which we can-
not escape. Of Hagar many were complacently
thinking it was no great matter if she were lost,
and some might consider themselves righteous
because they said she deserved whatever mishap
might befall her. But not so God. Of some of
us, it may be, others may think no great blank
would be made by our loss; but God's compas-
sion and care and purpose comprehend the least
worthy. The very hairs of your head are all
numbered by Him. Nothing is so trivial and
insignificant as to escape His attention, nothing
so intractable that He cannot use it for good.
Trust in Him, obey Him, and your life will yet
be useful and happy.
CHAPTER Xni.
THE COVENANT SEALED.
Genesis xvii.
According to the dates here given fourteen
years had passed since Abram had received any
intimation of God's will regarding him. Since
the covenant had been made some twenty years
before, no direct communication had been re-
ceived; and no message of any kind since Ish-
mael's birth. It need not, therefore, surprise us
that we are often allowed to remain for years in
a state of suspense, uncertain about the future,
feeling that we need more light and yet unable
to find it. All truth is not discovered in a day,
and if that on which we are to found for eternity
take us twenty years or a life's experience to
settle it in its place, why should we on this
account be overborne with discouragement?
They who love the truth and can as little abstain
from seeking it as the artist can abstain from ad-
miring what is lovely, will assuredly have their
reward. To be expectant yet not impatient, un-
satisfied yet not unbelieving, to hold mind and
heart open, assured that light is sown for the
upright and that all that is has lessons for the
teachable, this is our proper attitude.
Think you, 'mid all this mighty sura
Of things for ever speaking.
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
We appreciate the significance of a revelation in
proportion as we understand the state of mind
to which it is made. Abram's state of mind is
disclosed in the exclamation: " Oh, that Ishmael
might live before Thee! " He had learned to
love the bold, brilliant, domineering boy. He
saw how the men liked to serve him and how-
proud they were of the young chief. No doubt
his wild intractable ways often made his father
anxious. Sarah was there to point out and ex-
aggerate all his faults and to prognosticate mis-
chief. But there he was, in actual flesh and
blood, full of life and interest in everything, daily
getting deeper into the afifections of Abram,
who allowed and could not but allow his own
life to revolve very much around the dashing,
attractive lad. So that the reminder that he wr.s
not the promised heir was not entirely welcome.
When he was told that the heir of promise was
to be Sarah's child, he could not repress the
somewhat peevish exclamation: "Oh, that Ish-
mael might serve Thy turn! " Why call me off
again from this actual attainment to the vague,
shadowy, non-existent heir of promise, who
surely can never have the brightness of eye and
force of limb and lordly ways of this Ishmael?
Would that what already exists in actual sub-
stance before the eye might satisfy Thee and
fulfil Thine intention and supersede the neces-
sity of further waiting! Must I again loosen my
hold, and part with my chief attainment? Must
I cut my moorings and launch again upon this '
ocean of faith with a horizon always receding
and that seems absolutely boundless?
We are familiar with this state of mind. We
wish God would leave us alone. We have
found a very attractive substitute for what He
promises, and we resent being reminded that our
substitute is not, after all, the veritable, eternal,
best possession. It satisfies our taste, our intel-
lect, our ambition; it sets us on a level with
other men and gives us a place in the world; but
now and again we feel a void it does not fill.
We have attained comfortable circumstances,
success in our profession, our life has in it that
which attracts applause and sheds a brilliance
over it; and we do not like being told that this;
is not all. Our feeling is Oh, that this mighl;
do! that this might be accepted as perfect attain-
ment! it satisfies me (all but a little bit); might
it not satisfy God? Why summon me again
away from domestic happiness, intellectual en-
joyment, agreeable occupations, to what really
seems so unattainable as perfect fellowship with
God in the fulfilment of His promise? Why
spend all my life in waiting and seeking for high
spiritual things when I have so much with
which I can be moderately satisfied? For our
complaint often is not that God gives so little
but that He offers too much, more than we care
to have; that He never will let us be content
with anything short of what perfectly fulfils His.
perfect love and purpose.
(ienesis xvii.] THE COVENANT SEALED. 45
This being Abram's state of mind, he is whole a Hfe in God. He recognised what it is
aroused from it by the words: " I am the Al- to have a God, one Whose will is supreme and
mighty God; walk before Me and be thou per- unerringly good. Whose love is constant and
feet." I am the Almighty God, able to fulfil eternal, Who is the first and the last, beyond
your highest hopes and accomplish for you the Whom and from under Whom we can never
brightest ideal that ever My words set before pass. He moved about in the world in so per-
you. There is no need of paring down the fectly harmonious a correspondence with God.
promise till it square with human probabilities, so merging Himself in God and His purpose and
no need of relinquishing one hope it has be- with so unhesitating a reliance upon Him, that
gotten, no need of adopting some interpretation He seemed and was but a manifestation of God,
of it which may make it seem easier to fulfil, and God's Vv^ill embodied, God's child, God express-
no need of striving to fulfil it in any second-rate ing Himself in human nature. He showed us
way. All possibility lies in this: I am the Al- once for all the blessedness of true dependence,
mighty God. Walk before Me and be thou per- fidelity and faith. He showed us how that
tect, therefore. Do not train your eye to earthly simple promise " I will be a God to thee," re-
distances and earthly magnitudes and limit your ceived in faith, lifts the human life into fellow-
hope accordingly, but live in the presence of the ship with all that is hopeful and inspiring, with
Almighty God. Do not defer the advices of all that is purifying, with all that is real and
conscience and of your purest aspirations to abiding.
sonle other possible world; do not settle down at But a seconds point is, that Jesus was the heir
the low level of godless nature and of the men of Abram not merely because He was his de-
around you; do not give way to what you your- scendant, a Jew with all the advantages of the
self know to be weakness and evidence of de- Jew, but because, like Abram, He was full of
feat; do not let self-indulgence take the place of faith. God was the atmosphere of His life.
My commandments, indolence supplant resolu- But He claimed God not because He was Jew-
tion and the likelihoods of human calculation ish, but because He was human. Through the
obliterate the hopes stirred by the Divine call: Jews God had made Himself known, but it was
Be thou perfect. Is not this a summons that to what was human not to what was Jewish He
comes appropriately to every man? Whatever appealed. And it was as Son of man not as son
be our contentment, our attainments, our pos- of Israel or of Adam that Jesus responded to
sessions, a new light is shed upon our condition God and lived with Him as His God. Not by
when we measure it by God's idea and God's specially Jewish rites did Jesus approach and
resources. Is my life God's ideal? Does that rest in God, but by what is universal and human,
which satisfies me satisfy Him? by prayer to the Father, by loving obedience, by
The purpose of God's present appearance to faith and submission. And thus we too may be
Abram was to renew the covenant, and this He joint-heirs with Christ and possess God. And
does in terms so explicit, so pregnant, so mag- if we think of ourselves as left to struggle with
nificent that Abram must have seen more dis- natural defects amidst irreversible natural laws;
tinctly than ever that he was called to play a if we begin to pray very heartlessly, as if He
very special part in God's providence. That who once listened were now asleep or could do
kings should spring from him, a mere pastoral nothing; if our life seems profitless, purposeless,
nomad in an alien country, could not suggest and all unhinged: then let us look back to this
itself to Abram as a likely thing to happen. In- sure promise of God, that He will be our God:
deed, though a line of kings or two lines of our God, for, if Christ's God, then ours, for if
kings did spring from him through Isaac, the we be Christ's then are we Abram's seed
terms of the prediction seem scarcely exhausted and heirs according to the promise. How few
by that fulfilment. And accordingly Paul with- in any given day are living on this promise:
out hesitation or reserve transfers this prediction how few attach reality to God's continuous
to a spiritual region, and is at pains to show revelation of Himself, the reality in this
that the many nations of whom Abram was to be world's transitory history: how few can be-
the father, were not those who inherited his lieve in the nearness and observance and love
blood, his natural appearance, his language and of God: how few can strenuously seek to
earthly inheritance, but those who inherited his be holy or understand where abiding happi-
spiritual qualities and the heritage in God to ness is to be found; for all these things are here,
which his faith gave him entrance. And he Yet who knocks at this door? Who makes, as
argues that no difference of race or disadvan- Christ made, his life a unity with God, undis-
tages of worldly position can prevent any man mayed, unmurmuring, unreluctant, neither fear-
from serving himself heir to Abram, because the ful of God nor disobedient, but diligent, earnest,
seed, to whom as well as to Abram the promise jubilant, because God has said, " I will be thy
was made, was Christ, and in Christ there is God." Do you believe these things and can yon
neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, but all forbear to use them? Do you believe that it is
are one. open to you, whosoever you are, to have the
In connection then with this covenant in Eternal and Supreme God for your God, that
which God promised that He would be a God He may use all His Divine nature in your be-
to Abram and to his seed, two points of interest half; have you conceived what it is that God
to us emerge. First that Christ is Abram's heir, means when He extends to you this ofYer. and
In His use of God's promise we see its full sig- can you decline to accept it, can you do otlier-
nificance. In His life-long appropriation of wise than cherish it and seek to find more and
God we see what God meant when He said, " I more in it every day you live?
will be a God to thee and to thy seed." We find Two seals were at this time affixed to the
our Lord from the first living as one who felt His covenant: the one for Abram himself, the other
life encompassed by God, embraced and compre- for every one who shared with him in his bless-
hended in that higher life which God lives ings of the covenant. The first consisted in the
through all and in all. His life was all and change of his own name to Abraham, " the
46
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
father of a multitude," and of his wife's to Sarah,
" princess " or " queen," because she was now
announced as the destined mother of kings.
And however Abraham would be annoyed to see
the hardly surpressed smile on the ironical faces
of his men as he boldly commanded them to
call him by a name whose verification seemed so
grievously to lag; and however indignant and
pained he may have been to hear the young Ish-
mael jeering Sarah with her new name, and lend-
ing to it every tone of mockery and using it
with insolent frequency, yet Abraham knew that
these names were not given to deceive; and
probably as the name of Abraham has become
one of the best known names on earth, so to him-
self did it quickly acquire a preciousness as God's
voice abiding with him, God's promise renewed
to him through every man that addressed him,
until at length the child of promise lying on his
knees took up its first syllable and called him
" Abba."
This seal was special to Abraham and Sarah,
the other was public. All who desired to par-
take with Abraham in the security, hope, and
happiness of having God as their God, were to
submit to circumcision. This sign was to de-
termine who were included in the covenant. By
this outward mark encouragement and assurance
of faith were to be quickened in the heart of all
Abraham's descendants.
The mark chosen was significant. It was in-
deed not distinctive in its outward form; so little
so that at this day no fewer than one hundred
and fifty millions of the race make use of the
same rite for one purpose or other. All the de-
scendants of Ishmael of course continue it, but
also all who have their religion, that is, all Mo-
hammedans; but besides these, some tribes in
South America, some in Australia, some in the
South Sea Islands, and a large number of Kafifir
tribes. The ancient Egyptians certainly prac-
tised it, and it has been suggested that Abraham
may have become acquainted with the practice
during his sojourn in Egypt. It is however un-
certain whether the practice in Egypt runs back
to so early a time. If it were an established
Egyptian usage, then of course Hagar would de-
mand for her boy at the usual age the rite which
she had always associated with entrance on a
new stage of life. But even supposing this was
the case, the rite was none the less available for
the new use to which it was now put. The rain-
bow existed before the Flood; bread and wine
existed before the night of the Lord's Supper;
baptisms of various kinds were practised before
the days of the Apostles. And for this very rea-
son, when God desired a natural emblem of the
stability of the seasons He chose a striking
feature of nature on which men were already ac-
customed to look with pleasure and hope; when
He desired symbols of the body and blood of the
Redeemer He took those articles which already
had a meaning as the most efficacious human
nutriment; when He desired to represent to the
eye the renunciation of the old life and the birth
to a new life which we have by union with
Christ, He took that rite which was already
known as the badge of discipleship; and when
He desired to impress men by symbol with the
impurity of nature and with our dependence on
God for the production of all acceptable life.
He chose that rite which, whether used before or
not, did most strikingly represent this.
With the significance of circumcision to other
men who practise it, we have here nothing to
do. It is as the chief sacrament of the old cove-
nant, by which God meant to aid all succeeding
generations of Hebrews in believing that God
was their God. And this particular mark was
given, rather than any other, that they might
recognise and ever remember that human nature
was unable to generate its own Saviour, that in
man there is a native impurity which must be
laid aside when he comes into fellowship with
the Holy God. And these circumcised races,
although in many respects as unspiritual as
others, have yet in general perceived that God
is different from nature, a Holy Being to Whom
we cannot attain by any mere adherence to
nature, but only by the aid He Himself extends
to us in ways for which jiature makes no pro-
vision. The lesson of circumcision is an old
one and rudely expressed, but it is vital; and no
abhorrence of the circumcised for the uncircum-
cised too strongly, however unjustly, emphasises
the distinction that actually subsists between
those who believe in nature and those who be-
lieve in God.
The lesson is old, but the circumcision of the
heart to which the outward mark pointed, is
ever required. That is the true seal of our fel-
lowship with God; the earnest of the Spirit
which gives promise of eternal union with the
Holy One; the relentings, the shame, the soften-
ing of heart, the adoration and reverence for
the holiness of God, the thirst for Him, the joy
in His goodness, these are the first fruits of the
Spirit, which lead on to our calling God Father,
and feeling that to be alone with Him is our
happiness. It is this putting aside of our natural
confidence in. nature and absorption in nature,
and this turning to God as our confidence and
our life, which constitutes the true circumcision
of the heart.
Believing as Abraham was, he could not for-
bear smiling when God said that Sarah would be
the mother of the promised seed. This incre-
dulity of Abraham was so significant that it was
commemorated in the name of Isaac, the
laugher. This heir was typical of all God's best
gifts, at first reckoned impossible, at last filling
the heart with gladness. The smile of incre-
dulity became the laughter of joy when the child
was born and Sarah said, " God hath made me
to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with
me." It is they who expect things so incon-
gruous and so impossible to nature unaided that
they smile even while they believe, who will one
day find their hopes fulfilled and their hearts
running over with joyful laughter. If your heart
is fixed only on what you can accomplish for
yourself, no great joy can ever be yours. But
frame your actual hopes in accordance with the
promise of God, expect holiness, fulness of joy,
animating partnership with God in the highest
matters, the resurrection of the dead, the life
everlasting, and one day you will say, " God hath
made me to laugh." But Abraham prostrating
himself to hide a smile is the symbol of our com-
mon attitude. We profess to believe in a God
of unspeakable power and goodness, but even
while we do so we find it impossible to attach a
sense of reality to His promises. They are
kindly, well-intentioned words, but are appar-
ently spoken in neglect of solid, obstinate facts.
How hard is it for us to learn that God is the
great reality, and that the reality of all else may
be measured by its relation to Him.
Genesis xviii ]
ABRAHAM'S INTERCESSION FOR SODOM.
47
Sarah's laughter had a different meaning. In-
deed Sarah does not appear to have been by any
means a blameless character. Her conduct to-
wards Hagar showed us that she was a woman
capable of generous impulses but not of the
strain of continued magnanimous conduct. She
was capable of yielding her wifely rights on the
impulse of the brilliant scheme that had struck
her, but like many other persons who can begin
a magnanimous or generous course of conduct,
she could not follow it up to the end, but failed
disgracefully in her conduct towards her rival.
So now again she betrays characteristic weak-
ness. When the strangers came to Abraham's
tent, and announced that she was to become a
mother, she smiled in superior, self-assured,
woman's wisdom. When the promise threat-
ened no longer to hover over her household as
a mere sublime and exalting idea which serves
its purpose if it keep them in mind that God has
spoken to them, but to take place now among
the actualities of daily occurrence, she hails this
announcement with a laugh of total incredulity.
Whatever she had made of God's word, she had
not thought it was really and veritably to come
to pass; she smiled at the simplicity which could
speak of such an unheard-of thing.
This is true to human nature. It reminds you
how you have dealt with God's promises, — nay,
with God's commandments — when they offered
to make room for themselves in the everyday life
of which you are masters, every detail of which
you have arranged, seeming to know absolutely
the laws and principles on which your particular
line of life must be carried on. Have you never
smiled at the simplicity which could set about
making actual, about carrying out in practical
life, in society, in work, in business, those
thoughts, feelings, and purposes, which God's
promises beget? Sarah did. not laugh outright,
but smiled behind the Lord; she did not mock
Him to His face, but let the compassionate ex-
pression pass over her face with which we listen
to the glowing hopes of the young enthusiast
who does not know the world. Have we not
often put aside God's voice precisely thus; say-
ing within us. We know what kind of things can
be done by us and others and what need not
be attempted; we know what kind of frailties in
social intercourse we must put up with, and not
seek to amend; what kind of practices it is vain
to think of abolishing; we know what use to
make of God's promise and what use not to
make of it; how far to trust it, and how far to
give greater weight to our knowledge of the
world and our natural prudence and sense?
Does not our faith, like Sarah's, vary in propor-
tion as the promise to be believed is unpractical?
If the promise seems wholly to concern future
things, we cordially and devoutly assent; but if
we are asked to believe that God intends within
the year to do so-and-so, if we are asked to be-
lieve that the result of God's promise will be
found taking a substantial place among the re-
salts of our own efforts — then the derisive smile
of Sarah forms on our face.
To look at the crowds of persons professing
religion, one would suppose nothing was com-
moner than faith. There is nothing rarer. De-
voutness is common, righteousness of life is
common; a contempt for every kind of fraud
and underhand practice is common; a high-
minded disregard for this world's gains and
glories is common; an abhorrence of sensuality
4- Vol. I.
and an earnest thirst for perfection are common
— but faith? Will the Son of man when He
comes find it on earth? May not the messen-
gers of God yet say, Who hath believed our re-
port? Why, the great majority of Christian
people have never been near enough to spiritual
things to know whether they are or are not;
they have never narrowly weighed spiritual
issues and trembled as they watched the uncer-
tain balance; they say they believe God and a
future of happiness because they really do not
know what they are talking about — they have
not measured the magnitude of these things.
Faith is not a blind and careless assent to mat-
ters of indifference, faith is not a state of mental
suspense with a hope that things may turn out to
be as the Bible says. Faith is the firm' persua-
sion that these things are so. And he who at
once knows the magnitude of these things and
believes that they are so, must be filled with a
joy that makes him independent of the world,
with an enthusiasm which must seem to the
world like insanity. It is quite a different world
in which the man of faith lives.
CHAPTER XIV.
ABRAHAM'S INTERCESSION FOR SODOM.
Genesis xviii.
The scene with which this chapter opens is
one familiar to the observer of nomad life in the
East. During the scorching heat and glaring
light of noon, while the birds seek the densest
foliage and the wild animals lie panting in the
thicket and everything is still and silent as mid-
night, Abraham sits in his tent door under the
spreading oak of Mamre. Listless, languid, and
dreamy as he is, he is at once aroused into
brightest wakefulness by the sudden apparition
of three strangers. Remarkable as their appear-
ance no doubt must have been, it would seem
that Abraham did not recognise the rank of his
visitors; it was, as the writer to the Hebrews
says, " unawares " that he entertained angels.
But when he saw them stand as if inviting invi-
tation to rest, he treated them as hospitality re-
quired him to treat any wayfarers. He sprang
to his feet, ran and bowed himself to the ground,
and begged them to rest and eat with him.
With the extraordinary, and as it seems to our
colder nature extravagant courtesy of an
Oriental, he rates at the very lowest the com-
forts he can supply; it is only a little water he
can give to wash their feet, a morsel of bread to
help them on their way, but they will do him a
kindness if they accept these small attentions at
his hands. He gives, however, much more than
he offered, seeks out the fatted calf and serves
while his guests sit and eat. The whole scene
is primitive and Oriental, and " presents a per-
fect picture of the manner in which a modern
Bedawee Sheykh receives travellers arriving at
his encampment;" the hasty baking of bread,
the celebration of a guest's arrival by the killing
of animal food not on other occasions used even
by large flock-masters; the meal spread in the
open air, the black tents of the encampment
stretching back among the oaks of Mamre,
every available space filled with sheep, asses,
camels, — the whole is one of those clear pictures
48
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
which only the simplicity of primitive life can
produce.
Not only, hiowever, as a suitable and pretty
introduction which may ensure our reading the
subsequent narrative is it recorded how hospita-
bly Abraham received these three. Later writers
saw in it a picture of the beauty and reward of
hospitality. It is very true, indeed, that the cir-
cumstances of a wandering pastoral life are
peculiarly favourable to the cultivation of this
grace. Travellers being the only bringers of
tidings are greeted from a selfish desire to hear
news as well as from better motives. Life in
tents, too, pi necessity makes men freer in their
manners. They have no door to lock, no inner
rooms to retire to, their life is spent outside, and
their character naturally inclines to frankness
and freedom from the suspicions, fears, and re-
straints of city life. Especially is hospitality ac-
counted the indispensable virtue, and a breach of
it as culpable as a breach of tJie sixth command-
ment, because to refuse hospitality is in many
regions equivalent to subjecting a wayfarer to
dangers and hardships under which he is almost
certain to succumb.
" This tent is mine," said Yussouf. " but no more
Than it is God's ; come in, and be at peace ;
Freely shalt thou partake of all my store.
As I uf His Who buildeth over these
Our tents His glorious roof of night and day.
And at Whose door none ever yet heard Nay."
Still we are of course bound to import into our
life all the suggestions of kindly conduct which
any other style of living gives us. And the
writer to the Hebrews pointedly refers to this
scene and says, " Let us not be forgetful to
entertain strangers, for thereby some have enter-
tained angels unawares." And often in quite a
prosaic and unquestionable manner does it be-
come apparent to a host, that the guest he has
been entertaining has been sent by God. an angel
indeed ministering to his salvation, renewing in
him thoughts that had been dying out, filling his
home with brightness and life like the smile of
God's own face, calling out kindly feelings, pro-
voking to love and to good works, effectually
helping him onwards and making one more
sta-,c of his life endurable and even blessed.
And it is not to be wondered at that our Lord
Himself should have continually inculcated this
same grace; for in His whole life and by His
most painful experience were men being tested
as to who among them would take the stranger
in. He who became man for a little that He
might for ever consecrate the dwelling of Abra-
ham and leave a blessing in his household, has
now become man for evermore, that we may
learn to walk carefully and reverentially through
a life whose circumstances and conditions, whose
little socialities and duties, and whose great
trials and strains He found fit for Himself for
service to the Father. This tabernacle of our
human body has by His presence been trans-
formed from a tent to a temple, and this world
and all its ways that He approved, admired, and
walked in, is holy ground. But as He came to
Abraham trusting to his hospitality, not sending
before him a legion of angels to awe the patri-
arch but coming in the guise of an ordinary way-
farer; so did He come to His own and make His
entrance among us. claiming only the considera-
tion which He claims for the least of His people,
and granting to whoever pcave Him that the dis-
covery of His Divine nature. Had there been
ordinary hospitality in Bethlehem that night be-
fore the taxing, then a woman in Mary's condi-
tion had been cared for and not superciliously
thrust among the cattle, and our race had been
delivered from the everlasting reproach of refus-
ing its God a cradle to be born and sleep His
first sleep in, as it refused Him a bed to die in,
and left cha ce to provide Him a grave in which
to sleep His latest sleep. And still He is coming
to us all requiring of us this grace of hospitality,
not only in the case of every one who asks of us
a cup of cold water and whom our Lord Himself
will personate at the last day and say, " / was a
stranger and ye took ]Me in;" but also in regard
to those claims upon our heart's reception which
He only in His own person makes.
But while we are no doubt justified in gather-
ing such lessons from this scene, it can scarcely
have been for the sake of inculcating hospitality
that these angels visited Abraham. And if we
ask. Why did God on this occasion use this ex-
ceptional form of manifesting Himself; why, in-
stead of approaching Abraham in a vision or in
word as had been found sufficient on former
occasions, did He now adopt this method of
becoming Abraham's guest and eating with him?
— the only apparent reason is that He meant this
also to be the test applied to Sodom. There
too His angels were to appear as wayfarers, de-
pendent on the hospitality of the town, and by
the people's treatment of these unknown visi-
tors their moral state was to be detected and
judged. The peaceful meal under the oaks of
Mamre, the quiet and confidential walk over the
hills in the afternoon when Abraham in the
humble simplicity of a godly soul was found to
be fit company for these three — this scene where
the Lord and His messengers receive a becom-
ing welcome and where they leave only blessing
behind them, is set in telling contrast to their
reception in Sodom, where their coming was the
signal for the outbursts of a brutality one blushes
to think of, and elicited all the elements of a
mere hell upon earth.
Lot would fain have been as hospitable as
Abraham. Deeper in his nature than any other
consideration was the traditional habit of hos-
pitality. To this he would have sacrificed every-
thing— the rights of strangers were to him truly
inviolable. Lot was a man who could as little
see strangers without inviting them to his house
as Abraham could. He would have treated them
handsomely as his uncle; and what he could do
he did. But Lot had by his choice of a dwell-
ing made it impossible he should afford safe and
agreeable lodging to any visitor. He did his
best, and it was not his reception of the angels
that sealed Sodom's doom, and yet what shame
he must have felt that he had put himself in cir-
cumstances in which his chief virtue could not
be practised. So do men tie their own hands
and cripple them.selves so that even the good
they would take pleasure in doing is either
wholly impossible or turns to evil.
In divulging to Abraham His purpose in visit-
ing Sodom, it is enounced here that God acted
on a principle which seems afterwards to have
become almost proverbial. Surely the Lord will
do nothing but He revealeth His secret unto His
servants the prophets. There are indeed two
grounds stated for making known to Abraham
this catastrophe. The reason that we should
naturally expect, viz.. that he might go on and
Genesis xviii.]
ABRAHAM'S INTERCESSION FOR SODOM.
4-^
warn Lot is not one of them. Why then make
any announcement to Abraham if the catas-
trophe cannot be averted, and if Abraham is to
turn back to his own encampment? The first
reason is: " Shall I hide from Abraham that
thing which I do? Seeing that Abraham shall
surely become a great and mighty nation, and all
the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him."
In other words, Abraham has been made the de-
pository of a blessing for all nations, and account
must therefore be given to him when any people
is summarily removed beyond the possibility of
receiving this blessing. If a man has got a
grant for the emancipation of the slaves in a
certain district, and is informed on landing to
put this grant in force that fifty slaves are to be
executed that day, he has certainly a right to
know and he will inevitably desire to know that
this execution is to be, and why it is to be.
When an officer goes to negotiate an exchange
of prisoners, if two of the number cannot be ex-
changed, but are to be shot, he must be informed
of this and account of the matter must be given
him. Abraham often brooding on God's
promise, living indeed upon it, must have felt a
vague sympathy with all men, and a sympathy
not at all vague, but most powerful and practical,
with the men in the Jordan valley whom he had
rescued from Chedorlaomer. If he was to be a
blessing to any nation it must surely be to those
who were within an afternoon's walk of his en-
campment and amonff whom his nephew had
taken up his abode. Suppose he had not been
told, but had risen next morning and seen the
dense cloud of smoke overhanging the doomed
cities, might he not with some justice have com-
plained that although God had spoken to him
the previous day, not one word of this great
catastrophe had been breathed to him.
The second reason is expressed in the nine-
teenth verse; God had chosen Abraham that he
might command his children and his household
after him to keep the way of the Lord, to do
justice and judgment that the Lord might fulfil
His promise to Abraham. That is to say. as it
was only by obedience and righteousness that
Abraham and his seed were to continue in God's
favour, it was fair that they should be encour-
aged to do so by seeing the fruits of unright-
eousness. So that as the Dead Sea lay through-
out their whole history on their borders
reminding them of the wages of sin, they might
never fail rightly to interpret its meaning, and
in every great catastrophe read the lesson " ex-
cept ye repent ye shall all likewise perish."
They could never attribute to chance this
predicted judgment. And in point of fact fre-
quent and solemn reference was made to this
standing monument of the fruit of sin.
As vet there was no moral law proclaimed by
any external authority. Abraham had to dis-
cover what justice and goodness were from the
dictates of his own conscience and from his ob-
servation upon men and things. But he was at
all events persuaded that only so long as he and
his sought honestly to live in what they con-
■--idered to be righteousness would they enjoy
God's favour. And they read in the destruction
of Sodom a clear intimation that certain forms
of wickedness were detestable to God.
The earnestness with which Abraham inter-
cedes for the cities of the plain reveals a new
side of his character. One could understand a
strong desire on his part that Lot should be
rescued, and no doubt the preservation of Lot
formed one of his strongest motives to intei-
cede, yet Lot is never named, and it is, I think,
plain that he had more than the safety of Lot in
view. He prayed that the city might be spared,
not that the righteous might be delivered out of
its ruin. Probably he had a lively interest in the
people he had rescued from captivity, and felt a
kind of protectorate over them as he sometimes
looked down on them from the hills near his
own tents. He pleads for them as he had fought
for them, with generosity, boldness, and perse-
verance; and it was his boldness and unselfish-
ness in fighting for them that gave him boldness
in praying for them.
There has come into vogue in this country a
kind of intercession which is the exact reverse of
this of Abraham — an obtuse, mechanical inter-
cession about whose efficacy one may cherish a
reasonable suspicion. The Bible and common
sense bid us pray with the Spirit and with the
understanding; but at some meetings for prayer
you are asked to pray for people you do not
know and have no real interest in. You are not
told even their names, so that if an answer is
sent you could not identify the answer, nor is
any clue given you by which, if God should pro-
pose to use you for their help, you could know
where the help was to be applied. For all you
know the slip of paper handed in among a score
of others may misrepresent the circumstances;
and even supposing it does not, what likeness to
the efifectual fervent prayer of an anxious man
has the petition that is once read in your hear-
ing and at once- and for ever blotted from your
mind by a dozen others of the same kind. Not
so did Abraham pray; he prayed for those he
knew and had fought for; and I see no warrant
for expecting that our prayers will be heard for
persons whose good we seek in no other way
than prayer, in none of those ways which in all
other matters our conduct proves we judge more
effectual than prayer. When Lot was carried
captive Abraham did not think it enough to put
a petition for him in his evening prayer. He
went and did the needful thing, so that now when
there is nothing else he can do but pray, he
intercedes, as few of us can without self-reproach
or feeling that had we only done our part there
might now be no need of prayer. What confi-
dence can a parent have in praying for a son
who is going to a country where vice abounds,
if he has done little or nothing to infix in his
boy's mind a love of virtue? In some cases the
very persons who pray for others are themselves
the obstacles preventing the answer. Were we
to ask ourselves how much we are prepared to
do for those for whom we pray, we should come
to a more adequate estimate of the fervency and
sincerity of our prayers.
The element in Abraham's intercession that
jars on the reader is the trading temper that
strives always to get the best possible terms.
Abraham seems to think God can be beaten
down and induced to make smaller and smaller
demands. No doubt this style of prayer was
suggested to Abraham by the statement on
God's part that He was going to Sodom to see
if its iniquity was so great as it was reported;
that is, to number, as it were, the righteous men
in it. Abraham seizes upon this and asks if He
would not spare it if fifty were found in it. But
Abraham, knowing Sodom as he did. could not
have supposed this number would be found.
5c
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
Finding, then, that God meets him so far, he
goes on step by step getting larger in his de-
mands, until when he comes to ten he feels that
to go farther would be intolerably presumptuous.
Along with this audacious beating down of God,
there is a genuine and profound reverence and
humility which at each renewal of the petition
dictate some such expression as: "I who am but
dust and ashes," " Let not my Lord be angry."
It is remarkable too that, throughout, it is for
justice Abraham pleads, and for justice of a
limited and imperfect kind. He proceeds on the
assumption that the town will be judged as a
town, and either wholly saved or wholly de-
stroyed. He has no idea of individual discrimi-
nation being made, those only sufYering who had
sinned. And yet it is this principle of discrimi-
nation on which God ultimately proceeds, rescu-
ing Lot. Yet is not this intercession the history
of ,^hat every one who prays passes through,
beginning with the idea that God is to be won
over to more liberal views and a more munifi-
cent intention, and ending with the discovery
that God gives what we should count it shame-
less audacity to ask? We begin to pray,
" As if ourselves were better certainly
Than what we come to— Maker and High Priest,"
and we leave off praying assured that the whole
is to be managed by a righteousness and love
and wisdom, which we cannot plan for, which
any love or desire of ours would only limit the
action of, and which must be left to work out its
own purposes in its own marvellous ways. We
begin, feelmg that we have to beat down a re-
luctant God and that we can guide the mind of
God to some better thing than He intends: when
the answer comes we recognise that what we set
as the limit of our expectation God has far over-
stepped, and that our prayer has done little more
than show our inadequate conception of God's
mercy.
Not only in this respect but throughout this
chapter there is betrayed an inadequate concep-
tion of God. The language is adapted to the use
of men who are as yet unable to conceive of one
Infinite, Eternal Spirit. They think of Him as
one who needs to come down and institute an in-
quiry into the state of Sodom, if He is to know
with accuracy the moral condition cf its inhabit-
ants. We can freely use the same language, but
we put into it a meaning that the words do not
literally bear: Abraham and his contemporaries
used and accepted the words in their literal sense.
And yet the man who had ideas of God in some
respects so rudimentary was God's Friend, re-
ceived singular tokens of His favour, found His
whole life illuminated with His presence, and
was used as the point of contact between heaven
and earth, so that if you desire the first lessons
in the knowledge of God which will in time
grow into full information, it is to the tent of
Abraham you must go. This surely is encour-
aging; for who is not conscious of much diffi-
culty in thinking rightly of God? Who does
not feel that precisely here, where the light
should be brightest, clouds and darkness seem
to gather? It may indeed be said that what was
excusable in Abraham is inexcusable in us; that
we have that day, that full noon of Christ to
which he could only, out of the dusky dawn,
look forward. But after all may not a man with
some justice say: Give me an afternoon with
God, such as Abraham had; give me the oppor-
tunity of converse with a God submitting Him-
self to question and answer, to those means and
instruments of ascertaining truth which I daily
employ in other matters, and I will ask no more?
Christ has given us entrance into the final stage
of our knowledge of God, teaching us that God
is a Spirit and that we cannot see the Father;
that Christ Himself left earth and withdrew from
the bodily eye that we might rely more upon
spiritual modes of apprehension and think of
God as a Spirit. But we are not at all times
able to receive this teaching, we are children
still and fall back with longing for the times
when God walked and spoke with man. And
this being so, we are encouraged by the experi-
ence of Abraham. We shall not be disowned by
God though we do not know Him perfectly.
We can but begin where we are, not pretending
that that is clear and certain to us which in fact
is not so, but freely dealing with God according
to the light we have, hoping that we too, like
Abraham, shall see the day of Christ and be
glad; shall one day stand in the full light of
ascertained and eternal truth, knowing as we are
known.
In conclusion, we shall find when we read the
following chapter, and especially the prayer of
Lot that he might not be driven to the wild
mountain district, but might occupy the little
town of Zoar which was saved for his sake — we
shall find that much light is reflected on this
prayer of Abraham. Without trenching on what
may be more fitly spoken of afterwards, it may
now be observed that the difference between Lot
and Abraham, as between man and man gener-
ally, comes out nowhere more strikingly than in
their prayers. Abraham had never prayed for
himself with a tithe of the persistent earnestness
with which he prays for Sodom — a town which
was much indebted to him, but towards which
for more reasons than one a smaller man would
have borne a grudge. Lot, on the other hand,
much indebted to Sodom, identified indeed with
it, one of its leading citizens, connected by mar-
riage with its inhabitants, is in no agony about
its destruction, and has indeed but one prayer to
offer, and that is, that when all his fellow-towns-
men are destroyed, he may be comfortably pro-
vided for. While the men he has bargained and
feasted with, the men he has made money out of
and married his daughters to, are in the agonies
of an appalling catastrophe and so near that the
smoke of their torment sweeps across his retreat,
he is so disengaged from regrets and compas-
sion that he can nicely weigh the comparative
comfort and advantage of city and rural life.
One would have thought better of the man if he
had declined the angelic rescue and resolved to
stand by those in death whose society he had so
coveted in life. And it is significant that while
the generous, large-hearted, devout pleading of
Abraham is in vain, the miserable, timorous,
selfish petition of Lot is heard and answered. It
would seem as if sometimes God were hopeless
of men, and threw to them in contempt the gifts
they crave, giving them the noor stations in this
life their ambition is set upon, because He sees
they have made themselves incapable of endur-
ing hardness, and so quelling their lower nature.
An answered prayer is not always a blessing,
sometimes it is a doom: " He sent them meat to
the full: but whi^e then meat was yet in their
m.ouths, the wrath of God came upon them and
slew the fattest of them."
Genesis xix.] DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.
5'
Probably had Lot felt any inclination to pray
for his townsmen, he would have seen that for
him to do so would be unseemly. His circum-
stances, his long association with the Sodomites,
and his accommodation of himself to their ways
had both eaten the soul out of him and set him
on quite a different footing towards God from
that occupied by Abraham. A man cannot on
a sudden emergency lift himself out of the cir-
cumstances in which he has been rooted, nor
peel of¥ his character as if it were only skin-deep.
Abraham had been living an unworldly life in
which intercourre with God was a familiar em-
ployment. His prayer was but the seasonable
flower of his life, nourished to all its beauty by
the habitual nutriment of past years. Lot in his
need could only utter a peevish, pitiful, childish
cry. He had aimed all his life at being com-
fortable, he could not now wish anything more
than to be comfortable. " Stand out of my
sunshine," was all he could say, when he held by
the hand the plenipotentiary of heaven, and when
the roar of the conflict of moral good and evil
was filling his ears — a decent man, a righteous
man, but the world had eaten out his heart till
he had nothing to keep him in sympathy with
heaven.
Such is the state to which men in our society,
as in Sodom, are brought by risking their
spiritual life to make the most of this world.
CHAPTER XV.
DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE
PLAIN.
Genesis xix.
While Abraham was pleading with the Lord
the angels were pursuing their way to Sodom.
And in doing so they apparently observed the
laws of those human forms which they had
assumed. They did not spread swift wings and
alight early in the afternoon at the gates of the
city; but taking the usual route, they descended
from the hills which separated Abraham's en-
campment from the plain of the Jordan, and as
the sun was setting reached their destination.
In the deep recess which is found at either side
of the gateway of an Eastern city. Lot had taken
his accustomed seat. Wearied and vexed with
the din of the revellers in the street, and op-
pressed with the sultry doom-laden atmosphere,
he was looking out towards the cool and peace-
ful hills, purple with the sinking sun behind
them, and letting his thoughts first follow and
then outrun his eye; he was now picturing and
longing for the unseen tents of Abraham, and
almost hearing the cattle lowing round at even-
ing and all the old sounds his youth had made
familiar.
He is recalled to the actual present by the
footfall of the two men, and little knowing the
significance of his act, invites them to spend
the night under his roof. It has been observed
that the historian seems to intend to bring out
the quietness and the ordinary appearance of the
entire circumstances. All goes on as usual.
There is nothing in the setting sun to say that
for the last time it has shone on these rich
meadows, or that in twelve hours its rising will
be dimmed by the smoke of the burning cities.
The ministers of so appalling a justice as was
here displayed enter the city as ordinary trav-
ellers. When a crisis comes, men do not sud-
denly acquire an intelligence and insight they
have not habitually cultivated. They cannot
suddenly put forth an energy nor exhibit an apt
helpfulness which only character can give.
When the test comes, we stand or lall not ac-
cording to what we would wish to be and now
see the necessity of being, but according to what
former self-discipline or self-indulgence has
made us.
How then shall this angelic commission of en-
quiry proceed? Shall it call together the elders
of Sodom — or shall it take Lot outside the city
and cross-examine him, setting down names and
dates and seeking to come to a fair judgment.
Not at all — there is a much surer way of detect-
ing character than by any process of examina-
tion by question and answer. To each of us
God says:
"Since by its fruit a tree is judged,
Show me thy fruit, the latest act of thine !
For in the last is summed the first, and all, —
What thy h'fe last put heart and soul into,
There shall I taste thy product."
It is thus these angels proceed. They do not
startle the inhabitants of Sodom into any ab-
normal virtue nor present opportunity for any
unwonted iniquity. They give them opportunity
to act in their usual way. Nothing could well
be more ordinary than the entrance to the city
of two strangers at sunset. There is nothing in
this to excite, to throw men off their guard, to
overbalance the daily habit, or give exaggerated
expression to some special feature of character.
It is thus we are all judged — by the insignificant
circumstances in which we act without reflection,
without conscious remembrance of an impend-
ing judgment, with heart and soul and full enjoy-
ment.
First Lot is judged. Lot's character is a sin-
gularly mixed one. With all his selfishness, he
was hospitable and public-spirited. Lover of
good living, as undoubtedly he was, his courage
and strength of character are yet unmistakable.
His sitting at the gate in the evening to offer
hospitality may fairly be taken as an indication
of his desire to screen the wickedness of his
townsmen, and also to shield the stranger from
their brutality. From the style in which the
mob addressed him, it is obvious that he had
made himself offensive by interfering to prevent
wrong-doing. He was nicknamed " the Cen-
sor," and his eye was felt to carry condemna-
tion. It is true there is no evidence that his
opposition had been of the slightest avail. How
could it avail with men who knew perfectly well
that with all his denunciation of their wicked
ways, he preferred their money-making com-
pany to the desolation of the hills, where he
would be vexed with no filthy conversation, but
would also find no markets? Still it is to Lot's
credit that in such a city, with none to observe,
none to applaud, and none to second him, he
should have been able to preserve his own purity
of life and steadily to resist wrong-doing. It
would be cynical to say that he cultivated aus-
terity and renounced popular vices as a salve to
a conscience wounded by his own greed.
That he had the courage which lies at t'le
root of strength of character became apparent
as the last dark night of Sodom wore on. To
go out among a profligate, lawless mob, w'ld
52
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
with passion and infuriated by opposition — to
go out and shut the door behind him — was an
act of true courage. His confidence in the in-
fluence he had gained in the town cannot have
blinded him to the temper of the raging crowd
at his door. To defend his unknown guests he
put himself in a position in which men have fre-
(juently lost life.
In the first few hours of his last night in
Sodorn, there is much that is admirable and
pathetic in Lot's conduct. But when we have
said that he was bold and that he hated other
men's sins, we have exhausted the more at-
tractive side of his character. The inhuman col-
lectedness of mind with which, in the midst of
a tremendous public calamity, he could scheme
for his own private well-being is the key to his
whole character. He had no feeling. He was
cold-blooded, calculating, keenly alive to hi^
own interest, with all his wits about him to reap
some gain to himself out of every disaster; the
knid of man out of whom wreckers are made,
who can with gusto strip gold rings of? the
fingers of doomed corpses; out of whom are
made the villains who can rifle the pockets of
their dead comrades on a battlefield, or the poli-
ticians who can still ride on the top of the wave
that hurls their country on the rocks. When
Abraham gave him his choice of a grazing
ground, no rush of feeling, no sense of grati-
tude, prevented him from making the most of
the opportunity. When his house was assailed,
he had coolness, when he went out to the mob,
to shut the door behind him that those within
might not hear his bargain. When the angel,
(jne might almost say, was flurried by the im-
pending and terrible destruction, and was hurry-
ing him away, he was calm enough to take in at
a glance the whole situation and on the spot
make provision for himself. There was no need
to tell him not to look back as his wife did: no
deep emotion would overmaster him, no uncon-
querable longing to see the last of his dear
friends in Sodom would make him lose one
second of his time. Even the loss of his wife
was not a matter of such importance as to make
him forget himself and stand to mourn. In
every recordeti act of his life appears this same
unpleasant characteristic.
Between Lot and Judas there is an instructive
similarity. Both had sufficient discernment and
decision of character to commit themselves to
the life of faith, abandoning their original resi-
dence and ways of life. Both came to a shame-
ful end, because the motive even of the sacrifices
they made was self-interest. Neither would
have had so dark a career had he more justly
estimated his own character and capabilities, and
not attempted a life for which he was unfit.
They both put themselves into a false position;
than which nothing tends more rapidly to de-
teriorate character. Lot was in a doubly false
position, because in Sodom, as well as in Abra-
ham's shifting camp, he was out of place. He
voluntarily bound himself to men he could not
love. One side of his nature was paralysed; and
that the side which in him especially required
development. It is the influence of home life,
of kindly surroundings, of friendships, of con-
genial employment, of everything which evokes
the free expression of what is best in us; it is
this which is a chief factor in the development of
every man. But instead of the genial and fertil-
ising influence of worthy friendships, and en-
nobling love, Lot had to pretend good-will
where he felt none, and deceit and coldness grew
upon him in place of charity. Besides, a man
in a false position in life, out of which he can by
any sacrifice deliver himself, is never at peace
with God until he does deliver himself. And
any attempt to live a righteous life with an evil
conscience is foredoomed to failure.
And if it still be felt that Lot was punished
with extreme severity, and that if every man
who chose a good grazing ground or a position
in life which was likely to advance his fortune
were thereby doomed to end his days in a cave
and under the darkest moral brand, society
would be quite disintegrated, it must be remem-
bered that, in order to advance his interests in
life, Lot sacrificed much that a man is bound by
all means to cherish; and further, it must be
said that our destinies are thus determined. The
whole iniquity and final consequences of our dis-
position are not laid before us in the mass: but
to give the rein to any evil disposition is to yield
control of our own life and commit ourselves to
guidance which cannot result in good, and is of
a nature to result in utter shame and wretched-
ness.
Turning from the rescued to the destroyed,
we recognise how sufficient a test of their moral
condition the presence of the angels was. The
inhabitants of Sodom quickly afford evidence
that they are ripe for judgment. They do noth-
ing worse than their habitual conduct led them
to do. It is not for this one crime they are pun-
ished; its enormity is only the legible instance
which of itself convicts them. They are not
aware of the frightful nature of the crime they
seek to commit. They fancy it is but a renewal
of their constant practice. They rush headlong'
on destruction and do not know it. How can
it be otherwise? If a man zvill not take warning,
if he will persist in sin, then the day comes when
he is betrayed into iniquity the frightful nature
of which he did not perceive, but which is the
natural result of the life he has led. He goes on
and will not give up his sin till at last the final
damning act is committed which seals his doom.
Character tends to express itself in one perfectly
representative act. The habitual passion, what-
ever it is, is always alive and seeking expression.
Sometimes one consideration represses it, some-
times another; but these considerations are not
constant, while the passion is, and must there-
fore one daj' find its opportunity — its oppor-
tunity not for that moderate, guarded, disguised
expression which passes without notice, but for
the full utterance of its very essence. So it was
here: the whole city, small and great, young and
old, from every quarter came together unani-
mous and eager in prosecuting the vilest wicked-
ness. No further investigation or proof was
needed: it has indeed passed into a proverb:
" they declare their sin as Sodom."
To punish by a special commission of enquirj'
is quite unusual in God's government. Nations
are punished for immorality or for vicious ad-
ministration of law or for neglect of sanitary
principles by the operation of natural laws.
That is to say, there is a distinctly traceable con-
nection between the crime and its punishment;
the one being the natural cause of the other.
That nations should be weakened, depopulated,
and ultimately sink into insignificance, is the
natural result of a development of the military
spirit of a country and the love of glory. That
Genesis xix.] DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.
53
a population should be decimated by cholera or
small-pox is the inevitable result of neglecting
intelligible laws of health. It seems to me ab-
surd to put this destruction of Sodom in the
same category. The descent of meteoric stones
from the sky is not the natural result of immo-
rality. The vices of these cities have disastrous
national results which are quite legibly written
in some races existing in the present day. We
have here to do not with what is natural but with
what is miraculous. Of course it is open to any
one to say, " It was merely accidental — it was a
mere coincidence that a storm of lightning so
violent as to set fire to the bituminous soil
should rage in the valley, while on the hills a
mile or two off all was serene; it was a mere
coincidence that meteoric stones or some instru-
ment of conflagration should set on fire just
these cities, not only one of them but four of
them, and no more." And certainly were there
nothing more to go upon than the fact of their
destruction, this coincidence, however extraor-
dinary, must still be admitted as wholly nat-
ural, and having no relation to the character
of the people destroyed. It might be set down
as pure accident, and be classed with storms at
sea, or volcanic eruptions, which are due to
physical causes and have no relation to the moral
character of those involved, but indiscriminately
destroy all who happen to be present.
But we have to account not only for the fact
of the destruction but for its prediction both to
Abraham and to Lot. Surely it is only reason-
able to allow that such prediction was super-
natural; and the prediction being so, it is also
reasonable to accept the account of the event
given by the predictors of it, and understand it
not as an ordinary physical catastrophe, but as
an event contrived with a view to the moral
character of those concerned, and intended as an
infliction of punishment for moral offences.
And before we object to a style of dealing with
nations so different from anything we now de-
tect, we must be sure that a quite different style
of dealing was not at that time required. If
there is an intelligent training of the world, it
must follow the same law which requires that a
parent deal in one way with his boy of ten and
in another with his adult son.
Of Lot's wife the end is recorded in a curt and
summary fashion. " His wife looked back from
behind him, and she became a pillar of salt."
The angel, knowing how closely on the heels of
the fugitives the storm would press, had urgently
enjoined haste, saying, " Look not behind thee,
neither stay thou in all the plain." Rapid in its
pursuit as a prairie fire, it was only the swift who
could escape it. To pause was to be lost. The
command, '" Look not behind thee " was not
given because the scene was too awful to behold,
for what men can endure men may behold, and
Abraham looked upon it from the hill above. It
was given simply from the necessity of the case
and from no less practical and more arbitrary
reason. Accordingly, when the command was
neglected, the consequence was felt. Why the
infatuated woman looked back one can only
conjecture. The woful sounds behind her, the
roar of the flame and of Jordan driven back, the
crash of falling houses and the last forlorn cry
V of the doomed cities, all the confused and terrific
din that filled her ear, may well have paralysed
her and almost compelled her to turn. But the
use our Lord makes of her example shows us
that He ascribed her turning to a different
motive. He uses her as a warning to those who
seek to save out of the destruction more than
they have time to save, ^nd so lose all. " He
which shall be on the housetop, and his stuff in
the house, let him not con>e down to take it
away; and he that is in the field, let him likewise
not return back. Remember Lot's wife." It
would seem, then, as if our Lord ascribed her
tragic fate to her reluctance to abandon her
household stuff. She was a wife after Lot's own
heart, who in the midst of danger and disaster
had an eye to her possessions. The smell of
fire, the hot blast in her hair, the choking smoke
of blazing bitumen, suggested to her only the
thought of her own house decorations, her
hangings, and ornaments, and stores. She felt
keenly the hardship of leaving so much wealth
to be the mere food of fire. The thought of such
intolerable waste made her more breathless with
indignation than her rapid flight. Involuntarily
as she looks at the bleak, stony mountains before
her, she thinks of the rich plain behind; she
turns for one last look, to see if it is impossible
to return, impossible to save anything from the
wreck. The one look transfixes her, rivets her
with dismay and horror. Nothing she looked
for can be seen; all is changed in wildest confu-
sion. Unable to move, she is overtaken and in-
volved in the sulphurous smoke, the bitter salts
rise out of the earth and stifle her and encrust
around her and build her tomb where she stands.
Lot's wife by her death proclaims that if we
crave to make the best of both worlds, we shall
probably lose both. Her disposition is not rare
and exceptional as the pillar of salt which was its
monument. She is not the only woman whose
heart is so fixedly set upon her household pos-
sessions that she cannot listen to the angel-voices
that would guide her. Are there none but Lot's
wife who show that to them there is nothing so
important, nothing else indeed to live for at all,
but the management of a house and the accumu-
lation of possessions? If all who are of the same
mind as Lot's wife shared her fate the world
would present as strange a spectacle as the Dead
Sea presents at this day. For radically it was her
divided mind which was her ruin. She had
good impulses, she saw what she ought to do,
but she did not do it with a mind made up.
Other things divided her thoughts and diverted
her efforts. What else is it ruins half the people
who suppose themselves well on the way of life?
The world is in their heart; they cannot pursue
with undivided mind the promptings of a better
wisdom. Their heart is with their treasure, and
their treasure is really not in spiritual excellence,
not in purity of character, not in the keen brac-
ing air of the silent mountains where God is
known, but in the comforts and gains of the
luxurious plain behind.
We are to remember Lot's wife that we may
bear in mind how possible it is that persons who
promise well and make great efforts and bid fair
to reach a place of safety may be overtaken by
destruction. We can perhaps tell of exhausting
effort, we may have outstripped many in prac-
tical repentance, but all this may only be petri-
fied by present carelessness into a monument
recording how nearly a man may be saved and
yet be destroyed. " Have ye suffered all these
things in vain, if it be yet in vain?" "Ye have
run well, what now hinders you?" The ques-
tion always is, not. what have you done, but
54
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
what are you now doing? Up to the site of the
pillar, Lot's wife had done as well as Lot, had
kept pace with the angels; but her failure at
that point destroyed her.
The same urgency may not be felt by all; but
it should be felt by all to whose conscience it
has been distinctly intimated that they have be-
come involved in a state of matters which is
ruinous. If you are conscious that in your life
there are practices which may very well issue in
moral disaster, an angel has taken you by the
hand and bid you flee. For you to delay is
madness. Yet this is what people will do. Sa-
gacious men of the world, even when they see
the probability of disaster, cannot bear to come
out with loss. They will always wait a little
longer to see if they cannot rescue something
more, and so start on a fresh course with less
inconvenience. They will not understand that
it is better to live bare and stripped with a good
conscience and high moral achievement, than in
abundance with self-contempt. What they have
always seems more to them than what they are.
CHAPTER XVI.
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC.
Genesis xxii.
The sacrifice of Isaac was the supreme act of
Abraham's life. The faith which had been
schooled by so singular an experience and by so
many minor trials was here perfected and ex-
hibited as perfect. The strength which he had
been slowly gathering during a long and trying
life was here required and used. This is the act
which shines like a star out of those dark ages,
and has served for many storm-tossed souls over
whom God's billows have gone, as a mark by
which they could still shape their course when all
else was dark. The devotedness which made the
sacrifice, the trust in God that endured when
even such a sacrifice was demanded, the justifica-
tion of this trust by the event, and the affec-
tionate fatherly acknowledgment with which
God gloried in the man's loyalty and strength
of character — all so legibly written here — come
home to every heart in the time of its need.
Abraham has here shown the way to the highest
reach of human devotedness and to the heartiest
submission to the Divine will in the most heart-
rending circumstances. Men and women living
our modern life are brought into situations
which seem as torturing and overwhelming as
those of Abraham, and all who are in such con-
ditions find, in his loyal trust in God, sympa-
thetic and effectual aid.
In order to understand God's part in this inci-
dent and to remove the suspicion that God
imposed upon Abraham as a duty what was
really a crime, or that He was playing with the
most sacred feelings of His servant, there are
one or two facts which must not be left out of
consideration. In the first place, Abraham did
not think it wrong to sacrifice his son. His own
conscience did not clash with God's command.
On the contrary, it was through his own con-
science God's will impressed itself upon him.
No man of Abraham's character and intelligence
could suppose that any word of God could make
that right which was in itself wrong, or would
allow the voice of conscience to be drowned by
some mysterious voice from without. If Abra-
ham had supposed that in all circumstances it
was a crime to take his son's life, he could not
have listened to any voice that bade him commit
this crime. The man who in our day should put
his child to death and plead that he had a Di-
vine warrant for it would either be hanged or
confined as insane. No miracle would be ac-
cepted as a guarantee for the Divine dictation
of such an act. No voice from heaven would
be listened to for a moment, if it contradicted the
voice of the universal conscience of mankind.
But in Abraham's day the universal conscience
had only approbation to express for such a deed
as this. Not only had the father absolute power
over the son, so that he might do with him what
he pleased; but this particular mode of disposing
of a son would be considered singular only as
being beyond the reach of ordinary virtue.
Abraham was familiar with the idea that the
most exalted form of religious worship was the
sacrifice of the first-born. He felt, in common
with godly men in every age, that to offer to
God cheap sacrifices while we retain for our-
selves what is truly precious, is a kind of wor-
ship that betrays our low estimate of God rather
than expresses true devotion. He may have
been conscious that in losing Ishmael he had
felt resentment against God for depriving him of
so loved a possession; he may have seen Canaa-
nite fathers offering their children to gods he
knew to be utterly unworthy of any sacrifice;
and this may have rankled in his mind until he
felt shut up to offer his all to God in the person
of his son, his only son, Isaac. At all events,
however, it became his conviction that God de-
sired him to offer his son; this was a sacrifice
which was in no respect forbidden by his own
conscience.
But although not wrong in Abraham's judg-
ment, this sacrifice was wrong in the eye of God;
how then can we justify God's command that
He should make it? We justify it precisely on
that ground which lies patent on the face of the
narrative — God meant Abraham to make the
sacrifice in spirit, not in the outward act. He
meant to write deeply on the Jewish mind the
fundamental lesson regarding sacrifice, that it is
in the spirit and will all true sacrifice is made.
God intended what actually happened, that Abra-
ham's sacrifice should be complete and that hu-
man sacrifice should receive a fatal blow. So
far from introducing into Abraham's mind erro-
neous ideas about sacrifice, this incident finally
dispelled from his mind such ideas and perma-
nently fixed in his mind the conviction that the
sacrifice God seeks is the devotion of the living
soul, not the consumption of a dead body. God
met him on the platform of knowledge and of
morality to which he had attained, and by re-
quiring him to sacrifice his son taught him and
all his descendants in what sense alone such
sacrifice can be acceptable. God meant Abra-
ham to sacrifice his son, but not in the coarse
material sense. God meant him to yield the lad
truly to Him; to arrive at the consciousness
that Isaac more truly belonged to God than to
him, his father. It was needful that Abraham
and Isaac should be in perfect harmony with the
Divine will. Only by being really and abso-
lutely in God's hand could they, or can any one.y
reach the whole and full good designed for them
by God.
How old Isaac was at the time of this sacri-
yV>J<MfW
Genesis xxii.]
SACRIFICE OF ISAAC.
55
fice there is no means of accurately ascertain-
ing. He was probably in the vigor of early
manhood. He was able to take his share in the
work of cutting wood for the burnt offering and
carrying the faggots a considerable distance. It
was necessary too that this sacrifice should be
made on Isaac's part not with the timorous
shrinking or ignorant boldness of a boy, but
with the full comprehension and deliberate con-
sent of maturer years. It is probable that Abra-
ham was already preparing, if not to yield to
Isaac the family headship, yet to introduce him
to a share in the responsibilities he had so long
borne alone. From the touching confidence in
one another which this incident exhibits, a light
is reflected on the fond intercourse of former
years. Isaac was at that time of life when a son
is closest to a father, mature but not inde-
pendent; when all that a father can do has been
done, but while as yet the son has not passed
away into a life of his own.
And Isaac was no ordinary son. The man of
business who has encouraged and solaced him-
self in his toil by the hope that his son will reap
the fruit of it and make his old age easy and
honoured, but who outlives his son and sees the
effort of his life go for nothing, the proprietor
who bears an ancient name and sees his heir die
— these are familiar objects of pathetic interest,
and no heart is so hard as to refuse a tear of
sympathy when brought into view of such heart-
withering bereavements. But in Abraham all
fatherly feelings had been evoked and strength-
ened and deepened by a quite peculiar experi-
ence. By a special and most effectual discipline
he had been separated from the objects which
ordinarily divide men's attention and eke out.
their contentment in life, and his whole hopes
had been compelled to centre in his son. It was
not the perpetuation of a name nor the transmis-
sion of a well-known and valuable property; it
was not even the gratification of the most justi-
fiable and tender of human affections, that was
crushed and thwarted in Abraham by this com-
mand; but it was also and especially that hope
which had been aroused and fostered in him by
extraordinary providences and which concerned,
as he believed, not himself alone but all men.
Manifestly no harder task could have been set
to Abraham than that which was imposed on
him by the command, " Take now thy son, thine
only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest," this son of
thine in whom all the promises are yea and amen
to thee, this son for whose sake thou gavest up
home and kindred, and banished thy firstborn
Ishmael, this son whom thou lovest, and offer
him for a burnt-offering. This son, Abraham
might have said, whom I have been taught to
cherish, putting aside all other affections that
I might love him above all, I am now with my
own hand to slay, to slay with all the terrible
niceties and formalities of sacrifice and with all
the love and adoration of sacrj-fice. I am with my
own hand to destroy all that makes life valuable
to me, and as I do so I am to love and worship
Him who commands this sacrifice. I am to go
to Isaac, whom I have taught to look forward to
the fairest happiest life, and I am to contradict
all I ever told him and tell him now that he has
only grown to maturity that he might be cut
down in the flush and hope of opening manhood.
What can Abraham have thought? Possibly
the thought would occur that God was now re-
calling the great gift He had made. There is
always enough conscience of sin in the purest
human heart to engender self-reproach and fear
on the faintest occasion; and when so signal a
token of God's displeasure as this was sent,
Abraham may well have believed himself to have
been unwittingly guilty of some great crime
against God, or have now thought with bitter-
ness of the languid devotion he had been offer-
ing Him. I have in sacrificing a lamb been as
if I had been cutting off a dog's neck, profane
and thoughtless in my worship, and now God is
solemnising me indeed. I have in thought or
desire kept back the prime of my flock, and God
is now teaching me that a man may not rob
God. Who could have been surprised if in this
horror of great darkness the mind of Abraham
had become unhinged? Who could wonder if
he had slain himself to make the loss of Isaac
impossible? Who could wonder if he had sul-
lenly ignored the command, waited for further
light, or rejected an alliance with God which in-
volved such lamentable conditions? Nothing
that could befall him in consequence of disobe-
dience, he might have supposed, could exceed in
pain the agony of obedience. And it is always
easier to endure the pain inflicted upon us by
circumstances than to do with our own hand and
free will what we know will involve us in suffer-
ing. It is not mere resignation but active obedi-
ence that was required of Abraham. His was
not the passive resignation of the man out of
whose reach death or disaster has swept his
dearest treasures, and who is helped to resigna-
tion by the consciousness that no murmuring
can bring them back — his was the far more diffi-
cult act of resignation, which has still in pos-
session all that it prizes, and may withhold these
treasures if it pleases, but is called by a higher
voice than that of self-pleasing to sacrifice them
all.
But though Abraham was the chief, he was
not the sole actor in this trying scene. To Isaac
this was the memorable day of his life, and
quiescent and passive as his character seems to
have been, it cannot but have been stirred and
strained now in every fibre of it. Abraham
could not find it in his heart to disclose to his
son the object of the journey; even to the last
he kept him unconscious of the part he was him-
self to play. Two long days' journey, days of
intense inward commotion to Abraham, they
went northward. On the third day the servants
were left, and father and son went on alone, un-
accompanied and unwitnessed. " So they went,"
as the narrative twice over says, " both of them
together," but with minds how differently filled;
the father's heart torn with anguish and dis-
tracted by a thousand thoughts, the son's mind
disengaged, occupied only with the new scenes
and with passing fancies. Nowhere in the nar-
rative does the completeness of the mastery
Abraham had gained over his natural feelings
appear more strikingly than in the calmness with
which he answers Isaac's question. As they ap-
proach the place of sacrifice Isaac observes the
silent and awestruck demeanour of his father,
and fears that it may have been through absence
of mind he has neglected to bring the lamb.
With a gentle reverence he ventures to attract
Abraham's attention: " My father;" and he said,
" Here am I, my son." And he said, " Behold
the fire and the wood, but where is the Iamb for
a burnt offering? " It is one of those moments
when only the strongest heart can bear up calmly
56
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
and when only the humblest faith has the right
word to say. " My son, the Lord will provide
Himself a lamb for a burnt offering."
Not much longer could the terrible truth be
hidden from Isaac. With what feelings must he
have seen the agonised face of his father as he
turned to bind him and as he learned that he
must prepare not to sacrifice but to be sacrificed.
Here then was the end of those great hopes on
which his youth had been fed. What could such
contradiction mean? Was he to submit even to
his father in such a matter? Why should he
not expostulate, resist, flee? Such ideas seem to
have found short entertainment in the mind of
Isaac. Trained by long experience to trust his
father, he obeys without complaint or murmur.
Still it cannot cease to be matter of admiration
and astonishment that a young man should have
been able on so brief a notice, through so shock-
ing a way, and with so startling a reversal of his
€xpectations, to forego all right to choose for
himself, and yield himself implicitly to what he
believed to be God's will. By a faith so abso-
lute Isaac became indeed the heir of Abraham.
When he laid himself on the altar, trusting his
father and his God, he came of age as the true
seed of Abraham and entered on the inheritance,
making God his God. At that supreme moment
he made himself over to God, he put himself at
God's disposal; if his death was to be helpful in
fulfilling God's purpose he was willing to die. It
was God's will that must be done, not his. He
knew that God could not err, could not harm
His people; he was ignorant of the design which
his death could fulfil, but he felt sure that his
sacrifice was not asked in vain. He had famil-
iarised himself with the thought that he belonged
to God; that he was on earth for God's purposes,
not for his own; so that now, when he was sud-
denly summoned to lay himself formally and
finally on God's altar, he did not hesitate to do
so. He had learned that there are possessions
more worth preserving than life itself, that
" Manhood is the one immortal thing
Beneath Time's changeful sky"—
he had learned that " length of days is knowing
when to die."
No one who has measured the strain that such
sacrifice puts upon human nature can withhold
his tribute of cordial admiration for so rare a
devotedness, and no one can fail to see that by
this sacrifice Isaac became truly the heir of
Abraham. And not only Isaac, but every man
attains his majority by sacrifice. Only by losing
our life do we beein to live. Only by yielding
ourselves truly and unreservedly to God's pur-
pose do we enter the true life of men. The giv-
ing up of self, the abandonment of an isolated
lite, the bringing of ourselves into connection
with God, with the Supreme and with the whole,
this is the second birth. To reach that full
stream of life which is moved by God's will and
which is the true life of men, we must so give
ourselves up to God that each of His command-
ments, each of His providences, all by vvhicli He
comes into connection with us, has its due effect
upon us. If we only seek from God help to
carry out our own conception of life, if we only
desire His power to aid us in making of this life
what we have resolved it shall be, we are far in-
deed from Isaac's conception of God and of life.
But if we desire that God fulfil in us, and
through us. His own conception of what our life
should be, the only means of attaining this de-
sire is to put ourselves fairly into God's hand,
unflinchingly to do what we believe to be His
will irrespective of present darkness and pain
and privation. He who thus bids an honest
farewell to earth and lets himself be bound and
laid upon God's altar, is conscious that in re-
nouncing himself he has won God and become
His heir.
Have you thus given yourselves to God? I do
not ask if your sacrifice has been perfect, nor
whether you do not ever seek great things still
for yourselves; but do you know what it is thus
to yield yourself to God, to put God first, your-
self second or nowhere? Are you even occa-
sionally quite willing to sink your own interests,
your own prospects, your own native tastes, to
have your own worldly hopes delayed or
blighted, your future darkened? Have you even
brought your intellect to bear upon this first law
of human life, and determined for yourself
whether it is the case or not that man's life, in
order to be profitable, joyful, and abiding, must
be lived in God? Do you recognise that human
life is not for the individual's good, but for the
common good, and that only in God can each
man find his place and his work? All that we
give up to Him we have in an ampler form.
The very affections v/hich we are called to sacri-
fice are purified and deepened rather than lost.
When Abraham resigned his son to God and re-
ceived him back their love took on a new delicacy
and tenderness. They were more than ever to
one another after this interference of God. And
He meant it to be so. Where our affections are
thwarted or where our hopes are blasted, it is
not our injury, but our good, that is meant; a
fineness and purity, an eternal significance and
depth, are imparted to affections that are an-
nealed by passing through the fire of trial.
Not till the last moment did God interpose
with the gladdening words, " Lay not thine hand
upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto
him; for now I know that thou fearest God, see-
ing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only
son, from Me." The significance of this was so
obvious that it passed into a proverb: " In the
mount of the Lord it shall be provided." It was
there, and not at any earlier point, Abraham saw
the provision that had been made for an offering.
Up to the moment when he lifted the knife over
all he lived for, it was not seen that other pro-
vision was made. Up to the moment when it
was indubitable that both he and Isaac were
obedient unto death, and when in will and feel-
ing they had sacrificed themselves, no substitute
was visible, but no sooner was the sacrifice com-
plete in spirit than God's provision was dis-
closed. It was the spirit of sacrifice, not the
blood of Isaac, that God desired. It was the
noble generosity of Abraham that God delighted
in, not the fatherly grief that would have fol-
lowed the actual death of Isaac. It was the
heroic submission of father and son that God
saw with delight, rejoicing that men were found
capable of the utmost of heroism, of patient and
unflinchmg adherence to duty. At any point
short of the consummation, interposition would
have come too soon, and would have prevented
this educative and elevating display of the ca-
pacity of men for the utmost that life can require
of them. Had the provision of God been made
known one minute before the hand of Abrahan.
Genesis xxi,, xxii.]
ISHMAEL AND ISAAC.
57
-was raised to strike, it would have remained
doubtful whether in the critical moment one or
other of the parties might not have failed. But
when the sacrifice was complete, when already
the bitterness of death was past, when all the
agonizing conflict was over, the anguish of the
father mastered, and the dismay of the son sub-
dued to perfect conformity with the supreme
will, then the full reward of victorious conflict
was given, and God's meaning flashed through
the darkness, and His provision was seen.
This is the universal law. We find God's pro-
vision only on the mount of sacrifice, not at any
stage short of this, but only there. We must go
the whole way in faith; what lies before us as
duty, we must do; often in darkness and utter
misery, seeing no possibility of escape or relief,
we must climb the hill where we are to abandon
all that has given joy and hope to our life; and
not before the sacrifice has been actually made
can we enter into the heaven of victory God pro-
vides. You may be called to sacrifice your
youth, your hopes of a career, your affections,
that you may uphold and soothe the lingering
days of one to whom you are naturally bound.
Or your whole life may have centred in an affec-
tion which circumstances demand you shall
abandon- you may have to sacrifice your natural
tastes and give up almost everything you once
set your heart on; and while to others the years
bring brightness and variety and scope, to you
they may be bringing only monotonous fulfil-
ment of insipid and uncongenial tasks. You
may be in circumstances which tempt you to say.
Does God see the inextricable difficulty I am in?
Does He estimate the pain I must sufifer if im-
mediate relief do not come? Is obedience to
Him only to involve me in misery from which
other men are exempt? You may even say that
although a substitute was found for Isaac, no
substitute has been found for the sacrifice you
have had to make, but you have been compelled
actually to lose what was dear to you as life
itself. But when the character has been fully
tried, when the utmost good to character has
been accomplished, and when delay of relief
would only increase misery, then relief comes.
Still the law holds good, that as soon as you in
spirit yield to God's will, and with a quiet sub-
missiveness consent to the loss or pain inflicted
upon you, in that hour your whole attitude to
your circumstances is transformed, you find rest
and assured hope. Two things are certain: that,
however painful your condition is, God's inten-
tion is not to injure, but to advance you, and
that hopeful submission is wiser, nobler, and
every way better than murmuring and resent-
ment.
Finally, these words, " The Lord will pro-
vide," which Abraham uttered in that exalted
frame of mind which is near to the prophetic
■ecstasy, have been the burden sung by every
sincere and thoughtful worshipper as he as-
cended the hill of God to seek forgiveness of his
sin, the burden which the Lord's worshipping
congregation kept on its tongue through all the
ages, till at length, as the angel of the Lord had
opened the eyes of Abraham to see the ram pro-
vided, the voice of the Baptist " crying in the
wilderness " to a fainting and well-nigh despair-
ing few turned their eye to God's great provision
with the final announcement, " Behold the Lamb
of God." Let us accept this as a motto which
we may apply, not only in aU temporal straits,
when we can see no escape from loss and misery,
but also in all spiritual emergency, when sin
seems a burden too great for us to bear, and
when we seem to lie under the uplifted knife of
God's judgment. Let us remember that God's
desire is not that we sufifer pain, but that we
learn obedience, that we be brought to that true
and thorough confidence in Him which may fit
us to fulfil His loving purposes. Let us, above
all, remember that we cannot know the grace of
God, cannot experience the abundant provision
He has made for weak and sinful men, until we
have climbed the mount of sacrifice and are able
to commit ourselves wholly to Him. Not by
attacking our manifold enemies one by one, nor
by attempting the great work of sanctification
piecemeal, shall we ever make much growth or
progress, but by giving ourselves up wholly to
God and by becoming willing to live in Him and
as His.
CHAPTER XVII.
ISHMAEL AND ISAAC.
Genesis xxi., xxii.
"Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the
other by a freewoman. ♦ * * Which things are an
allegory."— Galatians iv. 22.
" Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife
to slay his son.''— Genesis xxii. 10.
In the birth of Isaac, Abraham at length sees
the long-delayed fulfilment of the promise. But
his trials are by no means over. He has himself
introduced into his family the seeds of discord
and disturbance, and speedily the fruit is borne.
Ishmael, at the birth of Isaac, was a lad of four-
teen years, and, reckoning from Eastern cus-
toms, he must have been over sixteen when the
feast was made in honour of the weaned child.
Certainly he was quite old enough to understand
the important and not very welcome alteration
in his orospects which the birth of this new son
effected. He had been brought up to count him-
self the heir of all the wealth and influence of
Abraham. There was no alienation of feeling
between father and son: no shadow had flitted
over the bright prospect of the boy as he grew
up; when suddenly and unexpectedly there was
interposed between him and his expectation the
effectual barrier of this child of Sarah's. The
importance of this child to the family was in due
course indicated in many ways offensive to Ish-
mael; and when the feast was made, his spleen
could no longer be repressed. This weaning
was the first step in the direction of an inde-
pendent existence, and this would be the point
of the feast in celebration. The child was no
longer a mere part of the mother, but an indi-
vidual, a member of the family. The hopes of
the parents were carried forward to the time
when he should be quite independent of them.
But in all this there was great food for_ the
ridicule of a thoughtless lad. It was precisely
the kind of thing which could easily be mocked
without any great expenditure of wit by a boy of
Ishmael's age. The too visible pride of the aged
mother, the incongruity of maternal duties with
ninety years, the concentration of attention and
honours on so small an object, — all this was,
doubtless, a temptation to a boy who had prob-
ably at no time too much reverence. But the
58
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
words and gestures which others might have
disregarded as childish frolic, or, at worst, as the
unseemly and ill-natured impertinence of a boy
who knew no better, stung Sarah, and left a
poison in her blood that infuriated her. " Cast
out that bondwoman and her son," she de-
manded of Abraham. Evidently she feared the
rivalry of this second household of Abraham,
and was resolved it should come to an end. The
mocking of Ishmael is but the violent concussion
that at last produces the explosion, for which
material has long been laid in train. She had
seen on Abraham's part a clinging to Ishmael,
which she was unable to appreciate. And
though her harsh decision was nothing more
than the dictate of maternal jealousy, it did pre-
vent things from running on as they were until
even a more painful family quarrel must have
been the issue.
The act of expulsion was itself unaccountably
harsh. There was nothing to prevent Abraham
sending the boy and his mother under an escort
to some safe place; nothing to prevent him from
giving the lad some share of his possessions
sufficient to provide for him. Nothing of this
kind was done. The woman and the boy were
simply put to the door; and this, although Ish-
mael had for years been counted Abraham's heir,
and though he was a member of the covenant
made with Abraham. There may have been
some law giving Sarah absolute power over her
maid; but if any law gave her power to do what
was now done, it was a thoroughly barbarous
one, and she was a barbarous woman who
used it.
It is one of those painful cases in which one
poor creature clothed with a little brief au-
thority stretches it to the utmost in vindictive
maltreatment of another. Sarah happened to be
mistress, and, instead of using her position to
make those under her happy, she used it for her
own convenience, for the gratification of her own
spite, and to make those beneath her conscious
of her power by their suffering. She happened
to be a mother, and instead of bringing her into
sympathy with all women and their children,
this concentrated her affection with a fierce jeal-
ousy on her own child. She breathed freely
when Hagar and Ishmael were fairly out of sight.
A smile of satisfied malice betrayed her bitter
spirit. No thought of the sufferings to which
she had committed a woman who had served her
well for years, who had yielded everything to
her will, and who had no other natural protector
but her, no glimpses of Abraham's saddened
face, visited her with any relentings. It mat-
tered not to her what came of the woman and
the boy to whom she really owed a more loving
and careful regard than to any except Abraham
and Isaac. It is a story often repeated. One
who has been a member of the household for
many years is at last dismissed at the dictate of
some petty pique or spite as remorselessly and
inhumanly as a piece of old furniture might be
parted with. Some thoroughly good servant,
who has made sacrifices to forward his em-
ployer's interest, is at last, through no offence of
his own, found to be in his employer's way, and
at once all old services are forgotten, all old ties
broken, and the authority of the employer, legal
but inhuman, is exercised. It is often those who
can least defend themselves who are thus treated;
no resistance is possible, and also, alas! the party
is too weak to face the wilderness on which she
is thrown out, and if any cares to follow her his-
tory, we may find her at the last gasp under a
bush.
Still, both for Abraham and for Ishmael, it was
better, this severance should take place. It was
grievous to Abraham; and Sarah saw that for
this very reason it was necessary. Ishmael was
his firstborn, and for many years had received
the whole of his parental affection: and, looking
on the little Isaac, he might feel the desirable-
ness of keeping another son in reserve, lest this
strangely-given child might as strangely pass
away. Coming to him in a way so unusual, and
having perhaps in his appearance some indica-
tion of his peculiar birth, he might seem scarcely
fit for the rough life Abraham himself had led.
On the other hand, it was plain that in Ishmael
were the very qualities which Isaac was al-
ready showing that he lacked. Already Abra-
ham was observine that with all his insolence
and turbulence there was a natural force and
independence of character which might come
to be most useful in the patriarchal house-
hold. The man who had pursued and routed the
allied kintrs could not but be drawn to a youth
who already gave promise of capacity for similar
enterprises — and this youth his own son. But
can Abraham have failed to let his fancy picture
the deeds this lad might one day do at the head
of his armed slaves? And may he not have
dreamt of a glory in the land not altogether such
as the promise of God encouraged him to look
for, but such as the tribes around would ac-
knowledge aiid fear? All the hopes Abraham
had of Ishmael had gained firm hold of his mind
before Isaac was born; and before Isaac grew
up, Ishmael must have taken the most influential
place in the house and plans of Abraham. His
mind would thus have received a strong bias to-
wards conquests and forcible modes of advance.
He might have been led to neglect, and, per-
haps, finally despise, the unostentatious bless-
ings of heaven.
If, then, Abraham was to become the founder,
not of one new warlike power in addition to the
already too numerous warlike powers of the
East, but of a religion which should finally de-
velop into the most elevating and purifying in-
fluence among men, it^ is obvious that Ishmael
was not at all a desirable heir. Whatever pain
it gave to Abraham to part with him, separation
in some form had becom*^ necessary. It was im-
possible that the father should continue to enjoy
the filial affection of Ishm?el. his lively talk, and
warm enthusiasm, and adventurous exploits, and
at the same time concentra*:e his hope and his
care on Isaac. He had, therefore, to give up,
with something of the sorrow and self-control he
afterwards underwent in connection with the sac-
rifice of Isaac, the lad whose bright face had for
so many years shone in all hi? paths. And in
some such way are we often called to part with
prospects which have wrought themselves very
deep into our spirit, and which, indeed, just be-
cause they are very promising and seductive,
have become dangerous to us, upsetting the
balance of our life, and throwing into the shade
objects and purposes which ought to be out-
standing. And when we are thus required to
give up what we were looking to for comfort,
for applause, and for profit, the voice of God in
its first admonition sometimes seems to us little
better than the jealousy of a woman. Like
Sarah's demand, that none should share with her
Genesis xxi., xxii.]
ISHMAEL AND ISAAC.
59
son, does the requirement seem which indicates
to us that we must set nothing on a level with
God's direct gifts to us. We refuse to see why
we may not have all the pleasures and enjoy-
ments, all the display and brilliance that the
world can give. We feel as if we were needlessly
restricted. But this instance shows us that
when circumstances compel us to give up some-
thing of this kind which we have been cherish-
ing, room is given for a better thing than itself
to grow.
For Ishmael himself, too, wronged as he was
in the mode of his expulsion, it was yet far
better that he should go. Isaac was the true
heir. No jeering allusions to his late birth or to
his appearance could alter that fact. And to a
temper like Ishmael's it was impossible to
occupy a subordinate, dependent position. All
he required to call out his latent powers was to
be thrown thus on his own resources. The dar-
ing and high spirit and quickness to take offence
and use violence, which would have wrought un-
told mischief in a pastoral camp, were the very
qualities which found fit exercise in the desert,
and seemed there only in keeping with the life
he had to lead. And his hard experience at first
would at his age do him no harm, but good
only. To be compelled to face life single-handed
at the age of sixteen is by no means a fate to be
pitied. It was the making of Ishmael, and is
the making of many a lad in every generation.
But the two fugitives are soon reminded that,
though expelled from j^braham's tents and pro-
tecti<m, they are not expelled from his God.
Ishmael finds it true that when father and mother
forsake him, the Lord takes him up. At the
very outset of his desert life he is made conscious
that God is still his God,, mindful of his wants,
responsive to his cry of distress. It was not
through Ishmael the promised seed was to come,
but the descendants of Ishmael had every induce-
ment to retain faith in the God of Abraham, who
listened to their father's cry. The fact of being
excluded from certain privileges did not involve
that they were to be excluded from all privi-
leges. God still " heard the voice of the lad.
and the angel of God called to Hagar out of
heaven."
It is this voice of God to Hagar that so
speedily, and apparently once for all, lifts her out
of despair to cheerful hope. It would appear as
if her despair had been needless; at least from
the words addressed to her, " What aileth thee.
Hagar? " it would appear as if she might herself
have found the water that was close at hand, if
only she had been disposed to look for it. But
she had lost heart, and perhaps with her despair
was mingled some resentment, not only at Sarah,
but at the whole Hebrew connection, including
the God of the Hebrews, who had before encour-
aged her. Here was the end of the magnificent
promise which that God had made her before her
child was born — a helpless human form gasp-
ing its life away without a drop of water to
moisten the parched tongue and bring light to
the glazing eyes, and with no easier couch than
the burning sand. Was it for this, the bitterest
d/op that, apart from sin, can be given to any
parent to drink, she had been brought from
Fgypt and led through all her past? Had her
hopes been nursed by means so extraordinary
oily that they mieht be so bitterly blighted?
7 hus she leant to her conrlncionq. and indeed
that because her skin of water had failed God had
failed her too. No one can blame her, with her
boy dying before her, and herself helpless to re-
lieve one pang of his suffering. Hitherto, in the
well-furnished tents of Abraham, she had been
able to respond to his slightest desire. Thirst
he had never known, save as the relish to some
boyish adventure. But now, when his eyes ap-
peal to her in dying anguish, she can but turn
away in helpless despair. She cannot relieve his
simplest want. Not for her own fate has she any
tears, but to see her pride, her life and joy, per-
ishing thus miserably, is more than she can bear.
No one can blame, but every one may learn
from her. When angry resentment and unbe-
lieving despair fill the mind, we may perish of
thirst in the midst of springs. When God's
promises produce no faith, but seem to us so
much waste paper, we are necessarily in danger
of missing their fulfilment. When we ascribe to
God the harshness and wickedness of those who
represent Him in the world, we commit moral
suicide. So far from the promises given to
Hagar being now at the point of extinction, this
was the first considerable step toward their ful-
filment. When Ishmael turned his back on the
familiar tents, and flung his last gibe at Sarah,
he was really setting out to a far richer inherit-
ance, so far as this world goes, than ever fell to
Isaac and his sons.
But the chief use Paul makes of this entire
episode in the history is to see in it an allegory,
a kind of picture made up of real persons and
events, representing the impossibility of law and
gospel living harmoniously together, the incom-
patibility of a spirit of service with a spirit of
sonship. Hagar. he says, is in this picture the
likeness of the law given from Sinai, which gen-
dereth to bondage. Hagar and her son, that is
to say, stand for the law and the kind of right-
eousness produced by the law, — not superficially
a bad kind; on the contrary, a righteousness
with much dash and brilliance and strong manly
force about it. but at the root defective, faulty m
its origin, springing from the slavish spirit. And
first Paul bids us notice how the free-born is
persecuted and mocked by the slave-born, that is,
how the children of God who are trying to live
by love and faith in Christ are put to shame and
made uneasy by the law. They believe they are
God's dear children, that they are loved by Him,
and may go out and in freely in His house as
their own home, using all that is His with the
freedom of His heirs; but the law mocks them,
frightens them, tells them it is God's firstborn;
law lying far back in the dimness of eternity, co-
eval with God Himself. It tells them they are
puny and weak, scarcely out of their mother's
arms, tottering, lisping creatures, doing much
mischief, but none of the housework, at best only
getting some little thing to pretend to work at.
In contrast to their feeble, soft, unskilled weak-
ness, it sets before them a finely-moulded, athletic
form, becoming disciplined to all work, and able
to take a place among the serviceable and able-
bodied. But with all this there is in that puny
babe a life begun which will grow and make it
the true heir, dwelling in the house and possess-
ing what it has not toiled for, while the vigorous,
likely-looking lad must go into the wilderness
and make a possession for himself with his own
bow and soear.
Now, of course, righteousness of life and char-
acter, or perfect manhood, is the end at which
all that we call salvation aims, and that which
6o
THE BOOK OF GtisESiS.
can give us the purest, ripest character is salva-
tion for us; that which can make us, for all pur-
poses, most serviceable and strong. And when
we are confronted with persons who might speak
of service we cannot render, of an upright, un-
faltering carrias?e we cannot assume, of a general
liuman worthiness we can make no pretension
to, we are justly perturbed, and should regain
our equanimity only under the influence of the
most undoubted truth and fact. If we can hon-
estly say in our hearts, " Although we can show
no such work done, and no such masculine
growth, yet we have a life in us which is of God,
and will grow;" if we are sure that we have the
spirit of God's children, a spirit of love and duti-
fulness, we may take comfort from this incident.
We may remind ourselves that it is not he who
has at the present moment the best appearance
who always abides in the father's home, but he
who is by birth the heir. Have we or have we
not the spirit of the Son? not feeling that we
must every evening make good our claim to an-
other night's lodging by showing the task we
have accomplished, but being conscious that the
interests in which we are called to work are our
own interests, that we are heirs in the father's
house, so that all we do for the house is really
done for ourselves. Do we go out and in with
God, feeling no need of His commands, our own
eye seeing where help is required, and our own
desires being wholly directed towards that which
engages all His attention and work?
For Paul woitld have each of us apply, alle-
gorically, the words, Cast out the bondwoman
and her son, that is, cast out the legal mode of
earning a standing in God's house, and with this
legal mode cast out all the self-seeking, the
servile fear of God, the self-righteousness, and
the hard-heartedness it engenders. Cast out
wholly from yourself the spirit of the slave, and
cherish the spirit of the son and heir. The
slave-born may seem for a while to have a firm
footing in the father's house, but it cannot last.
The temper and tastes of Ishmael are radically
different from those of Abraham, and when the
slave-born becomes mature, the wild Egyptian
strain will appear in his character. Moreover,
he looks upon the goods of Abraham as plunder;
he cannot rid himself of the feeling of an alien,
and this would, at length, show itself in a
want of frankness v/ith Abraham — slowly, but
surely, the confidence between them would be
worn out. Nothing but being a child of
God, being born of the Spirit, can give the
feeling of intimacy, confidence, unity of interest,
which constitutes true religion. All we do as
slaves goes for nothing; that is to say, all we do,
not because we see the good of it. but because
we are commanded; not because we have any
liking for the thing done, but because we wish to
be paid for it. The day is coming when we shall
attain our majority, when it will be said to us
by God, Now. do whatever you like, whatever
you have a mind to; no surveillance, no com-
mands are now needed: I put all into your own
hand. What, in these circumstances, should we
straightway do? Should wc, for the love of the
thing, carry on the same work to which God's
commands had driven us; should we, if left abso-
lutely in charge, find nothing more attractive
than just to prosecute that idea of life and the
world set before us by Christ? Or should we
see that we had merely bee i keeping ourselves
in check for a while, biding our time, untamed
as Ishmael, craving the rewards but not the life
of the children of God? The most serious of all
questions these — questions that determine the
issues of our whole life, that determine whether
our home is to be where all the best interests of
men and the highest blessings of God have their
seat, or in the pathless desert where life is an
aimless wandering, dissociated from all the for-
ward movements of men.
The distinction between the servile spirit and
the spirit of sonship being thus radical, it could,
be by no mere formality, or exhibition of his
legal title, that Isaac became the heir of God's
heritage. His sacrifice on Moriah was the requi-
site condition of his succession to Abraham's
place: it was the only suitable celebration of his
majority. Abraham himself had been able to
enter into covenant with God only by sacrifice:
and sacrifice not of a dead and external kind,
but vivified by an actual surrender of himself to
God, and by so true a perception of God's holi-
ness and requirements that he was in a horror
of great darkness. By no other process can any
of his heirs succeed to the inheritance. A true
resignation of self, in whatever outward form
this resignation may appear, is required that we
may become one with God in His holy purposes
and in His eternal blessedness. There could be
no doubt that Abraham had found a true heir,
when Isaac laid himself on the altar and steadied
his heart to receive the knife. Dearer to God,
and of immeasurably greater value than any
service, was this surrender of himself into the
hand of his Father and his God. In this was
promise of all service and all loving fellowship.
" Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death
of His saints. O Lord, truly I am Thy servant;
I am Thy servant, the son of Thine handmaid:
Thou hast loosed my bonds."
So incomparable with the most distinguished
service did this sacrifice of Isaac's self appear,
that the record of his active life seems to have
had no interest to his contemporaries or suc-
cessors. There was but this one thing to say of
him. No more seemed needful. The sacrifice
was indeed great, and worthy of commemora-
tion. No act could so t-onclusively have shown
that Isaac was thoroughly at one with God.
He had much to live for; from his birth there
hovered round him interests and hopes of the
most exciting and flattering nature; a new kind
of glory such as had not yet been attained on
earth was to be attained, or, at any rate, ap-
proached in him. This glory was certain to be
realised, being guaranteed by God's promise, so
that his hopes might launch out in the boldest
confidence and give him the aspect and bearing
of a king; while it was uncertain in the time and
manner of its realisation, so that the most attract-
ive mystery hung around his future. Plainly
his was a life worth entering on and living
through; a life fit to engage and absorb a man's
whole desire, interest, and effort; a life such as
might well make a man gird himself and resolve
to play the man throughout, that so each part
of it might reveal its secret to him. and that none
of its wonder might be lost. It was a life which,
above all others, seemed worth protecting from
all injury and risk, and for which, no doubt, not
a few of the homeborn servants in the patriarclinl
encampment would have gladly ventured their
own. There have, indeed, been few. if any. lives
of which it could so truly be said. The world
cannot do without th-'s — at all hazards and costs
Genesis xxiii.]
PURCHASE OF MACHPELAH.
6i
this must be cherished. And all this must have
been even more obvious to its owner than to
any one else, and must have begotten in him an
unquestioning assurance, that he at least had a
charmed life, and would live and see good days.
Yet with whatever shock the command of God
came upon him. there is no word of doubt or
remonstrance or rebellion. He gave his life to
Him who had first given it to him. And thus
yielding himself to God, he entered into the in-
heritance, and became worthy to stand to all
time the representative heir of God, as Abra-
ham by his faith had become the father of the
faithful.
CHAPTER XVni.
PURCHASE OF MACHPELAH.
Genesis xxiii.
It may be supposed to be a needless observa-
tion that our life is greatly influenced by the fact
that it speedily and certainly ends in death. But
it might be interesting, and it would cctainly be
surprising, to trace out the various ways in
which this fact influences '^fe. Plainly every
human affair would be altered if we lived on here
for ever, supposing that were possible. What
the world would be had we no predecessors, no
wisdom but what our own past experience and
the genius of one generation of men could pro-
duce, we can scarcely imagine. We can scarcely
imagine what life would be or what the world
would be did not one generation succeed and
oust another and were we contemporary with
the whole process of history. It is the grand
irreversible and universal law that we give place
and make room lor others. The individual
passes away, but the history of the race pro-
ceeds. Here on earth in the meantime, and not
elsewhere, the history of the race is being played
out, and each having done his part, however
small or however great, passes away. Whether
an individual, even the most gifted and power-
ful, could continue to be helpful to the race for
thousands of years, supposing his life were con-
tinued, it is needless to inquire. Perhaps as
steam has force only at a certain pressure, so
human force renuires the condensation of a brief
life to give it elastic energy. But these are idle
speculations. They show us, however, that our
life beyond death will ,be not so much a prolon-
gation of life as we now know it as an entire
change in the form of our existence; and they
show us also that our little piece of the world's
work must be quickly done if it is to be done at
all, and that it will not be done at all unless we
take our life seriously and own the responsibili-
ties we have to ourselves, to our fellows, to our
God.
Death comes sadly to the survivor, even when
there is as little untimeliness as in the case of
Sarah: and as Abraham moved towards the
familiar tent the most intimate of his household
would stand aloof and respect his grief. The
stillness that struck unon him, instead of the
usual greeting, as he lifted the tent-door; the
dead order of all inside: the one object that lay
stark before him and drew him again and again
to look on what grieved him most to see; the
chill which ran through him as his lips touched
the cold, stony forehead and gave him sensible
evidence how gone was the spirit from the clay —
these are shocks to the human heart not peculiar
to Abraham. But few have been so strangely
bound together as these two were, or have been
so manifestly given to one another by God, or
have been forced to so close a mutual depend-
ence. Not only had they grown up in the same
family, and been together separated from their
kindred, and passed through unusual and diffi-
cult circumstances together, but they were
made co-heirs of God's promise in such a man-
ner that neither could enjoy it without the other.
They were knit together, not merely by natural
liking and familiarity of intercourse, but by
God's choosing them as the instrument of His
work and the fountain of His salvation. So that
in Sarah's death Abraham doubtless read an in-
timation that his own work was done, and that
his generation is now out of date and ready to
be supplanted.
Abraham's grief is interrupted by the sad but
wholesome necessity which forces us from the
blank desolation of watching by the dead to the
active duties that follow. She whose beauty had
captivated two princes must now be buried out
of sight. So Abraham stands up from before
his dead. Such a moment requires the resolute
fortitude and manly self-control which that ex-
pression seems intended to suggest. There is
something within us which rebels against the
ordinary ongoing of the world side by side with
our great woe: we feel as if either the whole
world must mourn with us, or we must go aside
from the world and have our grief out in private.
The bustle of life seems so meaningless and in-
congruous to one whom grief has emptied of all
relish for it. We seem to wrong the dead by
every return of interest we show in the things of
life which no longer interest him. Yet he speaks
truly who says;
' When sorrow all our heart would ask,
We need not shun our daily task,
And hide ourselves for oalm ;
The herbs we seek to heal our woe,
Familiar by our pathway grrow.
Our common air is balm."
We must resume our duties, not as if nothings
had happened, not proudly forgetting death and
putting grief aside as if this life did not need the
chastening influence of such realities as we have
been engaged with, or as if its business could not
be pursued in an affectionate and softened spirit,
but acknowledging death as real and as hum-
bling and sobering.
Abraham then goes forth to seek a grave for
Sarah, having already with a common predilec-
tion fixed on the spot where he himself would
prefer to be laid. He goes accordingly to the
usual meeting-place or exchange of these times,
the city-gate, wdiere bargains were made, and
where witnesses for their ratification could al-
ways be had. Men who are familiar with East-
ern customs rather spoil for us the scene de-
scribed in this chapter by assuring us that all
these courtesies and large offers are merely the
ordinary forms preliminary to a bargain, and
were as little meant to be literally understood a?^
we mean to be literally understood when we sign
ourselves " your most obedient servant." AVira-
ham asks the Hittite chiefs to approach Ephron
on the subject, because all bargains of the kitid
are negotiated through mediators. Ephron'?
62
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
offer of the cave and field is merely a form.
Abraham quite understood that Ephron only in-
dicated his willingness to deal, and so he urges
him to state his price, which Ephron is not slow
to do; and apparently his price was a handsome
one, such as he could not have asked from a
poorer man, for he adds, " What are four hun-
dred shekels between wealthy men like you and
me? Without more words let the bargain be
closed — bury thy dead."
The first landed property, then, of the patri-
archs is a grave. In this tomb were laid Abra-
ham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah; here, too,
Jacob buried Leah, and here Jacob himself de-
sired to be laid after his death, his last words
being, " Bury me with my fathers in the cave
that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite." This
grave, therefore, becomes the centre of the land.
Where the dust of our fathers is, there is our
country; and as you may often hear aged per-
sons, who are content to die and have little else
to pray for, still express a wish'that they may
rest in the old well-remembered churchyard
where their kindred lie, and may thus in the
weakness of death find some comfort, and in its
solitariness some companionship from the pres-
ence of those who tenderly sheltered the help-
lessness of their childhood; so does this place of
the dead become henceforth the centre of attrac-
tion for all Abraham's seed to which still from
Egypt their longings and hopes turn, as to the
one magnetic point which, having once been
fixed there, binds them ever to the land. It is
this grave which binds them to the land. This
laying of Sarah in the tomb is the real occupa-
tion of the land.
During the lapse of ages, all around this spot
has been changed again and again; but at some
remote period, possibly as early as the time of
David, the reverence of the Jews built these
tombs round with masonry so substantial that it
still endures. Within the space thus enclosed
there stood for long a Christian church, but since
the Mohammedan domination was established,
a mosque has covered the spot. This mosque
has been guarded against Christian intrusion
with a jealousy almost as rigid as that which ex-
cludes all unbelievers from approaching Mecca.
And though the Prince of Wales was a few
years ago allowed to enter the mosque, he was
not permitted to make any examination of the
vaults beneath, where the original tomb must
be.
It is evident that this narrative of the purchase
of Machpelah and the burial of Sarah was pre-
served, not so much on account of the personal
interest which Abraham had in these matters, as
on account of the manifest significance they had
in connection with the history of his faith. He
had recently heard from his own kindred in
Mesopotamia, and it might very naturally have
occurred to him that the proper place to bury
Sarah was in his fatherland. The desire to lie
among one's people is a very strong Eastern
sentiment. Even tribes wihich have no dislike
to emigration make provision that at death their
bodies shall be restored to their own country.
The Chinese notoriously do so. Abraham,
therefore, could hardly have expressed his faith
in a stronger form than by purchasing a burying-
ground for himself in Canaan. It was equivalent
to saying in the most emphatic form that he be-
lieved this country would remain in perpetuity
the country of his children and people. He had
as yet given no such pledge as this was, that he
had irrevocably abandoned his fatherland. He
had bought no other landed property; he had
built no house. He shifted his encampment
from place to place as convenience dictated, and
there was nothing to hinder him from returning
at any time to his old country. But now he
fixed himself down; he said, as plainly as acts
can say, that his mind was made up that this was
to be in all time coming his land; this was no
mere right of pasture rented for the season, no
mere waste land he might occupy with his tents
till its owner wished to reclaim it; it was no
estate he could put into the market whenever
trade should become dull and he might wish to
realise or to leave the country; but it was a kind
of property which he could not sell and could
not abandon.
Again, his determination to hold it in per-
petuity is evident not only from the nature of the
property, but also from the formal purchase and
conveyance of it — the complete and precise terms
in which the transaction is completed. The nar-
rative is careful to remind us. again and again
that the whole transaction was negotiated in the
audience of the people of the land, of all those
who went in at the gate, that the sale was thor-
oughly approved and witnessed by competent
authorities. The precise subjects made over to
Abraham are also detailed with all the accuracy
of a legal document — "the field of Ephron, which
was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the
field and the cave which was therein, and all the
trees that were in the field, that were in all the
borders round about, were made sure unto Abra-
ham for a possession in the presence of the chil-
dren of Heth, before all that went in at the gate
of this city." Abraham had no doubt of the
friendliness of such men as Aner, Eshcol, and
Mamre, his ancient allies, but he was also aware
that the best way to maintain friendly relations
was to leave no loophole by which difference of
opinion or disagreement might enter. Let the
thing be in black and white, so that there may
be no misunderstanding as to terms, no expecta-
tions doomed to be unfulfilled, no encroach-
ments which must cause resentment, if not re-
taliation. Law probably does more to prevent
quarrels than to heal them. As statesmen and
historians tell us that the best way to secure
peace is to be prepared for war, so legal docu-
ments seem no doubt harsh and unfriendly, but
really are more effective in maintaining peace
and friendliness than vague promises and be-
nevolent intentions. In arranging affairs and
engagements one is always tempted to say. Never
mind about the money, see how the thing turns
out and we can settle that by-and-bye; or, in
looking at a will, one is tempted to ask, of what
strength is Christian feeling — not to say family
affection — if all these hard-and-fast lines need to
be drawn round the little bit of property which
each is to have? But experience shows that this
is false delicacy, and that kindliness and charity
may be as fully and far more safely expressed in
definite and legal terms than in loose promises or
mere understandings.
Again, Abraham's idea in purchasing this
sepulchre is brought out by the circumstance
that he would not accept the offer of the chil-
dren of Heth to use one of their sepulchres.
This was not pride of blood or any feeling of
that sort, but the right feeling that what God
had promised as His own peculiar gift must not
Genesis xxiii ] PURCHASE OF MACHPELAH. 6
J
seem to be given by men. Possibly no great writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews. He says
harm might have come of it if Abraham had ac- that persons who act as Abraham did declare
cepted the gift of a mere cave, or a shelf in some plainly that they seek a country; and if on find-
other man's burying-ground; but Abraham could ing they did not get the country in which they
not bear to think that any captious person sojourned they thought the promise had failed,
should ever be able to say that the inherit- they might, he says, have found opportunity to
ance promised by God was really the gift of a return to the country whence they came at first.
Hittite. And why did they not do so? Because they
Similar captiousness appears not only in the sought a better, that is, an heavenly country,
experience of the individual Christian, but also Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their
in the treatment religion gets from the world. God, for He hath prepared for them a city; as
It is quite apparent, that is to say, that the world if He said, God would have been ashamed of
counts itself the real proprietor here, and Chris- Abraham if he had been content with less, and
tianity a stranger fortunately or unfortunately had not aspired to something more than he re-
thrown upon its shores and upon its mercy. One ceived in the land of Canaan,
cannot miss noticing the patronising way of the Now how else could Abraham's mind have
world towards the Church and all that is con- been so effectually lifted to this exalted hope as
nected with it, as if it alone could give it those by the disappointment of his original and much
things needful for its prosperity — and especially tamer hope? Had he gained possession of the
willing is it to come forward in the Hittite land in the ordinary way of purchase or con-
fashion and ofifer to the sojourner a sepulchre quest, and had he been able to make full use of
where it may be decently buried, and as a dead it for the purposes of life: had he acquired
thing lie out of the way. meadows where his cattle might graze, towns
But thoughts of a still wider reach were no where his followers might establish themselves,
doubt suggested to Abraham by this purchase, would he not almost certainly have fallen into
Often must he have brooded on the sacrifice of the belief that in these pastures and by his
Isaac, seeking to exhaust its meaning. Many a worldly wealth and quiet and prosperity he was
talk in the dusk must his son and he have had already exhausting God's promise regarding the
about that most strange experience. And no land? But buying the land for his dead he is
doubt the one thing that seemed always certain forced to enter upon it from the right side, with
about it was, that it is through death a man truly the idea that not by present enjoyment of its fer-
becomes the heir of God; and here again in this tility is God's promise to him exhausted. Both
purchase of a tomb for Sarah it is the same fact in the getting of his heir and in the acquisition
that stares him in the face. He becomes a pro- of his land his mind is led to contemplate things
prietor when death enters his family; he him- beyond the range of earthly vision and earthly
self, he feels, is likely to have no more than this success. He is led to the thought that God hav-
burial-acre of possession of his land; it is only ing become his God, this means blessing eternal
by dying he enters on actual possession. Till as God Himself. In short Abraham came to
then he is but a tenant, not a proprietor; as he believe in a life beyond the grave on very much
says to the children of Heth, he is but a stranger the same grounds as many people still rely on.
and a sojourner among them, but at death he will They feel that this life has an unaccountable
take up his permanent dwelling in their midst, poverty and meagreness in it. They feel that
Was this not to suggest to him that there might they themselves are much larger than the life
be a deeper meaning underlying this, and that here allotted to them. They are out of propor-
possibly it was only by death he could enter tion. It may be said that this is their own fault;
fully into all that God intended he should re- they should make life a larger, richer thing,
ceive? No doubt in the first instance it was a But that is only apparently true; the very brevity
severe trial to his faith to find that even at his of life, which no skill of theirs can alter, is itself
wife's death he had acquired no firmer foothold a limiting and disappointing condition. More-
in the land. No doubt it was the very triumph over, it seems unworthy of God as well as of
of his faith that though he himself had never had man. As soon as a worthy conception of God
a settled, permanent residence in the land, but possesses the soul, the idea of immortality
had dwelt in tents, moving about from place to forthwith follows it. We instinctively feel that
place, just as he had done the first year of his God can do far more for us than is done in this
entrance upon it, yet he died in the unalterable life. Our knowledge of Him here is most rudi-
persuasion that the land was his, and that it mentary; our connection with Him obscure and
would one day be filled with his descendants. It perplexed, and wanting in fulness of result; we
was the triumph of his faith that he believed in seem scarcely to know whose we are, and
the performance of the promise as he had origi- scarcely to be reconciled to the essential condi-
nally understood it; that he believed in the gift tions of life, or even to God; — we are, in short,
of the actual visible land. But it is difficult to in a very different kind of life from that which
believe that he did not come to the persuasion we can conceive and desire. Besides, a serious
that God's friendship was more than any single belief in God, in a personal Spirit, removes at a
thing He promised; difficult to suppose he did touch all difficulties arising from materialism,
not feel something of what our Lord expressed If God lives and yet has no senses or bodily ap-
in the words that God is the God of the living, pearance, we also may so live; and if His is the
not of the dead; that those who are His enter by higher state and the more enjoyable state, we
death into some deeper and richer experience of need not dread to experience life as disembodied
His love. spirits.
Such is the interpretation put upon Abraham's It is certainly a most acceptable lesson that is
attitude of mind by the writer, who of all others read to us here — viz., that God's promises do
saw most deeply into the moving principles of not shrivel but grow solid and expand as we
the Old Trstament dispensation and the connec- grasp them. Abraham went out to enter on pos-
tion between old things and new — I mean the session of a few fields a little richer than his own,
5— Vol. 1.
64
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
and he found an eternal inheritance. Naturally
we think quite the opposite of God's promises;
we fancy they are grandiloquent and magnify
things, and that the actual fulfilment will prove
unworthy of the language describing it. But as
the woman who came to touch the hem of
Christ's garment, with some dubious hope that
thus her body might be healed, found herself
thereby linked to Christ for evermore, so always,
if we meet God at any one point and honestly
trust Him for even the smallest gift. He makes
that the means of introducing Himself to us and
getting us to understand the value of His better
gifts. And indeed, if this life were all, might not
God well be ashamed to call Himself our God?
When He calls Himself our God He bids us ex-
pect to find in Him inexhaustible resources to
protect and satisfy and enrich us. He bids us
cherish boldly all innocent and natural desires,
believing that we have in Him one who can
gratify every such desire. But if this life be all,
who can say existence has been perfectly satis-
factory— if there be no reversal of what has here
gone wrong, no restoration of what has here
been lost, if there be no life in which conscience
and ideas and hopes find their fulfilment and
satisfaction, who can say he is content and could
ask no more of God? Who can say he does
not see what more God could do for him than
has here been done? Doubtless there are many
happy lives, doubtless there are lives which carry
in them a worthiness and a sacredness which
manifest God's presence, but even such lives only
more powerfully suggest a state in which all lives
shall be holy and happy, and in which, freed
from inward uneasiness and shame and sorrow,
we shall live unimpeded the highest life, life as
we feel it ought to be. The very joys men have
here experienced suggest to them the desirable-
ness of continued life; the love they have known
can only intensify their yearning for this per-
petual enjoyment; their whole e.xperience of this
life has served to reveal to them the endless pos-
sibilities of growth and of activity that are bound
up in human nature; and if death is to end all
this, what more has life been to any of us than a
seed-time without a harvest, an education with-
out nny sphere of employment, a vision of good
that can never be ours, a striving after the unat-
tainable? If this is all that God can give us we
must indeed be disappointed in Him.
But He is disappointed in us if we do not
aspire to more than this. In this sense also He
is ashamed to be called our God. He is ashamed
to be known as the God of men who never aspire
to higher blessings than earthly comfort and
present prosperity. He is ashamed to be known
as connected with those who think so lightly of
His power that they look for nothing beyond
what every man calculates on getting in this
world. God means all present blessings and all
blessings of a lower kind to lure us on to trust
Him and seek more and more from Him. In
these early promises of His He says nothing ex-
pressly and distinctly of things eternal. He ap-
peals to the immediate wants and present long-
ings of men — just as our Lord while on earth
drew men to Himself by healing their diseases.
Take, then, any one promise of God. and, how-
ever small it seems at first, it will grow in your
hand; you will find always that you get more
than you bargained for, that you cannot take
even a little without going further and receiving
all.
CHAPTER XIX.
ISAACS MARRIAGE.
Genesis xxiv.
"Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain ; but a ■woman
that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised."— Prov. xxxi.
" When a son has attained the age of twenty
years, his father, if able, should marry him, and
then take his hand and say, I have disciplined
thee, and taught thee, and married thee; I now
seek refuge with God from thy mischief in the
present world and the next." This Mohamme-
dan tradition expresses with tolerable accuracy
the idea of the Eastern world, that a father has
not discharged his responsibilities towards his
son until he finds a wife for him. Abraham no
doubt fully recognised his duty in this respect,
but he had allowed Isaac to pass the usual age.
He was thirty-seven at his mother's death, forty
when the events of this chapter occurred. Thi-^
delay was occasioned by two causes. The bond
between Isaac and his mother was an unusually
strong one; and alongside of that imperious
woman a young wife would have found it even
more difficult than usual to take a becoming
place. Besides, where was a wife to be found?
No doubt some of Abraham's Hittite friends
would have considered any daughter of theirs
exceptionally fortunate who should secure so
good an alliance. The heir of Abraham was no
inconsiderable person even when measured hy
Hittite expectations. And it may have taxed
Abraham's sagacity to find excuses for not form-
ing an alliance which seemed so natural, and
which would have secured to him and his heirs
a settled place in the country. This was so ob-
vious, common, easily accomplished a means of
gaining a footing for Isaac among somewhat
dangerous neighbors, that it stands to reason
Abraham must often have weighed its ad-
vantages.
But as often as he Aveighed the advantages of
this solution of his difficulty, so often did he re-
ject them. He was resolved that the race should
be of pure Hebrew blood. His own experience
in connection with Hagar had given this idea a
settled prominence in his mind. And, accord-
ingly, in his instructions to the servant whom he
sent to find a wife for Isaac, two things were in-
sisted on — 1st, that she should not be a Canaan-
ite ; and, 2d, that on no pretext should Isaac
be allowed to leave the land of promise and visit
Mesopotamia. The steward, knowing some-
thing of men and women, foresaw that it 'was
most unlikely that a young woman would for-
sake her own land and preconceived hopes and
go away with a stranger to a foreign country.
Abraham believes she will be persuaded. But in
any case, he says, one thing must be seen to:
Isaac must on no account be induced to leave
the promised land even to visit Mesopotamia.
God will furnish Isaac with a wife without put-
tinc: him into circumstances of great temptation,
without requiring him to go into societies in
the slightest degree injurious to his faith. In
fact, Abraham refused to do what countless
Christian mothers of marriageable sons and
daughters do without compunction. He had an
insight into the real influences that form action
Genesis xxiv.]
ISAAC'S MARRIAGE.
65
and determine careers which many of us sadly
lack.
And his faith was rewarded. The tidings from
his brother's family arrived in the nick of time.
Light, he found, was sown for the upright. It
happened with him as it has doubtless often hap-
oened with ourselves, that though we have been
ooking forward to a certain time with much
anxiety, unable even to form a plan of action, yet
when the time actually came, things seemed to
arrange themselves, and the thing to do became
quite obvious. Abraham was persuaded God
would send His angel to bring the affair to a
happy issue. And when we seem drifting to-
wards some great upturning of our life, or when
things seem to come all of a sudden and in
crowds upon us, so that we cannot judge what
we should do, it is an animating thought that
another eye than ours is penetrating the dark-
ness, finding for us a way through all entan-
glement and making crooked things straight
for us.
But the patience of Isaac was quite as re-
markable as the faith of Abraham. He was now
forty years old, and if, as he had been told,
the great aim of his life, the great service he was
to render to the world, was bound up with the
rearing of a family, he might with some reason
be wondering why circumstances were so ad-
verse to the fulfilment of this vocation. Must
he not have been temoted, as his father had
been, to take matters into his own hand?
Fathers are perhaps too scrupulous about telling
their sons instructive passages from their own
experience; but when Abraham saw Isaac exer-
cised and discomposed about this matter, he can
scarcely have failed to strengthen his spirit by
telling him something of his own mistakes in
life. Abraham must have seen that everything
depended on Isaac's conduct, and that he had a
very difficult part to play. He himself had been
supernaturally encouraged to leave his own land
and sojourn in Canaan; on the other hand, by
the time Jacob grew up, the idea of the promised
land had become traditional and fixed; though
even Jacob, had he found Laban a better master,
might have permanently renounced his expecta-
tions in Canaan. But Isaac enjoyed the advan-
tages neither of the first nor of the third genera-
tion. The coming into Canaan was not his
doing, and he saw how little of the land Abra-
ham had gained. He was under strong tempta-
tion to disbelieve. And when he measured his
condition with that of other young men, he
certainly required unusual self-control. And to
every one who would urge. Youth is passing,
and I am not getting what I expected at God's
hand; I have not received that providential lead-
ing I was led to expect, nor do I find that my
life is made simpler; it is very well to tell me to
wait, but life is slipping away, and we may wait
too long — to every one whose heart urges such
murmurs. Abraham through Isaac would say:
But if you wait for God you get something,
some positive good, and not some mere appear-
ance of good; you at last do get be'gun, you get
into life at the right door; whereas, if you follow
some other way than that which you believe God
wishes to lead you in. you get nothing.
Isaac's continence had its reward. In the
suitableness of Rebekah to a man of his nature,
we see the suitableness of all such gifts of God
as are really waited for at His hand. God may
keep us longer waiting than the world does, but
He gives us never the wrong thing. Isaac had
no idea of Rebekah's character; he could only
yield himself to God's knowledge of what he
needed; and so there came to him, from a coun-
try he had never seen, a help-meet singularly
adapted to his own character. One cannot read
of her lively, bustling, almost forward, but oblig-
ing and generous conduct at the well, nor of her
prompt, impulsive departure to an unknown
land, without seeing, as no doubt Eliezer very
quickly saw, that this was exactly the woman for
Isaac. In this eager, ardent, active, enterprising
spirit, his own retiring and contemplative, if not
sombre disposition found its appropriate relief
and stimulus. Hers was a spirit which might in-
deed, with so mild a lord, take more of the
management of affairs than was befitting; and
when the wear and tear of life had tamed down
the girlish vivacity with which she spoke to
Eliezer at the well, and leapt from the camel tu
meet her lord, her active-mindedness does ap-
pear in the disagreeable shape of the clever
scheming of the mother of a family. In her
sons you see her qualities exaggerated: from her,
Esau derived his activity and open-handedness:
and in Jacob, you find that her self-reliant an.!
unscrupulous management has become a self-
asserting craft which leads him into much
trouble, if it also sometimes gets him out of
difficulties. But such as Rebekah was, she was
quite the woman to attract Isaac and supplement
his character.
So in other cases where you find you must
leave yourself very much in God's hand, what
He sends you will be found more precisely
adapted to your character than if you chose it
for yourself. You find your whole nature has
been considered, — your aims, your hopes, your
wants, your position, whatever in you waits for
something unattained. And as in giving to
Isaac the intended mother of the promised seed,
God gave him a woman who fitted in to all the
peculiarities of his nature, and was a comfort and
a joy to him in* his own life; so we shall always
find that God. in satisfying His own require-
ments, satisfies at the same time our wants — that
God carries forward His work in the world by
the satisfaction of the best and happiest feelings
of our nature, so that it is not only the result
that is blessedness, but blessing is created along
its whole course.
Abraham's servant, though not very sanguine
of success, does all in his power to earn it. He
sets out with an equipment fitted to inspire re-
spect and confidence. But as he draws nearer
and nearer to the city of Nahor, revolving the
delicate nature of his errand, and feeling that
definite action must now be taken, he sees so
much room for making an irreparable mistake
that he resolves to share his responsibility with
the God of his master. And the manner in
which he avails himself of God's guidance is re-
markable. He does not ask God to guide him
to the house of Bethuel; indeed, there was no
occasion to do so, for any child could have
pointed out the house to him. But he was a
cautious person, and he wished to make his own
observations on the appearance and conduct of
the younger women of the household, before in
any way committing himself to them. He was
free to make these observations at the well; while
he felt it must be very awkward to enter Laban's
house with the possibility of leaving it dissatis-
fied. At the same time, he felt it was for God
66
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
rather than for him to choose a wife for Isaac.
So he made an arrangement by which the inter-
position of God was provided for. He meant
to make his own selection, guided necessarily by
the comparative attractiveness of the women
who came for water, possibly also by some
family likeness to Sarah or Isaac he might ex-
pect to see in any women of Bethuel's house; but
knowing the deceitfulness of appearances, he
asked God to confirm and determine his own
choice by moving the girl he should address to
give him a certain answer. Having arranged
this, " Behold! Rebekah came out with her
pitcher upon her shoulder, and the damsel was
very fair to look upon." In the Bible the beauty
of women is frankly spoken of without prudery
or mawkishness as an influence in human aflfairs.
The beauty of Rebekah at once disposed Eliezer
to address her, and his first impression in her
favour was confirmed by the obliging, cheerful
alacrity with which she did very much more
than she was asked, and, indeed, took upon her-
self, through her kindness of disposition, a task
of some trouble and fatigue.
It is important to observe then in what sense
and to what extent this capable servant asked a
sign. He did not ask for a bare, intrinsically in-
significant sign. He might have done so. He
might have proposed as a test. Let her who
stumbles on the first step of the well be the de-
signed wife of Isaac; or. Let her who comes with
a certain-coloured flower in her hand — or so
forth. But the sign he chose was significant.
because dependent on the character of the girl
herself: a sign which must reveal her good-
heartedness and readiness to oblige and cour-
teous activity in the entertainment of strangers
— in fact, the outstanding Eastern virtue. So
that he really acted very much as Isaac himself
must have done. He would make no approach
to any one whose appearance repelled him; and
when satisfied in this particular, he would test her
disposition. And of course it was these qualities
of Rebekah which afterwards caused Isaac to
feel that this was the wife God had designed for
him. It was not by any arbitrary sign that he
or any man could come to know who was the
suitable wife for him, but only by the love sh-?
aroused within him. God has given this feeling
to direct choice in marriage: and where this is
wanting, nothing else whatever, no matter how
astoundingly providential it seems, ought to
persuade a man that such and such a person is
desisrned to be his wife.
There are turning points in life at once so mo-
mentous in their consequence, and affording so
little material for choice, that one is much
tempted to ask for more than providential lead-
ing. Not only among savages and heathen have
omens been sought. Among Christians there
has been manifest a constant disposition to ap-
peal to the lot, or to accept some arbitrary way
of determining which course we should follow.
In very many predicaments we should be greatly
relieved were there some one who could at once
deliver us from all hesitation and mental conflict
by one authoritative word. There are, perhans,
few things more frequently and determinedly
wished for, nor regarding which we are so much
tempted to feel that such a thing should be, as
some infallible gui'^e before whom we could lay
every difficulty: who would tell us at once what
ought to be done in each case, and whether we
ought to continue as we are or make some
change. But only consider for a moment what
would be the consequence of having such a
guide. At every important step of your progress
you would, of course, instantly turn to him; as
soon as doubt entered your mind regarding the
moral quality of an action, or the propriety of a
course you think of adopting, you would be at
your counsellor. And what would be the con-
sequence? The consequence would be, that in-
stead of the various circumstances, experiences,
and temptations of this life being a training to
you, your conscience would every day become
less able to guide you, and your will less able to
decide, until, instead of being a mature son of
God, who has learned to conform his conscience
and will to the will of God, you would be quite
imbecile as a moral creature. What God desires
by our training here is, that we become like to
Him; that there be nurtured in us a power to
discern between good and evil: that by giving
our own voluntary consent to His appointments,
and that by discovering in various and perplex-
ing circumstances what is the right thing to do,
we may have our own moral natures as enlight-
ened, strengthened, and fully developed every
way as possible. The object of God in declaring
His will to us is not to point out particular steps,
but to bring our wills into conformity with His,
so that, whether we err in any particular step or
no, we shall still be near to Him in intention.
He does with us as we with children. We do
not always at once relieve them from their little
difficulties, but watch with interest the working
of their own conscience regarding the matter,
and will give them no sign till they themselves
have decided.
Evidently, therefore, before we may dare to
ask a sign from God, the case must be a very
special one. If you are at present engaged in
something that is to your own conscience doubt-
ful, and if you are not hiding this from God, but
would very willingly, so far as you know your
own mind, do in the matter what He pleases —
if no further light is coming to you, and you
feel a growing inclination to put it to God in
this way: " Grant, O Lord, that som.ething may
happen by which I may know Thy mind in this
matter " — this is asking from God a kind of help
which He is very ready to give, often leading
men to clearer views of duty by events which
happen within their knowledge, and which hav-
ing no special significance to persons whose
minds are differently occupied, are yet most in-
structive to those who are waiting for light on
some particular point. The danger is not here,
but in fixing God down to the special thing
which shall happen as a sign between Him and
you; which, when it happens, gives no fresh
light on the subject, leaves your mind still
morally undecided, but only binds you, by an
arbitrary bargain of your own, to follow one
course rather than another. This matter that
you would so summarily dispose of may be the
very thread of your life which God means to
test you by; this state of indecision which you
would evade,' God may mean to continue until
your moral character grows strong enough to
rise above it to the right decision.
No one will suppose that Rebekah's readiness
to leave her home was due to mere light-minded-
ness. Her motives were no doubt mixed. The
worldly position offered to her was good, and
there was an attractive soice of romance about
the whole affair which would have its charm.
Genesis xxiv.]
ISAAC'S MARRIAGE.
67
She may also be credited with some apprehen-
sion of the great future of Isaac's family. In
after life she certainly showed a very keen sense
of the value of the blessings peculiar to that
household. And, probably above all, she had an
irresistible feeling that this was her destiny. She
saw the hand of God in her selection, and with
a more or less conscious faith in God she passed
to her new life.
Her first meeting with her future husband is
not the least picturesque passage in this most
picturesque narrative. Isaac had gone out on
that side of the encampment by which he knew
his father's messenger was most likely to ap-
proach. He had gone out " to meditate at even-
tide;" his meditation being necessarily directed
and intensified by his attitude of critical ex-
pectancy.
The evening light, in our country hanging
dubiously between the glare of noon and the
darkness of midnight, invites to that condition
of mind which lies between the intense alertness
of day and the deep oblivion of sleep, and which
seems the most favourable for the meditation of
divine things. The dusk of evening seems in-
terposed between day and night to invite us to
that reflection which should intervene betwixt
our labour and our rest from labour, that we
may leave our work behind us satisfied that we
have done what we could, or, seeing its faulti-
ness, may still lay us down to sleep with God's
forgiveness. It is when the bright sunlight has
gone, and no more reproaches our inactivity,
that friends can enjoy prolonged intercourse,
and can best unbosom to one another, as if the
darkness gave opportunity for a tenderness
which would be ashamed to show itself during
the twelve hours in which a man shall work.
And all that makes this hour so beloved by the
family circle, and so conducive to friendly inter-
course, makes it suitable also for such inter-
course with God as each human soul can at-
tempt. Most of us suppose we have some little
plot of time railed off for God morning and
evening, but how often does it get trodden down
by the profane multitude of this world's cares,
and quite occupied by encroaching secular en-
gagements. But evening is the time when many
men are, and when all men ought to be, least
hurried; when the mind is placid, but not yet
prostrate; when the body requires rest from its
ordinary labour, but is not yet so oppressed with
fatigue as to make devotion a mockery; when
the din of this world's business is silenced, and
as a sleeper wakes to consciousness when some
accustomed noise is checked, so the soul now
wakes up to the thought of itself and of God.
I know not whether those of us who have the
opportunity have also the resolution to sequester
ourselves evening by even.ng, as Isaac did; but
this I do know, that he who does so will not
fail of his reward, but will very speedily find
that his Father who seeth in secret is manifestly
rewarding him. What we all need above all
things is to let the mind dwell on divine things —
to be able to sit down knowing we have so much
clear time in which we shall not be disturbed,
and during which we shall think directly under
God's eye — to get quite rid of the feeling of
getting through with something, so that with-
out distraction the soul may take a deliberate
survey of its own matters. And so shall often
God's gifts appear on our horizon when we lift
uo our eyes, as Isaac " lifted up his eyes and saw
the camels coming " with his bride.
Twilight, " nature's vesper-bell," or the light
shaded at evening by the hills of Palestine,
seems, then, to have called Isaac to a familiar
occupation. This long-continued mourning for
his mother, and his lonely meditation in the
fields, are both in harmony with what we know
of his character, and of his experience on Mount
Moriah. Retiring and contemplative, willing to
conciliate by concession rather than to assert
and maintain his rights against opposition, glad
to yield his own affairs to the strong guidance of
some other hand, tender and deep in his aflFec-
tions, to him this lonely meditation seems sin-
gularly appropriate. His dwelling, too, was re-
mote, on the edge of the wilderness, by the well
which Hagar had named Lahai-roi. Here he
dwelt as one consecrated to God, feeling little
desire to enter deeper into the world, and prefer-
ring the place where the presence of God was
least disturbed by the society of men. But at
this time he had come from the south, and was
awaiting at his father's encampment the result of
Eliezer's mission. And one can conceive the
thrill of keen expectancy that shot through him
as he saw the female figure alighting from the
camel, the first eager exchange of greetings, and
the gladness with which he brought Rebekah
into his mother Sarah's tent and was comforted
after his mother's death. The readiness with
which he loved her seems to be referred in the
narrative to the grief he still felt for his mother;
for as a candle is never so easily lit as just after
it has been put out, so the affection of Isaac, still
emitting the sad memorial of a past love, more
quickly caught at the new object presented.
And thus was consummated a marriage which
shows us how thoroughly interwrought are the
plans of God and the life of man, each fulfilling
the other.
For as the salvation God introduces into the
world is a practical, every-day salvation to de-
liver us from the sins which this life tempts us
to, so God introduced this salvation by means of
the natural affections and ordinary arrangements
of human life. God would have us recognise in
our lives what He shows us in this chapter, that
He has made provision for our wants, and that
if we wait upon Him He will bring us into the
enjoyment of all we really need. So that if we
are to make any advance in appropriating to
ourselves God's salvation, it can only be by sub-
mitting ourselves implicitly to His providence,
and taking care that in the commonest and most
secular actions of our lives we are having respect
to His will with us, and that in those actions in
which our own feelings and desires seem suffi-
cient to guide us, we are having regard to His
controlling wisdom and goodness. We are to
find room for God everywhere in our lives, not
feeling embarrassed by the thought of His
claims even in our least constrained hours, but
subordinating to His highest and holiest ends
everything that our life contains, and acknowl-
edging as His gift what may seem to be our own
most proper conquest or earning.
68
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
CHAPTER XX.
ESAU AND JACOB.
Genesis xxv.
"He goeth as an ox goeth to the- slaughter, till a dart
strike through his liver ; as a bird hasteth to the snare,
and knoweth not that it is for his life."— Pkov. vii. 22, 23.
The character and career of Isaac would seem
to tell us that it is possible to have too great a
father. Isaac was dwarfed and weakened by
growing up under the shadow of Abraham. Of
his life there was little to record, and what was
recorded was very much a reproduction of some
of the least glorious passages of his father's
career. The digging of wells for his flocks was
among the most notable events in his common-
place life, and even in this he only re-opened the
wells his father had dug.
In him we see the result of growing up under
too strong and dominant an external influence.
The free and healthy play of his own capacities
and will was curbed. The sons of outstanding
fathers are much tempted to follow in the wake
of their success, and be too much controlled and
limited by the example therein set to them.
There is a great deal to induce a son to do so;
this calling has been successful in his father's
case, what better can he do than follow? Also
he may get the use of his wells — those sources
his father has opened for the easier or more
abundant maintenance of those dependent on
hitn, the business he has established, the practice
he has made, the connections he has formed —
these are useful if he follows in his father's line
of life. But all this tends, as in Isaac's case, to
the stunting of the man himself. Life is made
too easy for him.
Isaac has been called " the Wordsworth of the
Old Testament," but his meditative disposition
seems to have degenerated into mere dreamy
apathy, which, at last, made him the tool of the
more active-minded members of his family, and
was also attended by its common accompaniment
of sensuality. It seems also to have brought him
to a condition of almost entire bodily prostra-
tion, for a comparison of dates shows that he
mu.st have spent forty or fifty years in blindness
and incapacity for all active duty. Neither can
this greatly surprise us, for it is abundantly open
to our own observation that men of the finest
spiritual discernment, and of whose godliness in
the main one cannot doubt, are also frequently
the prey of the most childish tastes, and most
useless even to the extent of doing harm in prac-
tical matters. They do not see the evil that is
growing in their own family; or, if they see it,
they cannot rouse themselves to check it.
Isaac's marriage, though so promising in the
outset, brought new trial into his life. Rebekah
had to repeat the experience of Sarah. The in-
tended mother of the promised seed was left for
twenty years childless — to contend with the
doubts, surmises, evil proposals, proud challeng-
ings of God, and murmurings, which must un-
doubtedly have arisen even in so bright and
spirited a heart as Rebekah's. It was thus she
was taught the seriousness of the position she
had chosen for herself, and gradually led to the
implicit faith requisite for the discharge of its
responsibilities. Many young persons have a
similar experience. They seem to themselves to
have chosen a wrong position, to have made a
thorough mistake in life, and to have brought
themselves into circumstances in which they only
retard, or quite prevent, the prosperity of those
with whom they are connected. In proportion
as Rebekah loved Isaac, and entered into his
prospects, must she have been tempted to think
she had far better have remained in Padan-aram.
It is a humbling thing to stand in some other
person's way; but if it is by no fault of ours, but
in obedience to affection or conscience we are in
this position, we must, in humility and patience,
wait upon Providence as Rebekah did, and re-
sist all morbid despondency.
This second barrenness in the prospective
mother of the promised seed was as needful to
all concerned as the first was; for the people of
God, no more than any others, can learn in one
lesson. They must again be brought to a real
dependence on God as the Giver of the heir.
The prayer with which Isaac " entreated " the
Lord for his wife " because she was barren " was
a prayer of deeper intensity than he could have
uttered had he merely remembered the story that
had been told him of his own birth. God must
be recognised again and again, and throughout,
as the Giver of life to the promised line. We are
all apt to suppose that when once we have got
a thing in train and working we can get on with-
out God. How often do we pray for the be-
stowal of a blessing, and forget to pray for its
continuance? How often do we count it enough
that God has conferred some gift, and, not in-
viting Him to continue His agency, but trust-
ing to ourselves, we mar His gift in the use?
Learn, therefore, that although God has given
you means of working out His salvation, your
Rebekah will be barren without His continued
activity. On His own means you must re-invite
His blessing, for without the continuance of His
aid you will make nothing of the most beautiful
and appropriate helps He has given you.
It was by pain, anxiety, and almost dismay,
that Rebekah received intimation that her prayet
was answered. In this she is the type of many
whom God hears. Inward strife, miserable fore-
bodings, deep dejection, are often the first inti-
mations that God is listening to our prayer and
is beginning to work within tis. You have
prayed that God would make you more a bless-
ing to those about you, more useful in your
place, more answerable to His ends: and when
your prayer has risen to its highest point of
confidence and expectation, you are thrown into
what seems a worse state than ever, your heart
is broken within you, you say. Is this the an-
swer to my prayer, is this God's blessing; if it
be so, why am I thus? For things that make a
man serious happen when God takes him in
hand, and they that yield themselves to His
service will not find that that service is all
honour and enjoyment. Its first steps will often
land us in a position we can make nothing of,
and our attempts to aid others will get us into
difficulties with them; and especially will our de-
sire that Christ be formed in us bring into such
lively action the evil nature that is in us that wc
are torn by the conflict, and our heart lies like
the ground of a fierce struggle, seamed and fur-
rowed, tossed and confused. As soon as there
is a movement within us in one direction, imme-
diately there is an opposing movement: as soon
as one of the natures says. Do this; the other
says. Do it not. The better nature is gaining
Genesis xxv.]
ESAU AND JACOB.
69
slightly the upper hand, and by a long, steady
strain, seems to be wearying out the other, when
suddenly there is one quick stroke and the evil
nature conquers. And every movement of the
parties is with pain to ourselves; either con-
science is wronged, and gives out its cry of
shame, or our natural desires are trodden down,
and that also is pain. And so disconnected and
connected are we, so entirely one with both
parties, and yet so able to contemplate both, that
Rebekah's distress seems aptly enough to sym-
bolise our own. And whether the symbol be
apt or no, there can be no question that he who
enquires of the Lord as she did, will receive a
similar assurance that there are two natures
within him, and that " the elder shall serve the
younger; ' the nature last formed, and that seems
to give least promise of life, shall master the
original, eldest born child of the flesh.
The children whose birth and destinies were
thus predicted, at once gave evidence of a differ-
ence even greater than that which will often
strike one as existing between two brothers,
though rarely between twins. The first was
born, all over like a hairy garment, presenting
the appearance of being rolled up in a fur cloak
or the skin of an animal — an appearance which
did not pass away in childhood, but so obsti-
nately adhered to him through life that an imi-
tation of his hands could be produced with the
hairy skin of a kid. This was by his parents
considered ominous. The want of the hairy
covering which the lower animals have, is one of
the signs marking out man as destined for a
higher and more refined life than they; and when
their son appeared in this guise, they could not
but fear it prognosticated his sensual, animal
career. So they called him Esau. And so did
the younger son from the first show his nature,
catching the heel of his brother, as if he were
striving to be firstborn; and so they called him
Jacob, the heel-catcher or supplanter — as Esau
afterwards bitterly observed, a name which pre-
cisely suited his crafty, plotting nature, shown in
his twice over tripping up and overthrowing his
elder brother. The name which Esau handed
down to his people was, however, not his orig-
inal name, but one derived from the colour of
that for which he sold his birthright. It was in
that exclamation of his, " Feed me with that
same red," that he disclosed his character.
So different in appearance at birth, they grew
up of very different character, and as was natural,
he who had the quiet nature of his father was be-
loved by the mother, and he who had the bold,
practical skill of the mother was clung to by the
father. It seems unlikely that Rebekah was in-
fluenced in her affection by anything but natural
motives, though the fact that Jacob was to be
the heir must have been much on her mind, and
may have produced the partiality which maternal
pride sometimes begets. But before we con-
demn Isaac, or think the historian has not given
a full account of his love for Esau, let us ask
what we have noticed about the growth and de-
cay of our own affections. We are ashamed of
Isaac; but have we not also been sometimes
ashamed of ourselves on seeing that our affec-
tions are powerfully influenced by the gratifica-
tion of tastes almost or quite as low as this of
Isaac's? He who cunningly panders to our taste
for applause, he who purveys for us some sweet
morsel of scandal, he who flatters or amuses us,
straightway takes a place in our affections which
we do not accord to men of much finer parts,
but who do not so minister to our sordid
appetites.
The character of Jacob is easily understood.
It has frequently been remarked of him that he
is thoroughly a Jew, that in him you find the
good and bad features of the Jewish character
very prominent and conspicuous. He has that
mingling of craft and endu'-ance which has
enabled his descendants to use for their own
ends those who have wronged and persecuted
them. The Jew has, with some justice and some
injustice, been credited with an obstinate and
unscrupulous resolution to forward his own
interests, and there can be no question that in
this respect Jacob is the typical Jew — ruthlessly
taking advantage of his brother, watching and
waiting till he wrs sure of his victim; deceiving
his blind father, and robbing him of what he had
intended for his favourite son; outwitting the
grasping Laban, and making at least his own out
of all attempts to rob him; unable to meet his
brother without stratagem; not forgetting pru-
dence, even when the honour of his family is
stained; and not thrown off his guard even by
his true and deep affection for Joseph. Yet,
while one recoils from this craftiness and man-
agement, one cannot but admire the quiet force
of character, the indomitable tenacity, and, above
all, the capacity for warm affection and lasting
attachments, that he showed throughout.
But the quality which chiefly distinguished
Jacob from his hunting and marauding brother
was his desire for the friendship of God and sen-
sibility to spiritual influences. It may have
been Jacob's consciousness of his own meanness
that led him to crave connection with some
Being or with some prospect that might ennoble
his nature and lift him above his innate disposi-
tion. It is ?n old. old truth that not many noble
are called; and, seeing quite as plainly as others
see their feebleness and meanness, the ignoble
conceive a self-loathing which is sometimes the
beginning of an unquenchable thirst for the
high and holy God. The consciousness of your
bad, poor nature may revive within you day by
day, as the r^niembrance of physical weakness
returns to the invalid with every morning's light;
but to what else can God so effectively appeal
when he offers you present fellowship with Him-
self and eventual conformity to His own nature?
It has been pointed out that the weakness in
Esau's character which makes him so striking a
contrast to his brother is his inconstancy.
" That line error
Fills him with faults ; makes him run through all the sins."
Constancy, persistence, dogged tenacity is cer-
tainly the striking feature of Jacob's character.
He could wait and bide his time; he could retain
one purpose year after year till it was accom-
plished. The very motto of his life was. " I will
not let Thee go except Thou bless me." He
watched for Esau's weak moment, and took ad-
vantage of it. He served fourteen years for the
woman he loved, and no hardship quenched his
love. Nay, when a whole lifetime intervened,
and he lay dying in Egypt, his constant heart
still turned to Rachel, as if he had parted with
her but yesterday. In contrast with this tena-
cious, constant character stands Esau, led by im-
pulse, betrayed by appetite, everything by turns
and nothing long. To-day despising his birth-
right, to-morrow breaking his heart for its loss;
7©
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
to-day vowing he will murder his brother, to-
morrow falling on his neck and kissing him; a
man you cannot reckon upon, and of too shallow
a nature for anything to root itself deeply in.
The event in which the contrasted characters
of the twin brothers were most decisively shown,
so decisively shown that their destinies were
fixed by it, was an incident which, in its external
circumstances, was of the most ordinary and
trivial kind. Esau came in hungry from hunt-
ing: from dawn to dusk he had been taxing his
strength to the utmost, too eagerly absorbed to
notice either his distance from home or his hun-
ger; it is only when he begins to return de-
pressed by the ill-luck of the day, and with noth-
ing now to stimulate him, that he feels faint; and
when at last he reaches his father's tents, and
the savoury smell of Jacob's lentiles greets him,
his ravenous appetite becomes an intolerable
craving, and he begs Jacob to give him some of
his food. Had Jacob done so with brotherly
feeling there would have been nothing to record.
But Jacob had long been watching for an oppor-
tunity to win his brother's birthright, and
though no one could have supposed that an heir
to even a little property would sell it in order to
get a meal five minutes sooner than he could
otherwise get it, Jacob had taken his brother's
measure to a nicety, and was confident that
present appetite would in Esau completely ex-
tinguish every other thought.
It is perhaps worth noticing that the birthright
in Ishmael's line, the guardianship of the temple
at Mecca, passed from one branch of the family
to another in a precisely similar way. We read
that when the guardianship of the temple and the
governorship of the town " fell into the hands
of Abu Gabshan, a weak and silly man, Cosa,
one of Mohammed's ancestors, circumvented
him while in a drunken humour, and bought of
him the keys of the temple, and with them the
presidency of it, for a bottle of wine. But Abu
Gabshan being gotten out of his drunken fit,
sufficiently repented of his foolish bargain; from
whence grew these proverbs among the Arabs:
More vexed with late repentance than Abu Gab-
shan; and, More silly than Abu Gabshan — which
are usually said of those who part with a thing of
great moment for a small matter."
Which brother presents the more repulsive
spectacle of the two in this selling of the birth-
right it is hard to say. Who does not feel con-
tempt for the great, strong man, declaring he
will die if he is required to wait five minutes till
his own supper is prepared; forgetting, in the
craving of his appetite, every consideration of a
worthy kind; oblivious of everything but his
hunger and his food; crying, like a great baby,
Feed me with that red! So it is always with the
man who has fallen under the power of sensual
appetite. He is always going to die if it is not
immediately gratified. He must have his appe-
tite satisfied. No consideration of consequences
can be listened to or thought of; the man is
helpless in the hands of his appetite — it rules
and drives him on, and he is utterly without self-
control; nothing but physical compulsion can
restrain him.
But the treacherous and self-seeking craft of
the other brother is as repulsive; the cold-
blooded, calculating spirit that can hold every
appetite in check, that can cleave to one purpose
for a life-time, and, without scruple, take advan-
tage of a twin-brother's weakness. Jacob knows
his brother thoroughly, and all his knowledge he
uses to betray him. He knows he will speedily
repent of his bargain, so he makes him swear
he vvill abide by it. It is a relentless purpose he
carries out — he deliberately and unhesitatingly
sacrifices his brother to himself.
Still, in two' respects, Jacob is the superior
man. He can appreciate the birthright in his
father's family, and he has constancy. Esau
might be a pleasant companion, far brighter and
more vivacious than Jacob on a day's hunting;
free and open-handed, and not implacable; and
yet such people are not satisfactory friends.
Often the most attractive people have similar in-
constancy; they have a superficial vivacity, and
brilliance, and charm, and good-nature, which
invite a friendship they do not deserve.
Parents frequently make the mistake of Isaac,
and think more highly of the gay, sparkling, but
shallow child, than of the child who cannot be
always smiling, but broods over what he con-
ceives to be his wrongs. Sulkiness is itself not a
pleasing feature in a child's character, but it may
only be the childish expression of constancy, and
of a depth of character which is slow to let go
any impression made upon it. On the other
hand, frankness and a quick throwing aside of
passion and resentment are pleasing features in
a child, but often these are only the expressions
of a fickle character, rapidly changing from sun
to shower like an April day, and not to be
trusted for retaining affection or good impres-
sions any longer than it retains resentment.
But Esau's despising of his birthright is that
which stamps the man and makes him interest-
ing to each generation. No one can read the
simple account of his reckless act without feel-
ing how justly we are called upon to " look dili-
gently lest there be among us any profane per-
son as Esau, who, for one morsel of meat, sold
his birthright." Had the birthright been some-
thing to eat, Esau would not have sold it. What
an exhibition of human nature! What an ex-
posure of our childish folly and the infatuation
of appetite! For Esau has company in his fall.
We are all stricken by his shame. We are con-
scious that if God had made provision for the
flesh we should have listened to Him more
readily. " But what will this birthright profit
us?" We do not see the good it does: were it
something to keep us from disease, to give us
long unsated days of pleasure, to bring us the
fruits of labour without the weariness of it, to
make money for us, where is the man who would
not value it — where is the man who would lightly
give it up? But because it is only the favour of
God that is offered. His endless love. His holi-
ness made ours, this we will imperil or resign for
every idle desire, for every lust that bids us serve
it a little longer. Born the sons of God, made
in His image, introduced to a birthright angels
might covet, we yet prefer to rank with the
beasts of the field, and let our souls starve if only
our bodies be well tended and cared for.
There is in Esau's conduct and after-experi-
ence so much to stir serious thought, that one
always feels reluctant to pass from it, and as if
much more ought to be made of it. It reflects
so many features of our own conduct, and so
clearly shows us what we are from day to day
liable to, that we would wish to take it with us
through life as a perpetual admonition. Who
does not know of those moments of weakness,
when we are fagged with work, and with our
Genesis xxvii.]
JACOB'S FRAUD.
71
physical energy our moral tone has become re-
laxed? Who does not know how, in hours of
reaction from keen and exciting engagements,
sensual appetite asserts itself, and with what petu-
lance we inwardly cry. We shall die if we do not
get this or that paltry gratification? We are, for
the most part, inconstant as Esau, full of good
resolves to-day, and to-morrow throwing them
to the winds — to-day proud of the arduousness of
our calling, and girding ourselves to self-control
and self-denial, to-morrow sinking back to soft-
ness and self-indulgence. Not once as Esau, but
again and again we barter peace of conscience
and fellowship with God and the hope of holi-
ness, for what is, in simple fact, no more than a
bowl of pottage. Even after recognising our
weakness and the lowness of our tastes, and after
repenting with self-loathing and misery, some
slight pleasure is enough to upset our steadfast
mind, and make us as plastic as clay in the hand
of circumstances. It is with positive dismay one
considers the weakness and blindness of our
hours of appetite and passion: how one goes
then like an ox to the slaughter, all unconscious
of the pitfalls that betray and destroy men, and
how at any moment we ourselves may truly sell
our birthright.
CHAPTER XXI.
JACOB'S FRAUD.
Genesis xxvii.
"The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever."— PSALM
xxxiii. II.
There are some families whose miserable ex-
istence is almost entirely made up of malicious
plottings and counter-plottings, little mischiev-
ous designs, and spiteful triumphs of one mem-
ber or party in the family over the other. It is
not pleasant to have the veil withdrawn, and to
see that where love and eager self-sacrifice might
be expected their places are occupied by an eager
assertion of rights, and a cold, proud, and always
petty and stupid, nursing of some supposed in-
jury. In the story told us so graphically in this
page, we see the family whom God has blessed
sunk to this low level, and betrayed by family
jealousies into unseemly strife on the most
sacred ground. Each member of the family plans
his own wicked device, and God by the evil of
one defeats the evil of another, and saves His
own purpose to bless the race from being frit-
tered away and lost. And it is told us in order
that, amidst all this mess of human craft and self-
ishness, the righteousness and stability of God's
word of promise may be more vividly seen. Let
us look at the sin of each of the parties in order,
and the punishment of each.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews Isaac is com-
mended for his faith in blessing his sons. It
was commendable in him that, in great bodily
weakness, he still believed himself to be the
guardian of God's blessing, and recognised that
he had a great inheritance to bequeath to his
sons. But, in unaccountable and inconsistent
contempt of God's expressed purpose, he pro-
poses to hand over this blessing to Esau.
Many things had occurred to fix his attention
upon the fact that Esau was not to be his heir.
Esau had sold his birthright, and had married
Hittite women, and his whole conduct was, no
doubt, of a piece with this, and showed that, in
his hands, any spiritual inheritance would be
both unsafe and unappreciated. That Isaac had
some notion he was doing wrong in giving to
Esau what belonged to God, and what God
meant to give to Jacob, is shown from his pre-
cipitation in bestowing the blessing. He has no
feeling that he is authorized by God, and there-
fore he cannot wait calmly till God should inti-
mate, by unmistakable signs, that he is near his
end; but, seized with a panic lest his favourite
should somehow be left unblessed, he feels, in
his nervous alarm, as if he were at the point of
death, and, though destined to live for forty-
three years longer, he calls Esau that he may
hand over to him his dying testament. How
different is the nerve of a man when he knows he
is doing God's will, and when he is but fulfilling
his own device. For the same reason, he has
to stimulate his spirit by artificial means. The
prophetic ecstasy is not felt by him; he must be
exhilarated by venison and wine, that, strength-
ened and revived in body, and having his grati-
tude aroused afresh towards Esau, he may bless
him with all the greater vigour. The final stimu-
lus is given when he smells the garments of
Esau on Jacob, and when that fresh earthy smell
which so revives us in spring, as if our life were
renewed with the year, and which hangs about
one who has been in the open air, entered into
Isaac's blood, and lent him fresh vigour.
It is a strange and, in some respects, perplex-
ing spectacle that is here presented to us — the
organ of the Divine blessing represented by a
blind old man, laid on a " couch of skins," stimu-
lated by meat and wine, and trying to cheat God
by bestowing the family blessing on the son of
his own choice to the exclusion of the divinely-
appointed heir. Out of such beginnings had
God to educate a people worthy of Himself, and
through such hazards had He to guide the
spiritual blessing He designed to convey to us
all.
Isaac laid a net for his own feet. By his un-
righteous and timorous haste he secured the de-
feat of his own long-cherished scheme. It was
his hasting- to bless Esau which drove Rebekah
to checkmate him by winning the blessing for
her favourite. The shock which Isaac felt when
Esau came in and the fraud was discovered is
easily understood. The mortification of the old
man must have been extreme when he found that
he had so completely taken himself in. He was
reclining in the satisfied reflection that for once
he had overreached his astute Rebekah and her
astute son, and in the comfortable feeling that,
at last, he had accomplished his one remaining
desire, when he learns from the exceeding bitter
cry of Esau that he has himself been duped. It
was enough to rouse the anger of the mildest
and godliest of men, but Isaac does not storm
and protest — " he trembles exceedingly." He
recognises, by a spiritual insight quite unknown
to Esau, that this is God's hand, and deliberately
confirms, with his eyes open, what he had done
in blindness: "I have blessed him: Yea, and he
shall be blessed." Had he wished to deny the
validity of the blessing, he had ground enough
for doing so. He had not really given it: it had
been stolen from him. An act must be judged
by its intention, and he had been far from in-
tending to bless Jacob. Was he to consider
himself bound by what he had done under a
72
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
misapprehension? He had given a blessing to
one person under the impression that he was a
different person; must not the blessing go to
him for whom it was designed? But Isaac un-
hesitatingly yielded.
This clear recognition of God's hand in the
matter, and quick submission to Him, reveals a
habit of reflection, and a spiritual thoughtful-
ness, which are the good qualities in Isaac's
otherwise unsatisfactory character. Before he
finished his answer to Esau, he felt he was a
poor feeble creature in the hand of a true and
just God, who had used even his infirmity and
sin to forward righteous and gracious ends. It
was his sudden recognition of the frightful way
in which he had been tampering with God's will,
and of the grace with which God had prevented
him from accomplishing a wrong destination of
the inheritance, that made Isaac tremble very ex-
ceedingly.
In this humble acceptance of the disappoint-
ment of his life's love and hope, Isaac shows us
the manner in which we ought to bear the conse-
quences of our wrong-doing. The punishment
of our sin often comes through the persons with
whom we have to do, unintentionally on their
part, and yet we are tempted to hate them be-
cause they pain and punish us, father, mother,
wife, child, or whoever else. Isaac and Esau
were alike disappointed. Esau only saw the
supplanter, and vowed to be revenged. Isaac
saw God in the matter, and trembled. So when
Shimei cursed David, and his loyal retainers
would have cut off his head for so doing, David
said, " Let him alone, and let him curse: it may
be that the Lord hath bidden him." We can
bear the pain inflicted on us by men when we
see that they are merely the instruments of a
divine chastisement. The persons who thwart
us and make our life bitter, the persons who
stand between us and our dearest hopes, the per-
sons whom we are most disposed to speak
angrily and bitterly to, are often thorns planted
in our path by God to keep us on the right way.
Isaac's sin propagated itself with the rapid
multiplication of all sin. Rebekah overheard
what passed between Isaac and Esau, and al-
though she mie^ht have been able to wait until
by fair means Jacob received the blessing, yet
when she sees Isaac actually preparing to pass
Jacob by and bless Esau, her fears are so ex-
cited that she cannot any longer quietly leave the
matter in God's hand, but must lend her own
more skilful management. It may have crossed
her mind that she was justified in forwarding
what she knew to be God's purpose. She saw
no other way of saving God's purpose and
Jacob's rights than by her interference. The
emergency might have unnerved many a woman,
but Rebekah is equal to the occasion. She
makes the threatened exclusion of Jacob the
very means for at last finally settling the in-
heritance upon him. She braves the indignation
of Isaac and the rage of Esau, and fearless her-
self, and confident of success, she soon quiets
the timorous and cautious objections of Jacob.
She knows that for straightforward lying and
acting a part she was sure of good support in
Jacob. Luther says. " Had it been me, I'd have
dropped the dish." But Jacob had no such
tremors— could submit his hands and face to the
touch of Isaac, and repeat his lie as often as
needful.
An old man bedridden like Isaac becomes the
subject of a number of little deceptions which
may seem, and which may be, very unimportant
in themselves, but which are seen to wear down
the reverence due to the father of a family, and
which imperceptibly sap the guileless sincerity
and truthfulness of those who practise them
This overreaching of Isaac by dressing Jacob in
Esau's clothes, might come in naturally as one
of those daily deceptions which Rebekah was
accustomed to practise on the old man whom she
kept quite in her own hand, giving him as much
or as little insight into the doings of the family
as seemed advisable to her. It would never
occur to her that she was taking God in hand;
it would seem only as if she were making such
use of Isaac's infirmity as she was in the daily
practice of doing.
But to account for an act is not to excuse it.
Underlying the conduct of Rebekah and Jacob
was the conviction that they would come better
speed by a little deceit of their own than by suf-
fering God to further them in His own way —
that though God would certainly not practise de-
ception Himself, He might not object to others
doing so — that in this emergency holiness was a
hampering thing which might just for a little be
laid aside that they might be more holy after-
wards— that though no doubt in ordinary cir-
cumstances, and as a normal habit, deceit is not
to be commended, yet in cases of difficulty,
which call for ready wit, a prompt seizure, and
delicate handling, men must be allowed to secure
their ends in their own way. Their unbelief
thus directly produced immorality — immorality
of a very revolting kind, the defrauding of their
relatives, and repulsive also because practised as
if on God's side, or, as we should now say, " in
the interests of religion."
To this day the method of Rebekah and Jacob
is largely adopted by religious persons. It is
notorious that persons whose ends are good fre-
quently become thoroughly unscrupulous about
the means they use to accomplish them. They
dare not say in so many words that they may do
evil that good may come, nor do they think it a
tenable position in morals that the end sanctifies
the means; and yet their consciousness of a
justifiable and desirable end undoubtedly does
blunt their sensitiveness regarding the legitimacy
of the means they employ. For example.
Protestant controversialists, persuaded that
vehement opposition to Popery is good, and
filled with the idea of accomplishing its down-
fall, are often guilty of gross misrepresentation,
because they do not sufificiently inform them-
selves of the actual tenets and practices of the
Church of Rome. In all controversy, religious
and political, it is the same. It is always dis-
honest to circulate reports that you have no
means of authenticating: yet how freely are such
reports circulated to blacken the character of an
opponent, and to prove his opinions to be dan-
gerous. It is always dishonest to condemn
opinions we have not inquired into, merely be-
cause of some fancied consequence which these
opinions carry in them: yet how freely are
opinions condemned by men who have never
been at the trouble carefully to inquire into their
truth. They do not feel the dishonesty of their
position, because they have a general conscious-
ness that they are on the side of religion, and of
what has generally passed for truth. All keep-
ing back of facts which are supposed to have an
unsettling effect is but a repetition of this sin.
'Genesis xxvii.]
JACOB'S FRAUD.
73
There is no sin more hateful. Under the ap-
pearance of serving God, and maintaining His
cause in the world, it insults Him by assuming
that if the whole bare, undisguised truth were
spoken. His cause would suffer.
, The fate of all such attempts to manage God's
matters by keeping things dark, and misrepre-
senting fact, is written for all who care to under-
stand in the results of this scheme of Rebekah's
and Jacob's. They gained nothing, and they
lost a great deal, by their wicked interference.
They gained nothing; for God had promised
that the birthright would be Jacob's, and would
have given it him in some way redounding to his
credit and not to his shame. And they lost a
great deal. The mother lost her son; Jacob had
to flee for his life, and, for all we know, Rebekah
never saw him more. And Jacob lost all the
comforts of home, and all those possessions his
father had accumulated. He had to flee with
nothing but his staff, an outcast to begin the
world for himself. From this first false step
onwards to his death, he was pursued by mis-
fortune, until his own verdict on his life was,
" Few and evil have been the days of the years
of my life."
Thus severely was the sin of Rebekah and
Jacob punished. It coloured their whole after-
life with a deep sombre hue. It was marked
thus, because it was a sin by all means to be
avoided. It was virtually the sin of blaming
God for forgetting His promise, or of accusing
Him of being unable to perform it: so that they,
Rebekah and Jacob, had, forsooth, to take God's
work out of His hands, and show Him how it
ought to be done. The announcement of God's
purpose, instead of enabling them quietly to wait
for a blessing they knew to be certain, became in
their unrighteous and impatient hearts actually
an inducement to sin. Abraham was so bold
and confident in his faith, at least latterly, that
again and again he refused to take as a gift from
men, and on the most honourable terms, what
God had promised to give him: his grandson is
so little sure of God's truth, that he will rather
trust his own falsehood; and what he thinks God
may forget to give him, he will steal from his
own father. Some persons have especial need
to consider this sin — they are tempted to play
the part of Providence, to intermeddle where
they ought to refrain. Sometimes just a little
thing is needed to make everything go to our
liking — the keeping back of one small fact, a
slight variation in the way of stating the matter,
is enough — thines want just a little push in the
right direction: it is wrong, but very slightly so.
And so they are encouraged to close for a mo-
ment their eyes and put to their hand.
Of all the parties in this transaction none is
more to blame than Esau. He shows now how
selfish and untruthful the sensual man really is,
and how worthless is the generosity which is
merely of impulse and not bottomed on prin-
ciple. While he so furiously and bitterly blamed
Jacob for supplanting him, it might surely have
occurred to him that it was really he who was
supplanting Jacob. He had no right, divine or
human, to the inheritance. God had never said
that His possession should go to the oldest, and
had in this case said the express opposite. Be-
sides, inconstant as Esau was, he could scarcely
have forgotten the bargain that so pleased him
at the time, and by which he had sold to his
younger brother all title to bis father's blessings.
Jacob was to blame for seeking to win his own
by craft, but Esau was more to blame for en-
deavouring furtively to recover what he knew to
be no longer his. His bitter cry was the cry of
a disappointed and enraged child, what Hosea
calls the " howl " of those who seem to seek the
Lord, but are really merely crying out, like ani-
mals, for corn and wine. Many that care very
little for God's love will seek His favours; and
every wicked wretch who has in his prosperity
spurned God's offers will, when he sees how he
has cheated himself, turn to God's gifts, though
not to God, with a cry. Esau would now very
gladly have given a mess of pottage for the bless-
ing that secured to its receiver " the dew of
heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of
corn and wine." Like many another sinner, he
wanted both to eat his cake and have it. He
wanted to spend his youth sowing to the flesh,
and have the harvest which those only can have
who have sown to the spirit. He wished both
of two irreconcilable things — both the red pot-
tage and the birthright. He is a type of those
who think very lightly of spiritual blessings
while their appetites are strong, but afterwards
bitterly complain that their whole life is filled
with the results of sowing to the flesh and not
to the spirit.
" We barter life for pottapre ; sell true bliss
For wealth or power, for pleasure or renown ;
Thus, Esau like, our F'ather's blessing miss,
Then wash with fruitless tears our faded crown."
The words of the New Testament, in which it
is said that Esau " found no place for repentance,
though he sought it carefully with tears," arc
sometimes misunderstood. They do not mean
that he sought what we ordinarily call repent-
ance, a change of mind about the value of the
birthright. He Jiad that; it was this that made
him weep. What he sought now was some
means of undoing what he had done, of cancel-
ling the deed of which he repented. His ex-
perience does not tell us that a man once sinning
as Esau sinned becomes a hardened reprobate
whom no good influence can impress or bring
to repentance, but it says that the sin so com-
mitted leaves irreparable consequences — that no
man can live a youth of folly and yet find as
much in manhood and maturer years as if he had
lived a careful and God-fearing youth. Esau
had irrecoverably lost that which he would now
have given all he had to possess; and in this, I
suppose, he represents half the men who pass
through this world. He warns us that it is very
possible, by careless yielding to appetite and
passing whim, to entangle ourselves irrecoverably
for this life, if not to weaken and maim our-
selves for eternity. At the time, your act may
seem a very small and secular one, a mere bar-
gain in the ordinary course, a little transaction
such as one would enter into carelessly after the
day's work is over, in the quiet of a summer
evening or in the midst of the family circle; or
it may seem so necessary that you never think of
its moral qualities, as little as you question
whether you are justified in breathing; but you
are warned that if there be in that act a crushing
out of spiritual hopes to make way for the free
enjoyment of the pleasures of sense — if there be
a deliberate preference of the good things of
this life to the love of God— if, knowingly, you
make light of spiritual blessings, and count them
unreal when weighed against obvious worldly
74
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
advantages — then the consequences of that act
will in this life bring to you great discomfort
and uneasiness, great loss and vexation, an
agony of remorse, and a life-long repentance.
You are warned of this, and most touchingly, by
the moving entreaties, the bitter cries and tears
of Esau.
But even when our life is spoiled irreparably,
a hope remains for our character and ourselves —
not certainly if our misfortunes embitter us, not
if resentment is the chief result of our suffering;
but if, subduing resentment, and taking blame to
ourselves instead of trying to fix it on others, we
take revenge upon the real source of our un-
doing, and extirpate from our own character the
root of bitterness. Painful and difficult is such
schooling. It calls for simplicity, and humility,
and truthfulness — qualities not of frequent occur-
rence. It calls for abiding patience; for he who
begins thus to sow to the spirit late in life must
be content with inward fruits, with peace of con-
science, increase of righteousness and humility,
and must learn to live without much of what
all men naturally desire.
While each member of Isaac's family has thus
his own plan, and is striving to fulfil his private
intention, the result is, that God's purpose is
fulfilled. In the human agency, such faith in
God as existed was overlaid with misunderstand-
ing and distrust of God. But notwithstanding
the petty and mean devices, the short-sighted
slyness, the blundering unbelief, the profane
worldliness of the human parties in the transac-
tion, the truth and mercy of God still find a way
for themselves. Were matters left in our hands,
we should make shipwreck even of the salvation
with which we are provided. We carry into our
dealings with it the same selfishness, and incon-
stancy, and worldliness which made it neces-
sary: and had not God patience to bear with, as
well as mercy to invite us; had He not wisdom
to govern us in the use of His grace, as well as
wisdom to contrive its first bestowal, we should
perish with the water of life at our lips.
CHAPTER XXII.
JACOB'S FLIGHT AND DREAM.
Genesis xxvii. 41 — xxviii.
" So foolish was I, and ignorant : I was as a beast before
Thee. Nevertheless I am continually with thee."— PSALM
Ixxiii. 22.
It is SO commonly observed as to be scarcely
worth again remarking, that persons who em-
ploy a great deal of craft in the management of
their afifairs are invariably entrapped in their own
net. Life is so complicated, and every matter of
conduct has so many issues, that no human brain
can possibly foresee every contingency. Re-
bekah was a clever woman, and quite competent
to outwit men like Isaac and Esau, but she had
in her scheming neglected to take account of
Laban, a man true brother to herself in cunning.
She had calculated on Esau's resentment, and
knew it would last only a few days, and this brief
period she was prepared to utilise by sending
Jacob out of Esau's reach to her own kith and
kin, from among whom he might get a suitable
wife. But she did not reckon on Laban's mak-
ing her son serve fourteen years for his wife,
nor upon Jacob's falling so deeply in love with
Rachel as to make him apparently forget his
mother.
In the first part of her scheme she feels herself
at home. She is a woman who knows exactly
how much of her mind to disclose, so as effectu-
ally to lead her husband to adopt her view and
plan. She did not bluntly advise Isaac to send
Jacob to Padan-aram, but she sowed in his ap-
prehensive mind fears which she knew would
make him send Jacob there; she suggested the
possibility of Jacob's taking a wife of the daugh-
ters of Heth. She felt sure that Isaac did not
need to be told where to send his son to find a
suitable wife. So Isaac called Jacob, and said.
Go to Padan-aram, to the house of thy mother's
father, and take thee a wife thence. And he
gave him the family blessing — God Almighty
give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and
to thy seed with thee — so constituting him his
heir, the representative of Abraham.
The effect this had on Esau is very noticeable.
He sees, as the narrative tells us, a great many
things, and his dull mind tries to make some
meaning out of all that is passing before him.
The historian seems intentionally to satirise
Esau's attempt at reasoning, and the foolish sim-
plicity of the device he fell upon. He had an
idea that Jacob's obedience in going to seek a
wife of another stock than he had connected
himself with would be pleasing to his parents;
and perhaps he had an idea that it would be pos-
sible to steal a march upon Jacob in his absence,
and by a more speedily affected obedience to his
parents' desire, win their preference, and per-
haps move Isaac to alter his will and reverse the
blessing. Though living in the chosen family,
he seems to have had not the slightest idea that
there was any higher will than his father's being
fulfilled in their doings. He does not yet see
why he himself should not be as blessed as
Jacob; he cannot grasp at all the distinction that
grace makes; cannot take in the idea that God
has chosen a people to Himself, and that no
natural advantage or force or endowment can set
a man among that people, but only God's choice.
Accordingly, he does not see any difference be-
tween Ishmael's family and the chosen family;
they are both sprung from Abraham, both are
naturally the same, and the fact that God ex-
pressly gave His inheritance past Ishmael is
nothing to Esau — an act of God has no meaning
to him. He merely sees that he has not pleased
his parents as well as he might by his marriage,
and his easy and yielding disposition prompts
him to remedy this.
This is a fine specimen of the hazy views men
have of what will bring them to a level with
God's chosen. Through their crass insensi-
bility to the high righteousness of God, there
still does penetrate a perception that if they are
to please Him there are certain means t6 be
used for doing so. There are, they see, certain
occupations and ways pursued by Christians,
and if by themselves adopting these they can
please God, they are quite willing to humour
Him in this. Like Esau, they do not see their
way to drop their old connections, but if by
making some little additions to their habits, or
forming some new connection, they can quiet
this controversy that has somehow grown up be-
tween God and His children, — though, so far as
they see, it is a very unmeaning controversy, —
they will very gladly enter' into any little ar-
rangement for the purpose. We will not, of
Genesis xxvii. 4i-xxviii.] JACOB'S FLIGHT AND DREAM.
75
course, divorce the world, will not dismiss from
our homes and hearts what God hates and
means to destroy, will not accept God's will
as our sole and absolute law, but we will so far
meet God's wishes as to add to what we have
adopted something that is almost as good as
what God enjoins: we will make any little altera-
tions which will not quite upset our present ways.
Much commoner than hypocrisy is this dim-
sighted, blundering stupidity of the really pro-
fane worldly man, who thinks he can take rank
with men whose natures God has changed, by
the mere imitation of some of their ways; who
thinks, that as he cannot without great labour,
and without too seriously endangering his hold
on the world, do precisely what God requires,
God may be expected to be satisfied with a some-
thing like it. Are we not aware of endeavouring
at times to cloak a sin with some easy virtue, to
adopt some new and apparently good habit, in-
stead of destroying the sin we know God hates;
or to offer to God, and palm upon our own con-
science, a mere imitation of what God is pleased
with? Do you attend Church, do you come and
decorously submit to a service? That is not at
all what God enjoins, though it is like it. What
He means is. that you worship Him, which is a
quite different employment. Do you render to
God some outward respect, have you adopted
some habits in deference to Him, do you even at-
tempt some private devotion and discipline of
the spirit? Still what He requires is something
that goes much deeper than all that; namely,
that you love Him. To conform to one or two
habits of godly people is not what is required of
us; but to be at heart godly.
As Jacob journeyed northwards, he came, on
the second or third evening of his flight, to the
hills of Bethel. As the sun was sinking he found
himself toiling up the roueh path which Abra-
ham may have described to him as looking like
a great staircase of rock and crag reaching from
earth to sky. Slabs of rock, piled one upon an-
other, form the whole hillside, and to Jacob's
eye. accustomed to the rolling pastures of Beer-
sheba. they would appear almost like a structure
built for superhuman uses, well founded in the
valley below, and intended to reach to unknown
heights. Overtaken by darkness on this rugged
path, he readily finds as soft a bed and as good
shelter as his shepherd-habits require, and with
his head on a stone and a corner of his dress
thrown over his face to preserve him from the
moon, he is soon fast asleep. But in his dreams
the massive staircase is still before his eyes, and
it is no longer himself that is toiling up it as it
leads to an unexplored hill-top above him, but
the angels of God are ascending and descending
upon it, and at its top is Jehovah Himself.
Thus simply does God meet the thoughts of
J'lcob, and lead him to the encouragement he
needed. What was probably Jacob's state of
mind when he lay down on that hill-side? In
tlie first place, and as he would have said to any
rran he chanced to meet, he wondered what he
would see when he got to the top of this hill;
and still more, as he may have said to Rebekah,
hi: wondered what reception he would meet with
f) om Laban, and whether he would ever again
s'^e his father's tents. This vision shows him
that his path leads to God, that it is He who
occupies the future; and, in his dream, a voice
comes to him: "I ar" with thee, and will keep
thee in all places whither thou goest, and will
bring thee again into this land." He had, no
doubt, wondered much whether the blessing of
his father was, after all, so valuable a possession,
whether it might not have been wiser to take a
share with Esau than to be driven out homeless
thus. God has never spoken to him; he has
heard his father speak of assurances coming to
him from God, but as for him, through all the
long years of his life he has never heard what he
could speak of as a voice of God. But this night
these doubts were silenced — there came to his
soul an assurance that' never departed from it.
He could have affirmed he heard God saying to
him: "I am the Lord God of thy father Abraham,
and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou
liest, to thee will I 2-ive it." And lastly, all these
thoughts probably centred in one deep feeling,
that he was an outcast, a fugitive from justice.
He was glad he was in so solitary a place, he
was glad he was so far from Esau and from
every human eye; and yet — what desolation of
spirit accompanied this feeling; there was no one
he could bid good-night to, no one he could
spend the evening hour with in quiet talk; he
was a banished man, whatever fine gloss Re-
bekah might put upon it, and deep down in his
conscience there was that which told him he
was not banished without cause. Might not
God also forsake him— might not God banisn
him, and might he not find a curse pursuing him,
preventing man or woman from ever again look-
ing in his face with pleasure? Such fears are
met by the vision. This desolate spot, unvisited
by sheep or bird, has become busy with life,
angels thronging the ample staircase. Here,
where he thought himself lonely and outcast, he
finds he has come to tne very gate of heaven.
His fond mother might at that hour, have been
visiting his silent tent and shedding ineffectual
tears on his abandoned bed, but he finds himself
in the very house of God, cared for by angels.
As the darkness had revealed to him the stars
shining overhead, so, when the deceptive glare
of waking life was dulled by sleep, he saw the
actual realities which before were hidden.
No wonder that a vision which so graphically
showed the open communication between earth
and heaven should have deeply impressed itself
on Jacob's descendants. What more effectual
consolation could any poor outcast, who felt he
had spoiled his life, require than the memory of
this staircase reaching from the pillow of the
lonely fugitive from justice up into the very
heart of heaven? How could any most desolate
soul feel quite abandoned so long as the memory
retained the vision of the angels thronging up
and down with swift service to the needy? How
could it be even in the darkest hour believed that
all hope was gone, and that men might but curse
God and die, when the mind turned to this bridg-
ing of the interval between earth and heaven?
In the New Testament we meet with an in-
stance of the familiarity with this vision which
true Israelites enjoyed. Our Lord, in address-
ing Nathanael. makes use of it in a way that
proves this familiarity. Under his fig-tree,
whose broad leaves were used in every Jewish
garden as a screen from observation, and whose
branches were trained down so as to form an
open-air oratory, where secret prayer might be
indulged in undisturbed, Nathanael had been de-
claring to the Father his ways, his weaknesses,
his hopes. And scarcely more astonished was
Jacob when he found himself the object of this
76
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
angelic ministry on the lonely hill-side, than was
Nathanael when he found how one eye pene-
trated the leafy screen, and had read his thoughts
and wishes. Apparently he had been encourag-
ing himself with t is vision, for our Lord, read-
ing his thoughts, says: " Because I said unto
thee, When thou wast under the fig-tree I saw
thee, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater
things than these — thou shalt see heaven opened,
and the angels of God ascending and descend-
ing upon the Son of man."
This, then, is a vision 'for us even more than
for Jacob. It has its fulfilment in the times after
the Incarnation more manifestly than in previous
times. The true staircase by which heavenly
m.essengers ascend and descend is the Son of
man. It is He who really bridges the interval
between heaven and earth, God and man. In
His person these two are united. You cannot
tell whether Christ is more Divine or human,
more God or man — solidly based on earth, as
this massive staircase, by His real humanity, by
His thirty-three years' engagement in all human
functions and all experiences of this life, He is
yet familiar with eternity. His name is " He that
came down from heaven," and if your eye fol-
lows step by step to the heights of His person, it
rests at last on what you recognise as Divine.
His love it is that is wide enough to embrace
God on the one hand, and the lowest sinner on
the other. Truly He is the way, the stair, lead-
ing from the lowest depth of earth to the highest
height of heaven. In Him you find a love that
embraces you as you are, in whatever condition,
however cast down and defeated, however em-
bittered and polluted — a love that stoops ten-
derly to you and hopefully, and gives you once
more a hold upon holiness and life, and in that
very love unfolds to you the highest glory of
heaven and of God.
When this comes home to a man in the hour
of his need, it becomes the most arousing reve-
lation. He springs from the troubled slumber
we call life, and all earth wears a new glory and
awe to him. He exclaims with Jacob, " How
dreadful is this place. Surely the Lord is in
this place, and I knew it not." The world, that
had been so bleak and empty to him, is filled
with a majestic vital presence. Jacob is no
longer a mere fugitive from the results of his
own sin, a shepherd in search of employment, a
man setting out in the world to try his fortune;
he is the partner with God in the fulfilment of a
Divine purpose. And such is the change that
passes on every man who believes in the Incar-
nation, who feels himself to be connected with
God by Jesus Christ; he recognises the Divine
intention to uplift his life and to fill it with new
hopes and purposes. He feels that humanity is
consecrated by the entrance of the Son of God
into it: he feels that all human life is holy ground
sitice the Lord Himself has passed through it.
Having once had this vision of God and man
united in Christ, life cannot any more be to him
the poor, dreary, commonplace, wretched round
of secular duties and short-lived joys and ter-
ribly punished sins it was before: but it truly be-
comes the very gate of heaven: from each part
of it he knows there is a staircase rising to the
presence of God, and that out of the region of
pure holiness and justice there flow to him heav-
enly aids, tender guidance, and encouragement.
Do you think the idea of the Incarnation too
aerial and speculative to carry with you for help
in rough, practical matters? The Incarnation
is not a mere idea, but a fact as substantial and
solidly rooted in life as anything you have to do
with. Even the shadow of it Jacob saw carried
in it so much of what was real that when he was
broad awake he trusted it and acted on it. It
was not scattered by the chill of the morning air,
nor by that fixed staring reality which external
nature assumes in the gray dawn as one object
after another shows itself in the same spot and
form in which night had fallen upon it. There
were no angels visible when he opened his eyes;
the staircase was there, but it was of no neavenly
substance, and if it had any secret to tell, it
coldly and darkly kept it. There was no retreat
for the runaway from the poor common facts of
yesterday. The sky seemed as far from earth as
it did yesterday, his track over the hill as lonely,
his brother's wrath as real; — but other things
also had become real; and as he looked back
from the top of the hill on the stone he had set
up, he felt the words, " I am with thee in all
places whither thou goest," graven on his heart,
and giving him new courage; and he knew that
every footfall of his was making a Bethel, and
that as he went he was carrying God through
the world. The bleakest rains that swept across
the hills of Bethel could never wash out of his
mind the vision of bright-winged angels, as little
as they could wash off the oil or wear down the
stone he had set up. The brightest glare of this
world's heyday of real life could not outshine
and cause them to disappear; and the vision on
which we hope is not one that vanishes at cock-
crow, nor is He who connects us with God shy
of human handling, but substantial as ourselves.
He offered Himself to every kind of test, so that
those who knew Him for years could say, with
the most absolute confidence, " That which we
have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon, and our hands have
handled of the Word of Life . . . declare we
unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with
us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father
and with His Son Jesus Christ."
Jacob obeyed a good instinct when he set up
as a monumental stone that which had served as
his pillow while he dreamt and saw this inspir-
ing vision. He felt that, vivid as the impression
on his mind then was, it would tend to fade, and
he erected this stone that in after days he might
have a witness that would testify to his present
assurance. One great secret in the growth of
character is the art of prolonging the quickening
power of right ideas, of perpetuating just and in-
spiring impressions. And he who despises the
aid of all external helps for the accomplishment
of this object is not likely to succeed. Religion,
some men say, is an inward thing: it does not
consist of public worship, ordinances, and so
forth, but it is a state of spirit. Very true: but
he knows little of human nature who fancies a
state of spirit can be maintained without the aid
of external reminders, presentations to eye and
ear of central religious truths and facts. We
have all of us had such views of truth, and such
corresponding desires and purposes, as would
transform us were they only permanent. But
what a night has settled on our past, how little
have we found skill to prolong the benefit aris-
ing from particular events or occasions. Some
parts of our life, indeed, require no monument,
there is nothing tncre we would ever again think
of, if possible; but, alas! these, for the most part.
Genesis xxxii.]
JACOB AT PENIEL.
77
have erected monuments of their own, to which,
as with a sad fascination, our eyes are ever turn-
ing— persons we have injured, or who, somehow,
so remind us of sin, that we shrink from meet-
ing them — places to which sins of ours have at-
tached a reproachful meaning. And these
natural monuments must be imitated in the life
of grace. By fixed hours of worship, by rules
and habits of devotion, by public worship, and
especially by the monumental ordinance of the
Lord's Supper, must we cherish the memory of
known truth, and deepen former impressions.
To the monument Jacob attached a vow, so
that when he returned to that spot the stone
might remind him of the dependence on God he
now felt, of the precarious situation he was in
when this vision appeared, and of all the help
God had afterwards given him. He seems to
have taken up the meaning of that endless chain
of angels ceaselessly co ning down full of bless-
ing, and going up empty of all but desires, re-
quests, aspirations. And if we are to live with
clean conscience and with heart open to God,
we must so live that the messengers who bring
God's blessings to us shall not have an evil re-
port to take back of the manner in which we
have received and spent His bounty.
This whole incident makes a special appeal to
those who are starting in life. Jacob was no
longer a young man, but he was unmarried, and
he was going to seek employment with nothing
to begin the world with but his shepherd's stafif,
the symbol of his knowledge of a profession.
Many must see in him a very exact reproduction
of their own position. They have left home, and
it may be they have left it not altogether with
pleasant memories, and they are now launched
on the world for themselves, with nothing but
their staff, their knowledge of some business.
The spot they have reached may seem as deso-
late as the rock where Jacob lay, their prospects
as doubtful as his. For such an one there is
absolutely no security but tha't which is given in
the vision of Jacob — in the belief that God will
be with you in all places, and that even now on
that life which you are perhaps already wishing
to seclude from all holy influences, the angels of
God are descending to bless and restrain you
from sin. Happy the man who, at the outset,
can heartily welcome such a connection of his
life with God; unhappy he who welcomes what-
ever blots out the thought of heaven, and who
separates himself from all that reminds him of
the pood influences that throng his path. The
desire of the young heart to see life and know
the world is natural and innocent, but how many
fancy that in seeing the lowest and poorest per-
versions of life they see life — how many forget
that unless they keep their hearts pure they can
never enter into the best and richest and most
enduring of the uses and joys of human life.
Even from a selfish motive and the mere desire
to succeed in the world, every one starting in life
would do well to consider whether he really has
Jacob's blessing and is making his vow. And
certainly every one who has any honour, who is
governed by any of those sentiments that lead
men to noble and worthy actions, will frankly
meet God's offers and joyfully accept a heavenly
guidance and a permanent connection with God.
jiefore we dismiss this vision, it may be well to
look at one instance of its fulfilment, that we
may understand the manner in which God fulfils
His promises. Jacob's experience in Haran was
not so brilliant and unexceptionable as he might
perhaps expect. He did, indeed, at once find a
woman he could love, but he had to purchase
her with seven years' toil, which ultimately be-
came fourteen years. He did not grudge this;
becau e it was customary, because his affections
were strong, and because he was too independent
to send to his father for money to buy a wife.
But the bitterest disappointment awaited him.
With the burning humiliation of one who has
been cheated in so cruel a way, he finds himseli
married to Leah. He protests, but he cannot
insist on his protest, nor divorce Leah; for. in
point of fact, he is conscious that he is only
being paid in his own coin, foiled with his own
weapons. In this veiled bride broug'nt in to
him on false pretences he sees the just retribu-
tion of his own disguise when, with the hands of
Esau he went m and received his father's bless-
ing. His mouth is shut by the remembrance of
his own past. But submitting to this chastise-
ment, and recognising in it not only the craft
of his uncle, but the stroke of God, that which he
at first thought of as a cruel curse became a
blessing. It was Leah much more than Rachel
that built up the house of Israel. To this de-
spised wife six of the tribes traced their origin,
and among these was the tribe of Judah. Thus
he learned the fruitfulness of God's retribution —
that to be humbled by God is really to be built
up, and to be punished by Him the richest bless-
ing. Through such an experience are many per-
sons led: when we would embrace the fruit of
years of toil God thrusts into our arms some-
thing quite different from our expectation —
something that not only disappoints, but that at
first repels us, reminding us of acts of our own
we had striven to forget. Is it with resentment
you still look back on some such experience,
when the reward of years of toil evaded your
grasp, and you found yourself bound to what
you would not have worked a day to obtain? —
do you find yourself disheartened and discour-
aged by the way in which you seem regularly to
miss the fruit of your labour? If so, no doubt
it were useless to assure you that the disappoint-
ment may be more fruitful than the hope ful-
filled, but it can scarcely be useless to ask you to
consider whether it is not the fact that in Jacob's
case what was thrust upon him was more fruitful
than what he strove to win.
CHAPTER XXin.
JACOB AT PENIEL.
Genesis xxxii.
" Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he
shall lift you up."— J.4MES iv. lo.
Jacob had a double reason for wishing to leave
Padan-aram. He believed in the promise of
God to give him Canaan: and he saw that Laban
was a man with whom he could never be on a
thoroughly good understanding. He saw plainly
that Laban was resolved to make what he could
out of his skill at as cheap a rate as possible —
the characteristic of a selfish, greedy, ungrate-
ful, and therefore, in the end, ill-served master.
Laban and Esau were the two men who had
hitherto chiefly influenced Jacob's life. But they
were very different in character. Esau could
78
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
never see that there was any important differ-
ence between himself and Jacob — except that his
brother was trickier. Esau was the type of those
who honestly think that there is not much in re-
ligion, and that saints are but white-washed sin-
ners. Laban, on the contrary, is almost super-
stitiously impressed by the distinction between
God's people and others. But the chief prac-
tical issue of this impression is, not that he seeks
God's friendship for himself, but that he tries to
make a profitable use of God's friends. He
seeks to get God's blessing, as it were, at second-
hand. If men could be related to God indirectly,
as if in law and not by blood, that would suit
Laban. If God would admit men to his inherit-
ance on any other terms than being sons in the
direct line, if there were some relationship once
removed, a kind of sons-in-law, so that mere
connection with the godly, though not with
God, would win His blessing, this would suit
Laban.
Laban is the man who appreciates the social
value of virtue, truthfulness, fidelity, temperance,
godliness, but wishes to enjoy their fruits with-
out the pain of cultivating the qualities them-
selves. He is scrupulous as to the character of
those he takes into his employment, and seeks
to connect himself in business with good men.
In his domestic life he acts on the idea which
his experience has suggested to him, that per-
sons really godly will make his home more
peaceful, better regulated, safer than otherwise
it might be. If he holds a position of authority,
he knows how to make use, for the preservation
of order and for the promotion of his own ends,
of the voluntary efforts of Christian societies, of
the trustworthiness of Christian officials, and of
the support of the Christian community. But
with all this recognition of the reality and in-
fluence of godliness, he never for one moment
entertains the idea of himself becoming a godly
man. In all ages there are Labans, who clearly
recognise the utility and worth of a connection
with God, who have been much mixed up with
persons in whom that worth was very conspicu-
ous, and who yet, at the last, " depart and return
unto their place," like Jacob's father-in-law,
without having themselves entered into any
affectionate relations with God.
From Laban, then, Jacob was resolved to es-
cape. And though to escape with large droves
of slow-moving sheep and cattle, as well as with
many women and children, seemed hopeless, the
cleverness of Jacob did not fail him here. He
did not get beyond reach of pursuit; he could
never have expected to do so. But he stole
away to such a distance from Haran as made it
much easier for him to come to terms with
Laban, and much more difficult for Laban to try
any further device for detaining him.
But, delivered as he was from Laban, he had
an even more formidable person to deal with.
As soon as Laban's company disappear on the
northern horizon, Jacob sends messengers south
to sound Esau. His message is so contrived as
to beget the idea in Esau's mind that his younger
brother is a person of some importance, and yet
is prepared to show greater deference to himself
than formerly. But the answer brought back by
the messengers is the curt and haughty despatch
of the man of war to the man of peace. No
notice is taken of Jacob's vaunted wealth. No
proposal of terms as if Esau had an equal to deal
with, is carried back. There is only the startling
announcement: " Esau cometh to meet thee, and
four hundred men with him." Jacob at once
recognises the significance of this armed advance
on Esau's part. Esau has not forgotten the
wrong he suffered at Jacob's hands, and he
means to show him that he is entirely in his
power.
Therefore was Jacob " greatly afraid and dis-
tressed." The joy with which, a few days ago,
he had greeted the host of God, was quite over-
cast by the tidings brouerht him regarding the
host of Esau. Things heavenly do always look
so like a mere show; visits of angels seem so de-
lusive and fleeting; the exhibition of the powers
of heaven seems so often but as a tournament
painted on the sky, and so unavailable for the
stern encounters that await us on earth, that one
seems, even after the most impressive of such
displays, to be left to fight on alone. No won-
der Jacob is disturbed. His wives and depend-
ants gather round him in dismay; the children,
catching the infectious panic, cower with cries
and weeping about their mothers; the whole
camp is rudely shaken out of its brief truce by
the news of this rough Esau, whose impetuosity
and warlike ways they had all heard of and were
now to experience. The accounts of the mes-
sengers would no doubt grow in alarming de-
scriptive detail as they saw how much impor-
tance was attached to their words. Their ac-
counts would also be exaggerated by their own
unwarlike nature, and by the indistinctness with
which they had made out the temper of Esau's
followers, and the novelty of the equipments of
war they had seen in his camp. Could we have
been surprised had Jacob turned and fled when
thus he was made to picture the troops of Esau
sweeping from his grasp all he had so laboriously
earned, and snatching the promised inheritance
from him when in the very act of entering on
possession? But though in fancy he already
hears their rude shouts of triumph as they fall
upon his defenceless band, and already sees the
merciless horde dividing the spoil with shouts of
derision and coarse triumph, and though all
around him are clamouring to be led into a safe
retreat, Jacob sees stretched before him the land
that is his, and resolves that, by God's help, he
shall win it. What he does is not the act of a
man rendered incompetent through fear, but of
one who has recovered from the first shock of
alarm and has all his wits about him. He dis-
poses his household and followers in two com-
panies, so that each might advance with the hope
that it might be the one which should not meet
Esau; and having done all that his circumstances
permit, he commends himself to God in prayer.
After Jacob had prayed to God, a happy
thought strikes him, which he at once puts in
execution. Anticipating the experience of Solo-
mon, that " a brother offended is harder to be
won than a strong city." he. in the style of a
skilled tactician, lays siege to Esau's wrath, and
directs against it train after train of gifts, which,
like successive battalions pouring into a breach,
might at length quite win his brother. This dis-
position of his peaceful battering trains having
occupied him till sunset, he retires to the short
rest of a general on the eve of battle. As soon
as he judges that the weaker members of the
camp are refreshed enough to begin their event-
ful march, he rises and goes from tent to tent
awaking the sleepers, and quickly forming them
into their usual line of march, sends them over
Genesis xxxii.]
JACOB AT PENIEL.
79
the brook in the darkness, and himself is left
alone, not with the depression of a man who
waits for the inevitable, but with the high spirits
of intense activity, and with the return of the old
complacent confidence of his own superiority to
his powerful but sluggish-minded brother — a
confidence regained now by the certainty he felt,
at least for the time, that Esau's rage could not
blaze through all the relays of gifts he had sent
forward. Having in this spirit seen all his camp
across the brook, he himself pauses for a mo-
ment, and looks with interest at the stream be-
fore him, and at the promised land on its south-
ern bank. This stream, too, has an interest for
him as bearing a name like his own — a name that
signifies the " struggler," and vvas given to the
mountain torrent from the pain and difficulty
with which it seemed to find its way through the
hills. Sitting on the bank of the stream, he
sees gleaming through the darkness the foam
that it churned as it writhed through the ob-
structing rocks, or heard through the night the
roar of its torrent as it leapt downwards, tortu-
ously finding its way towards Jordan; and Jacob
says. So will I, opposed though I be, win my
way, by the circuitous routes of craft or by the
impetuous rush of courage, into the land whither
that stream is going. With compressed lips, and
step as firm as when, twenty years before, he left
the land, he rises to cross the brook and enter the
land — he rises, and is seized in a grasp that he at
once owns as formidable. But surely this silent
close, as of two combatants who at once recog-
nise one another's strength, this protracted strife,
does not look like the act of a depressed man,
but of one whose energies have been strung to
the highest pitch, and who would have borne
down the champion of Esau's host had he at
that hour opposed his entrance into the land
which Jacob claimed as his own, and into which,
as his glove, pledging himself to follow, he had
thrown all that was dear to him in the world. It
was no common wrestler that would have been
safe to meet him in that mood.
Why, then, was Jacob thus mysteriously held
back while his household were quietly moving
forward in the darkness? What is the meaning,
purpose, and use of this opposition to his en-
trance? These are obvious from the state of
mind Jacob was in. He was going forward to
meet Esau under the impression that there was
no other reason why he should not inherit the
land but only his wrath, and pretty confident
that by his superior talent, his mother-wit, he
could make a tool of this stupid, generous
brother of his. And the danger was, that if
Jacob's device had succeeded, he would have
been confirmed in these impressions, and have
believed that he had won the land from Esau,
with God's help certainly, but still by his own
indomitable pertinacity of purpose and skill in
dealing with men. Now, this was not the state
of the case at all. Jacob had, by his own deceit,
become an exile from the land, had been, in fact,
Vanished for fraud; and though God had con-
firmed to him the covenant, and promised to
him the land, yet Jacob had apparently never
<:ome to any such thorough sense of his sin and
entire incompetency to win the birthright for
bimself, as would have made it possible for him to
receive simply as God's gift this land which as
God's gift was alone valuable. Jacob does not
yet seem to have taken up the difference between
inheriting a thing as God's gift, and inheriting
6-Vol. I.
it as the meed of his own prowess. To such a
man God cannot give the land; Jacob cannot re-
ceive it. He is thinking only of winning it,
which is not at all what God means, and which
would, in fact, have annulled all the covenant,
and lowered Jacob and his people to the level
simply of other nations who had to win and
keep their territoiies at their risk, and not as the
blessed of God. If Jacob then is to get the land,
he must take it as a gift, which he is not prepared
to do. During the last twenty years he has got
rnany a lesson which might have taught him to
distrust his own management, and he had, to a
certain extent, acknowledged God; but his
Jacob-nature, his subtle, scheming nature, was
not so easily made to stand erect, and still he is
for wriggling himself into the promised land.
He is coming back to the land under the impres-
sion that God needs to be managed; that even
though we have His promises it requires dex-
terity to get them fulfilled; that a man will get
into the inheritance all the readier for knowing
what to veil from God and what to exhibit; when
to cleave to His word with great profession of
most humble and absolute reliance on Him, and
when to take matters into one's own hand.
Jacob, in short, was about to enter the land as
Jacob, the supplanter, and that would never do;
he was going to win the land from Esau by guile,
or as he might; and not to receive it from God.
And therefore, just as he is going to step into it,
there lays hold of him, not an armed emissary
of his brother, but a far more formidable antago-
nist— if Jacob will win the land, if it is to be a
mere trial of skill, a wrestling match, it must at
least be with the right person. Jacob is met
with his own weapons. He has not chosen war,
so no armed opposition is made; but with the
naked force of his own nature, he is prepared for
any man who will hold the land against him;
with such tenacity, toughness, quick presence of
mind, elasticity, as nature has given him, he is
confident he can win and hold his own. So the
real proprietor of the land strips himself for the
contest, and lets him feel, by the first hold he
takes of him, that if the question be one of mere
strength he shall never enter the land.
This wrestling therefore was by no means
actually or symbolically prayer. Jacob was not
aggressive, nor did he stay behind his company
to spend the night in praying for them. It was
God who came and laid hold on Jacob to pre-
vent him from entering the land in the temper
he was in, and as Jacob. He was to be taught
that it was not only Esau's appeased wrath, or
his own skilful smoothing down of his brother's
rufifled temper, that gave him entrance; but that
a nameless Being, Who came out upon him from
the darkness, guarded the land, and that by His
passport only could he find entrance. And
henceforth, as to every reader of this history so
much more to Jacob's self, the meeting with
Esau and the overcoming of his opposition were
quite secondary to and eclipsed by his meeting
and prevailing with this unknown combatant.
This struggle had, therefore, immense signifi-
cance for the history of Jacob. It is, in fact, a
concrete representation of the attitude he had
maintained towards God throughout his previous
history; and it constitutes the turning point at
which he assumes a new and satisfactory atti-
tude. Year after year Jacob had still retained
confidence in himself; he had never been thor-
oughly humbled, but had always felt himself able
So
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
to regain the land he had lost by his sin. And
in this struggle he shows this same determina-
tion and self-confidence. He wrestles on in-
domitably. As Kurtz, whom I follow in his
interpretation of this incident, says, " All along
Jacob's life had been the struggle of a clever and
strong, a pertinacious and enduring, a self-confi-
dent and self-sufficient person, who was sure of
the result only when he helped himself — a con-
test with God, who wished to break his strength
and wisdom, in order to bestow upon him real
strength in divine weakness, and real wisdom in
divine folly." All this self-confidence culmi-
nates now, and in one final and sensible struggle,
his Jacob-nature, his natural propensity to
wrest what he desires and win what he aims
at, from the most unwilling opponent, does
its very utmost and does it in vain. His steady
straining, his dexterous feints, his quick gusts of
vehement assault, make no impression on this
combatant and move him not one foot off his
ground. Time after time his crafty nature puts
out all its various resources, now letting his
grasp relax and feigning defeat, and then with
gathered strength hurling himself on the stran-
ger, but all in vain. What Jacob had often sur-
mised during the last twenty years, what had
flashed through him like a sudden gleam of light
when he found himself married to Leah, that he
was in the hands of one against whom it is quite
useless to struggle, he now again begins to sus-
pect. And as the first faint dawn appears, and
he begins dimly to make out the face, the quiet
breathing of which he had felt on his own during
the contest, the man with whom he wrestles
touches the strongest sinew in Jacob's body, and
the muscle on which the wrestler most depends
shrivels at the touch and reveals to the falling
Jacob how utterly futile had been all his skill
and obstinacy, and how quickly the stranger
might have thrown and mastered him.
All in a moment, as he falls, Jacob sees how
it is with him, and Who it is that has met him
thus. As the hard, stifif, corded muscle shriv-
elled, so shrivelled his obdurate, persistent self-
confidence. And as he is thrown, yet cleaves
with the natuidl tenacity of a wrestler to his
conqueror; so, utterly humbled before this
Mighty One whom now he recognises and owns,
he yet cleaves to Him and entreats His Blessing.
It is at this touch, which discovers the Almighty
power of Him with whom he has been contend-
ing, that the whole nature of Jacob goes down
before God. He sees how foolish and vain
has been his obstinate persistence in striv-
ing to trick God out of His blessing, or wrest
it from Him, and now he owns his utter inca-
pacity to advance one step in this way. he ad-
mits to himself that he is stopped, weakened in
the way, thrown on his back, and can effect
nothing, simply nothing, by what he thought
would effect all: and, therefore, he passes from
wrestling to praying, and with tears, as Hosea
says, sobs out from the broken heart of the
strong man, " I will not let thee go except thou
bless me." In making this transition from the
boldness and persistence of self-confidence to the
boldness of faith and humility, Jacob becomes
Israel — the supplanter, being baffled by his con-
queror, rises a Prince. Disarmed of all other
weapons, he at last finds and uses the weapons
wherewith God is conquered, and with the sim-
plicity and guilelessness now of an Israelite in-
deed, face to face with God, hanging helpless
with his arms around Him. he supplicates the
blessing he could not win.
Thus, as Abraham had to become God's heir
in the simplicity of humble dependence on God;
as Isaac had to lay himself on God's altar with
absolute resignation, and so become the heir of
God, so Jacob enters on the inheritance through
the most thorough humbling. Abraham had to
give up all possessions and live on God's
promise; Isaac had to give up life itself; Jacob
had to yield his very self, and abandon all de-
pendence on his own ability. The new name he
receives signalizes and interprets this crisis in
his life. He enters his land not as Jacob, but as
Israel. The man who crossed the Jabbok was
not the same as he who had cheated Esau and
outwitted Laban and determinedly striven this
morning with the angel. He was Israel, God's
prince, entering on the land freely bestowed on
him by an authority none could resist; a man
who had learned that in order to receive from
God, one must ask.
Very significant to Jacob in his after life must
have been the lameness consequent on this
night's struggle. He, the wrestler, had to go
halting all his days. He who had carried all his
weapons in his own person, in his intelligent
watchful eye and tough right arm, he who had
felt sufficient for all emergencies and a match
for all men, had now to limp along as one who
had been worsted and baffled and could not hide
his shame from men. So it sometimes happens
that a man never recovers the severe handling
he has received at some turning point in his life.
Often there is never again the same elastic step,
the same free and confident bearing, the same
apparent power, the same appearance to our
fellow-men of completeness in our life; but, in-
stead of this, there is a humble decision which, if
it does not walk with so free a gait, yet knows
better what ground it is treading and by what
right. To the end some men bear the marks of
the heavy stroke by which God first humbled
them. It came in a sudden shock that broke
their health, or in a disappointment which noth-
ing now given can ever quite obliterate the trace
of, or in circumstances painfully and permanently
altered. And the man has to say with Jacob, I
shall never now be what I might have been; I
was resolved to have my own way, and though
God in His mercy did not suffer me to destroy
myself, yet to drive me from my purpose He was
forced to use a violence, under the effects of
which I go halting all my days, saved and whole,
yet maimed to the end of time. I am not
ashamed of the mark, at least when I think of it
as God's signature I am able to glory in it, but
it never fails to remind me of a perverse wilful-
ness I am ashamed of. With many men God is
forced to such treatment: if any of us are under
it, God forbid we should mistake its meaning
and lie prostrate and despairing in the darkness
instead of clinging to Him Who has smitten and
will heal us.
For the treatment which Jacob received at
Peniel must hot be set aside as singular or ex-
ceptional. Sometimes God interposes between
us and a greatly-desired possession which we
have been counting upon as our right and as the
fair and natural consequence of our past efforts
and ways. The expectation of this possession
has indeed determined our movements and
shaped our life for some time past, and it would
not only be assigned to us by men as fairly ours,
Genesis xxxv.]
JACOIJ'S RETURN.
8l
but God also has Himself seemed to encourage
us to win it. Yet when it is now within sight.
and when we are rising to pass the little stream
which seems alone to separate us from it, we are
arrested by a strong, an irresistible hand. The
reason is, that God wishes us to be in such a
state of mind that we shall receive it as His gift,
so that it becomes ours by an indefeasible title.
Similarly, when advancing to a spiritual pos-
session, such checks are not without their use.
Many men look with longing to what is eternal
and spiritual, and they resolve to win this in-
heritance. And this resolve they often make as
if its accomplishment depended solely on their
own endurance. They leave almost wholly out
of account that the possibility of their entering
the state they long for is not decided by their
readiness to pass through any ordeal, spiritual or
physical, which may be required of them, but by
God's willingness to give it. They act as if by
taking advantage of God's promises, and by pass-
ing through certain states of mind and prescribed
duties, they could, irrespective of God's present
attitude toward them and constant love, win
eternal happiness. In the life of such persons
there must therefore come a time when their own
spiritual energy seems all to collapse in that
painful, utter way in which, when the body is ex-
hausted, the muscles are suddenly found to be
cramped and heavy and no longer responsive to
the will. They are made to feel that a spiritual
dislocation has taken place, and that their eager-
ness to enter life everlasting no longer stirs the
active energies of the soul.
In that hour the man learns the most valuable
truth he can learn, that it is God Who is wish-
ing to save him, not he who must wrest a bless-
ing from an unwilling God. Instead of any
longer looking on himself as against the world,
he takes his place as one who has the whole
energy of God's will at his back, to give him
rightful entrance into all blessedness. So long
as Jacob was in doubt whether it was not some
kind of man that was opposing him, he wrestled
on; and our foolish ways of dealing with God
terminate, when we recognise that He is not
such an one as ourselves. We naturally act as
if God had some pleasure in thwarting us — as if
we could, and even ought to, maintain a kind of
contest with God. We deal with Him as if He
were opposed to our best purposes and grudged
to advance us in all good, and as if He needed to
be propitiated by penitence and cajoled by forced
feelings and sanctimonious demeanour. We act
as if we could make more way were God not in
our way, as if our best prospects began in our
own conception and we had to win God over to
our views. If God is unwilling, then there is an
end: no device nor force will get us past Him.
If He is willing, why all this unworthy dealing
with Him, as if the whole idea and accomplish-
ment of salvation did not proceed from Him?
CHAPTER XXIV.
JACOB'S RETURN.
Genesis xxxv.
"As for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by
me in the land of Canaan in the way."— Gen. xlviii. 7.
The words of the Wrestler at the brook Jab-
bok, " Let me go, for the day breaketh," express
the truth that spiritual things will not submit
themselves to sensible tests. When we seek to
let the full daylight, by which we discern other
objects, stream upon them, they elude our grasp.
When we fancy we are on the verge of having
our doubts for ever scattered, and our supposi-
tions changed into certainties, the very approacil
of clear knowledge and demonstration seems to
drive those sensitive spiritual presences into
darkness. As Pascal remarked, and remarked as
the mouth-piece of all souls that have earnestly
sought for God, the world only gives us indica-
tions of the presence of a God Who conceals
Himself. It is, indeed, one of the most mys-
terious characteristics of our life in this world
that the great Existence which originates and
embraces all other Beings should Himself be so
silent and concealed: that there should be need
of subtle arguments to prove His existence, and
that no argument ever conceived has been found
sufficiently cogent to convince all men. One is
always tempted to say, how easy to end all doubt,
how easy for God so to reveal Himself as to
make unbelief impossible, and give to all men
the glad consciousness that they have a God.
The reason of this " reserve " of God must lie
in the nature of things. The greatest forces in
nature are silent and unobtrusive and incompre-
hensible. Without the law of gravitation the
universe would rush into ruin, but who has ever
seen this force? Its efifects are everywhere visi-
ble, but itself is shrouded in darkness and can-
not be comprehended. So much more must the
Infinite Spirit remain unseen and bafifiing all
comprehension. " No man hath seen God at
any time " must ever remain true. To ask for
God's name, therefore, as Jacob did, is a mistake.
For almost every one supposes that when he
knows the name of a thing he knows also
its nature. The giving of a name, therefore,
tends to discourage enquiry, and to beget
an unfounded satisfaction as if, when we know
what a thing is called, we know what it is.
The craving, therefore, which we all feel in com-
mon with Jacob — to have all mystery swept from
between us and God, and to see Him face to face,
so that we may know Him as we know our
friends — is a caving which cannot be satisfied.
You cannot ever know God as He is. Your
mind cannot comprehend a Being who is pure
Spirit, inhabiting no body, present with you
here but present also hundreds of millions of
miles away, related to time and to space and to
matter in ways utterly impossible for you to
comprehend.
What is possible, God has done. He has
made Himself known in Christ. We are assured,
on testimony that stands every kind of test,
that in Him, if nowhere else, we find God. And
yet even by Christ this same law of reserve if not
concealment was observed. Not only did He
forbid men and devils to proclaim who He was.
but when men, weary of their own doubts and
debatings, impatiently challenged him, " If thou
be the Christ tell us olainly," He declined to do
so. For really men must grow to the knowledge
of Him. Even a human face cannot be known
by once or twice seeing it; the practised artist
often misses the expression best loved by the in-
timate friend, or by the relative whose own
nature interprets to him the face in which he sees
himself reflected. Much more can the child of
God only attain to the knowledge of his Father's
face by first of all being a child of God, and then
by gradually growing up into His likeness.
82
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
But though God's operation is in darkness the
results of it are in the light. " As Jacob passed
over Peniel, the sun rose upon him, and he halted
upon his thigh." As Jacob's company halted
when they missed him, and as many anxious
eyes were turned back into the darkness, they
were unable still to see him; and even when the
darkness began to scatter, and they saw dimly
and far off a human figure, the sharpest eyes
among them declare it cannot be Jacob, for the
gait and walk, which alone they can judge by at
that distance and in that light, are not his. But
when at last the first ray of sunlight streams on
him from over the hills of Gilead, all doubt is at
an end; it is Jacob, but halting on his thigh.
And he himself finds it is not a strain which the
walking of a few paces will ease, nor a night
cramp which will pass off, nor a mere dream
which would vanish in broad day, but a real per-
manent lameness which he must explain to his
company. Has he missed a step on the bank in
the darkness, or stumbled or slipped on the slip-
pery stones of the ford? It is a far more real
thing to him than any such accident. So, how-
ever others may discredit the results of a work
on the soul which they have not seen — however
they may say of the first and most obvious re-
sults, " This is but a sickness of soul which the
rising sun will dispel; a feigned peculiarity of
walk which will be forgotten in the bustle of the
day's work " — it is not so, but every contact with
real life makes it more obvious that when God
touches a man the result is real. And as Jacob's
household and children in all generations
counted that sinew which shrank sacred, and
would not eat of it, so surely should we be rever-
ential towards God's work in the soul of our
neighbour, and respect even those peculiarities
which are often the most obvious first-fruits of
conversion, and which make it difficult for us to
walk in the same comfort with these persons, and
keep step with them as easily as once we did.
A reluctance to live like other good people, an
inability to share their innocent amusements, a
distaste for the very duties of this life, a harsh or
reserved bearing towards unconverted persons,
an awkwardness in speaking of their religious
experience, as well as an awkwardness in apply-
ing it to the ordinary circumstances of their life,
— these and many other of the results of God's
work on the soul should not be rudely dealt with,
but respected; for though not in themselves
either seemly or beneficial, they are evidence of
God's touch.
After this contest with the angel, the meeting
of Jacob with Esau has no separate significance.
Jacob succeeds with his brother because already
he has prevailed with God. He is on a satis-
factory footing now with the Sovereign who
alone can bestow the land and judge betwixt
him and his brother. Jacob can no longer sup-
pose that the chief obstacle to his advance is the
resentment of Esau. He has felt and submitted
to a stronger hand than Esau's. Such school-
ing we all need: and get, if we will take it. Like
Jacob, we have to make our way to our end
through numberless human interferences and
worldly obstacles. Some of these we have to
flee from, as Jacob from Laban; others we
must meet and overcome, as our Esaus. Our
own sin or mistake has put us under the power
of some whose influence is disastrous; others,
though we are not under their power at all, yet,
consciously or unconsciously to themselves, con-
tinually cross our path and thwart us, keep us
back and prevent us from effecting what we de-
sire, and from shaping things about us accord-
ing to our own ideas. And there will, from time
to time, be present to our minds obvious ways
in which we could defeat the opposition of these
persons, and by which we fancy we could tri-
umph over them. And what we are here taught
is, that we need look for no triumph, and it is a
pity for us if we win a triumph over any human
opposition, however purely secular and unchris-
tian, without first having prevailed with God in
the matter. He comes in between us and all
men and things, and, laying His hand on us,
arrests us from further progress till we have to
the very bottom and in every part adjusted the
affair with Him — and then, standing right with
Him, we can very easily, or at least we can, get
right with all things. And it should be a sug-
gestive and fruitful thought to the most of us
that, in all cases in which we sin against our
brother, God presents Himself as the champion
of the wronged party. One day or other we
must meet not the strongest putting of all those
cases in which we have erred as the offended
party could himself put them, but we must meet
them as put by the Eternal Advocate of justice
and right, who saw our spirit, our merely selfish
calculating, our base motive, our impure desire,
our unrighteous deed. Gladly would Jacob have
met the mightiest of Esau's host in place of this
invincible opponent, and it is this same Mighty
One, this same watchful guardian of right Who
threw Himself in Jacob's way, Who has His eye
on us. Who has tracked us through all our years,
and Who will certainly one time appear in our
path as the champion of every one we have
wronged, of every one whose soul we have
put in jeopardy, of every one to whom we have
not done what God intended we should do, of
every one whom we have attempted merely to
make use of; and in stating their case and show-
ing us what justice and duty would have required
of us. He will make us feel, what we cannot feel
till He Himself convinces us, that, in all our
dealings with men, wherein we have wronged
them we have wronged Him.
The narrative now prepares to leave Jacob and
make room for Joseph. It brings him back to
Bethel, thereby completing the history of his
triumph over the difficulties with which his life
had been so thickly studded. The interest and
much of the significance of a man's life come to
an end when position and success are achieved.
The remaining notices of Jacob's experience are
of a sorrowful kind; he lives under a cloud until
at the close the sun shines out again. We have
seen him in his youth making experiments in
life; in his prime founding a family and winning
his way by slow and painful steps to his own
place in the world; and now he enters on the last
stage of his life, a stage in which signs of break-
ing up appear almost as soon as he attains his
aim and place in life.
After all that had happened to Jacob, we
should have expected him to make for Bethel as
rapidly as his unwieldy company could be
moved forwards. But the pastures that had
charmed the eye of his grandfather captivated
Jacob as well. He bought land at Shechem, and
appeared willing to settle there. The vows
which he had uttered with such fervour when his
future was precarious are apparently quite for-
gotten, or more probably neglected, now that
Genesis xxxv.]
JACOB'S RETURN.
83
danger seems past. To go to Bethel involved
the abandonment of admirable pastures, and the
introduction of new religious views and habits
into his family life. A man who has large pos-
sessions, difficult and precarious relations to sus-
tain with the world, and a household unmanage-
able from its size, and from the variety of dispo-
sitions included in it, requires great independ-
ence and determination to carry out domestic
reform on religious grounds. Even a slight
change in our habits is often delayed because we
are shy of exposing to observation fresh and deep
convictions on religious subjects. Besides, we
forget our fears and our vows when the time of
hardship passes away; and that which, as young
men, we considered almost hopeless, we at
length accept as our right, and omit all remem-
brance and gratitude. A spiritual experience
that is separated from your present by twenty
years of active life, by a foreign residence, by
marriage, by the growing up of a family around
you, by other and fresher spiritual experiences,
is apt to be very indistinctly remembered. The
obligations you then felt and owned have been
overlaid and buried in the lapse of years. And
so it comes that a low tone is introduced into
your life, and your homes cease to be model
homes.
Out of this condition Jacob was roughly
awakened. Sinning by unfaithfulness and soft-
ness towards his family, he is, according to the
usual law, punished by family disaster of the
most painful kind. The conduct of Simeon and
Levi was apparently due quite as much to family
pride and religious fanaticism as to brotherlj'
love or any high moral view. In them first we
see how the true religion, when held by coarse
and ungodly men, becomes the root of all evil.
We see the first instance of that fanaticism which
so often made the Jews a curse rather than a
blessing to other nations. Indeed, it is but an
instance of the injustice, cruelty, and violence
that at all times result where men suppose that
they themselves are raised to quite peculiar privi-
leges and to a position superior to their fellows,
without recognising also that this position is
held by the grace of a holy God and for the good
of their fellows.
Jacob is now compelled to make a virtue of
necessity. He flees to Bethel to escape the ven-
geance of the Shechemites. To such serious
calamities do men expose themselves by arguing
with conscience and by refusing to live up to
their engagements. How can men be saved
from living merely for sheep-feeding and cattle-
breeding and trade and enjoyment? how can
they be saved from gradually expelling from
their character all principle and all high senti-
ment that conflicts with immediate advantage
and present pleasure, save by such irresistible
blows as here compelled Jacob to shift his camp?
He has spiritual perception enough left to see
what is meant. The order is at once issued:
" Put away the strange gods that are among you,
and be clean, and change your garments: and let
us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make
there an altar unto God, who answered me in
the day of my distress, and was with me in the
way which I went." Thus frankly does he ac-
knowledge his error, and repair, so far as he can,
the evil he has done. Thus decidedly does he
press God's command on those whom he had
hitherto encouraged or connived at. Even from
his favourite Rachel he takes her gods and buries
them. The fierce Simeon and Levi, proud of
the blood with which they had washed out their
sister's stain, are ordered to cleanse their gar-
ments and show some seemly sorrow, if they
can.
If years go by without any such incident oc-
curring in our life as drives us to a recognition
of our moral laxity and deterioration, and to a
frank and humble return to a closer walk with
God, we had need to strive to awaken ourselves
and ascertain whether we are living up to old
vows and are really animated by thoroughly
worthy motives. It was when Jacob came back
to the very spot where he had lain on the open
hill-side, and pointed out to his wives and chil-
dren the stone he had set up to mark the spot,
that he felt humbled as he cast his eye over the
flocks and tents he now owned. And if you can,
like Jacob, go back to spots in your life which
were very woful and perplexed, years even when
all continued dreary, dark, and hopeless, when
friendlessness and poverty, bereavement or dis-
ease, laid their chilling, crushing hands upon you,
times when you could not see what possible
good there was for you in the world; and if now
all this is solved, and your condition is in the
most striking contrast to what you can remem-
ber, it becomes you to make acknowledgment
to God such as you may have made to your
friends, such acknowledgment as makes it plain
that you are touched by His kindness. The ac-
knowledgment Jacob made was sensible and
honest. He put away the gods which had di-
vided the worship of his family. In our life
there is probably that which constantly tends to
usurp an undue place in our regard; something
which gives us more pleasure than the thought
of God, or from which we really expect a more
palpable benefit than we expect from God, and
which, therefore, we cultivate with far greater
assiduity. How easily, if we really wish to be
on a clear footing with God, can we discover
what things should be cast revengefully from us,
buried and stamped upon and numbered with the
things of the past. Are there not in your life
any objects for the sake of which you sacrifice
that nearness to God, and that sure hold of Him
you once enjoyed? Are you not conscious' oF
any pursuits, or hopes, or pleasures, or employ-
ments which practically have the effect of mak-
ing you indififerent to spiritual advancement, and
which make you shy of Bethel — shy of all that
sets clear before you your indebtedness to God,
and your own past vows and resolves?
" But," continues the narrative, '" ftw^ Deborah,
Rebekah's nurse, died;" that is, although Jacob
and his house were now living in thefear of God,
that did not exempt them from the otditiary dis-
tresses of family life. And among these. One
that falls on us with a chastening and mild sad-
ness all its own, occurs when there passes from
the family one of its oldest members, and- one
who has by the delicate tact of love gained in-
fluence over all, and has by the common consent
become the arbiter and mediator, the confidant
and counsellor of the family. They, indeed, are
the true salt of the earth whose own peace is so
deep and abiding, and whose purity is so thor-
ough and energetic, that into their ear we can
disburden the troubled heart or the guilty con-
science, as the wildest brook disturbs not and the
most polluted fouls not the settled depths of the
all-cleansing ocean. Such must Deborah have
beeiv, for the oak under which she was buried
84
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
was afterwards known as " the oak of weeping."
Specially must Jacob himself have mourned the
death of her whose face was the oldest in his
remernbranre, and with whom his mother and
his happy early days were associated. Very dear
to Jacob, as to most men, were those who had
been connected with and could tell him of his
parents, and remind him of his early years.
Deborah, by treating him still as a little boy,
perhaps the only one who now called him by the
pet name of childhood, gave him the pleasantest
relief from the cares of manhood and the ob-
sequious deportment of the other members of his
household towards him. So that when she went
a great blank was made to him: no longer was
the wise and happy old face seen in her tent door
to greet him of an evening; no longer could he
take refuge in the peacefulness of her old age
from the troubles of his lot: she being gone, a
whole generation was gone, and a new stage of
life was entered on.
But a heavier blow, the heaviest that death
could inflict, soon fell upon him. She who had
been as God's gift and smile to him since ever he
had left Bethel at the first is taken from him now
that he is restored to God's house. The nurn-
ber of his sons is completed, and the mother is
removed. Suddenly and unexpectedly the blow
fell, as they were journeying and fearing no ill.
Notwithstanding the confident and cheering,
though ambiguous, assurances of those about
her, she had that clear knowledge of her own
state which, without contradicting, simply put
aside such assurances, and, as her soul was de-
parting, feebly named her son Benoni, Son of
my sorrow. She felt keenly what was, to a
nature like hers, the very anguish of disappoint-
ment. She was never to feel the little creature
stirring in her arms with personal human life.
nor see him growing up to manhood as the son
of his father's right hand. It was this sad death
of Rachel's which made her the typical mother
in Israel. It was not an unclouded, merely pros-
perous life which could fitly have foreshadowed
the lives of those by whom the promised seed
was to come; and least of all of the virgin to
whom it was said. " A sword shall pierce through
thine own soul also." It was the wail of Rachel
that poetical minds among the Jews heard from
time to time mourning their national disasters —
"Rachel weeping" for her children, \vhen by
captivity they were separated from their mother
country, or when, by the sword of Herod, the
mothers of Bethlehem were bereaved of their
babes. But it was also observed that that which
brought this anguish on the mothers of Bethle-
hem was the birth there of the last Son of Israel,
the blossom of this long-growing plant, sud-
denly born after a long and barren period, the
son of Israel's right hand.
Still another death is registered in this chap-
ter. It took place twelve years after Joseph
went into Egypt, but is set down here for con-
venience. Esau and Jacob are, for the last time,
brought toeether over their dead father — and for
the last time, as they see that family likeness
which comes out so strikingly in the face of the
dead, do they feel drawn with brotherly affec-
tion to ereet one another as sons of one father.
In the dead Isaac, too, they find an object of
veneration more impressive than they had found
in the living father: the infirmities of age are ex-
changed for the mystery and majesty of death;
the man has passed out of reach of pity, of con-
tempt: the shrill, uncontrolled treble is no longer
heard, there are no weak, plaintive movements,
no childishness; but a solemn, august silence, a
silence that seems to bid on-lookers be still and
refrain from disturbing the first communings of
the departed soirit with things unseen.
The tenderness of these two brothers towards
one another and towards their father was prob-
ably quickened by remorse when they met at
his deathbed. They could not. perhaps, think
that they had hastened his end by causing him
anxieties which age has not strength to throw
off; but they could not miss the reflection that
the life now closed and finally sealed up might
have been a much brighter life had they acted
the part of dutiful, loving sons. Scarcely can
one of our number pass from among us without
leaving in our minds some self-reproach that we
were not more kindly towards him, and that now
he is beyond our kindness; that our opportunity
for being brotherly towards him is for ever gone.
And when we have very manifestly erred in this
respect, perhaps there are among all the stings of
a guilty conscience few more bitterly piercing
than this. Many a son who has stood unmoved
by the tears of a living mother — his mother by
whom he lives, who has cherished him as her
own soul, who has forgiven and forgiven and
forgiven him. who has toiled and prayed, and
watched for him — though he has hardened him-
self against her looks of imploring love and
turned carelessly from her entreaties and burst
through all the fond cords and snares by which
she has sought to keep him. has yet broken down
before the calm, unsolicitous, resting face of the
dead. Hitherto he has not listened to her plead-
ings, and now she pleads no more. Hitherto she
has heard no word of pure love from him, and
now she hears no more. Hitherto he has done
nothing for her of all that a son may do, and now
there is nothing he can do. All the goodness of
her life gathers up and stands out at once, and
the time for gratitude is past. He sees suddenly,
as by the withdrawal of a veil, all that that worn
body has passed through for him, and all the
goodness these features have expressed, and now
they can never light up with joyful acceptance of
his love and duty. Such grief as this finds its
one alleviation in the knowledge that we may
follow those who have gone before us; that we
may yet make reparation. And when we think
how many we have let pass without those frank,
human, kindly offices we might have rendered,
the knowledge that we also shall be gathered to
our people comes in as very cheering. It is a
grateful thought that there is a place where wc
shall be able to live rightly, where selfishness
will not intrude and sooil all. but will leave us
free to be to our neighbour all that we ought to
be and all that we would be.
CHAPTER XXV.
JOSEPH'S DREAMS.
Genesis xxxvii.
" Surely the wrath of man shall prai.se thee."— Ps.ai.m
Ixxvi. lo.
The migration of Israel from Canaan to Egypt
was a step of prime importance in the history.
Great difficulties surrounded it. and very ex-
traordinary means were used to bring it about.
Genesis xxxvii.j
JOSEPHS DREAMS.
85
The preparatory steps occupied about twenty
years, and nearly a fourth of the Book of Genesis
is devoted to this period. This migration v/as
a new idea. So little was it the result of an acci-
dental dearth, or of any of those unforeseen
calamities which cause families to emigrate from
our own country, that God had forewarned
Abraham himself that it must be. But only
when it was becoming matter of actual experi-
ence and o^ history did God make known the
precise object to be accomplished by it. This
He makes known to Jacob as he passes from
Canaan; and as, in abandoning the land he had
so painfully won, his heart sinks, he is sustained
by the assurance, " Fear not to go down into
Egypt; I will there make thee a great nation."
The meaning of the step, and the suitableness
of the time and of the place to which Israel mi-
grr.ted, are apparent. For more than two hun-
dred years now had Abraham and his descend-
an:s been wandering as pilgrims, and as yet there
were iio signs of God's promise being kept to
them. That promise had been of a land and of
a seed. Great fecundity had been promised to
the race; but instead of that there had been a re-
markable and perplexing barrenness, so that
after two centuries one tent could contain the
whole male population. In Jacob's time the
population began to increase, but just in propor-
tion as this oart of the promise showed signs of
fulfilment did the other part seem precarious.
For, in proportion to their increase, the family
became hostile to the Canaanites, and how
should they ever get past that critical point in
their history at which they would be strong
enough to excite the suspicion, jealousy, and
hatred of the indigenous tribes, and yet not
.strong enough to defend themselves against this
enmity? Their presence was tolerated, just as
.our countrymen tolerated the presence of French
refugees, on the score of their impotence to do
harm. They were placed in a quite anomalous
position; a single family who had continued for
two hundred years in a land which they could
only seem in jest to call theirs, dwelling as guests
amid the natives, maintaining peculiar forms of
worship and customs. Collision with the in-
habitants seemed unavoidable as soon as their
real character and pretensions oozed out, and as
soon as it seemed at all likely that they really
proposed to become owners and masters in the
land. And. in case of such collision, what could
be the result, but that which has ever followed
where a few score men, brave enough to be cut
down where they stood, have been exposed to
mass after mass of fierce and bloodthirsty bar-
barians? A small number of men have often
made good their entrance into lands where the
inhabitants greatly outnumbered them, but these
have commonly been highly disciplined troops,
as in the case of the handful of Spaniards who
seized Mexico and Peru; or they have been
backed by a power which could aid with vast
resources, as when the Romans held this coun-
trv, or when the English lad in India left his pen
on his desk and headed his few resolute country-
men, and held his own against unnumbered
millions. It may be argued that if even Abra-
ham with his own household swept Canaan clear
of invaders, it might now have been possible for
his grandson to do as much with increased
means at his disposal. But, not to mention that
every man has not the native genius for com-
mand and military enterprise which Abraham
had, it must be taken into account that a force
which is quite suiftcient for a marauding expedi-
tion or a night attack, is inadequate for the
exigencies of a campaign of several years' dura-
tion. The war which Jacob must have waged,
had hostilities been opened, must have been a
war of extermination, and such a war must have
desolated the house of Israel if victorious, and,
more probably by far, would have quite annihi-
lated it.
It is to obviate these dangers, and to secure
that Israel grow without let or hindrance, that
Jacob's household is removed to a land where
protection and seclusion would at once be se-
cured to them. In the land of Goshen, secured
from molestation partly by the influence of Jo-
seph, but much more by the caste-prejudices of
the Egyptians, and their hatred of all foreigners,
and shepherds in particular, they enjoyed such
prosperity and attained so rapidly the magni-
tude of a nation that some, forgetful alike of the
promise of God and of the natural advantages of
Israel's position, have refused to credit the ac-
counts given us of the increase in their popula-
tion. In a land so roomy, so fertile, and so se-
cluded as that in which they were now settled,
they had every advantage for making the transi-
tion from a family to a nation. Here they were
preserved from all temptation to mingle with
neighbours of a different race, and so lose their
special place as a people called out by God to
stand alone. The Egyptians would have scorned
the marriages which the Canaanites passionately
solicited. Here the very contempt in which they
were held proved to be their most valuable bul-
wark. And if Christians have any of the wisdom
of the serpent, they will often find in the con-
tempt or exclusiveness of worldly men a con-
venient barrier, preventing them, indeed, from
enjoying some privileges, but at the same time
enabling them, without molestation, to pursue
their own way. I believe young people espe-
cially feel put about by the deprivations which
they have to suffer in order to save their relig-
ious scruples; they are shut off from what their
friends and associates enjoy, and they perceive
that they are not so well liked as they would be
had they less desire to live by conscience and by
God's will. They feel ostracized, banished,
frowned upon, laid under disabilities; but all this
has its compensations: it forms for them a kind
of Goshen where they may worship and increase,
it runs a fence around them which keeps them
apart from much that tempts and from much
that enfeebles.
The residence of Israel in Egypt served an-
other important purpose. By contact with the
most civilised people of antiquity they emerged
from the semi-barbarous condition in which they
had previously been living. Going into Egypt
mere shepherds, as Jacob somewhat plaintively
and deprecatingly says to Pharaoh; not even
possessed, so far as we know, of the fundamental
arts on which civilisation rests, unable to record
in writing the revelations God made, or to read
them if recorded; having the most rudimentary
ideas of law and justice, and having nothing to
keep them together and give them form and
strength, save the one idea that God meant to
confer on them great distinction; they were
transferred into a land where government had
been so long established and law had come to be
so thoroughly administered that life and prop-
erty were as safe as among ourselves to-day.
86
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
where science had made such advances that even
the weather-beaten and time-stained relics of it
seem to point to regions into which even the
bold enterprise of modern investigation has not
penetrated, and where all the arts needful for
life were in familiar use, and even some prac-
tised which modern times have as yet been un-
able to recover. To no better school could the
barbarous sons of Bilhah and Zilpah have been
sent; to no more fitting discipline could the law-
less spirits of Reuben, Simeon, and Levi have
been subjected. In Egypt, where human life
was sacred, where truth was worshipped as a
deity, and where law was invested with the sanc-
tity which belonged to what was supposed to
have descended from heaven, they were brought
under influences similar to those which ancient
Rome exerted over conquered races.
The unwitting pioneer of this great movement
was a man in all respects fitted to initiate it
happily. In Joseph we meet a type of character
rare in any race, and which, though occasionally
reproduced in Jewish history, we should cer-
tainly not have expected to meet with at so early
a period. For what chiefly strikes one in Joseph
is a combination of grace and power, which is
commonly looked upon as the peculiar result of
civilising influences, knowledge of history, fa-
miliarity with foreign races, and hereditary
dignity. In David we find a similar flexibility
and grace of character, and a similar personal
superiority. We find the same bright and hu-
morous disposition helping him to play the man
in adverse circumstances; but we miss in David
Joseph's self-control and incorruptible purity, as
we also miss something of his capacity for dififi-
cult affairs of state. In Daniel this latter ca-
pacity is abundantly present, and a facility equal
to Joseph's in dealing with foreigners, and there
is also a certain grace or nobility in the Jewish
Vizier; but Joseph had a surplus of power which
enabled him to be cheerful and alert in doleful
circumstances, which Daniel would certainly
have borne manfully, but probably in a sterner
and more passive mood. Joseph, indeed, seemed
to inherit and happily combine the highest quali-
ties of his ancestors. He had Abraham's dignity
and capacity, Isaac's purity and power of self-
devotion, Jacob's cleverness and buoyancy and
tenacity. From his mother's family he had per-
sonal beauty, humour, and management.
A young man of such capabilities could riot
long remain insensible to his own powers or in-
different to his own destiny. Indeed, the con-
duct of his father and brothers towards him must
have made him self-conscious, even though he
had been wholly innocent of introspection. The
force of the impression he produced on his
family may be measured by the circumstance that
the princely dress given him by his father did
not excite his brothers' ridicule but their envy
and hatred. In this dress there was a manifest
suitableness to his person, and this excited them
to a keen resentment of the distinction. So too
they felt that his dreams were not the mere
whimsicalities of a lively fancy, but were pos-
sessed of a verisimilitude which gave them im-
portance. In short, the dress and the dreams
were insufferably exasperating to the brothers,
because they proclaimed and marked in a defi-
nite way the feeling of Joseph's superiority which
had already been vaguely rankling in their con-
sciousness. And it is creditable to Joseph that
this superiority should first have emerged in con-
nection with a point of conduct. It was in moral
stature that the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah felt
that they were outgrown by the stripling whom
they carried with them as their drudge. Neither
are we obliged to suppose that Joseph was a
gratuitous tale-bearer, or that when he carried
their evil report to his father he was actuated by
a prudish, censorious, or in any way unworthy
spirit. That he very well knew how to hold his
tongue no man ever gave more adequate proof;
but he that understands that there is a time to
keep silence necessarily sees also that there is a
time to speak. And no one can tell what torture
that pure young soul may have endured in the
remote pastures, when left alone to withstand
day after day the outrage of these coarse and un-
scrupulous men. An elder brother, if he will,
can more effectually guard the innocence of a
younger brother than any other relative can, but
he can also inflict a more exquisite torture.
Joseph, then, could not but come to think of
his future and of his destiny in this family. That
his father should make a pet of him rather than
of Benjamin, he would refer to the circumstance
that he was the oldest son of the wife of his
choice, of her whom first he had loved, and who
had no rival while he lived. To so charming a
companion as Joseph must always have been,
Jacob would naturally impart all the traditions
and hopes of the family. In him he found a
sympathetic and appreciative listener, who wiled
him on to endless narrative, and whose imagina-
tiveness quickened his own hopes and made the
future seem grander and the world more wide.
And what Jacob had to tell could fall into no
kindlier soil than the opening mind of Joseph.
No hint was lost, every promise was interpreted
by some waiting aspiration. And thus, like
every youth of capacity, he came to have his
day-dreams. These day-dreams, though de-
rided by those who cannot see the Caesar
in the careless trifler, and though often awk-
ward and even offensive in their expression,
are not always the mere discontented cravings
of youthful vanity, but are frequently instinctive
gropings towards the position which the
nature is fitted to fill. " Our wishes," it has
been said, " are the forefeeling of our capabili-
ties;" and certainly where there is any special
gift or genius in a man, the wish of his youth
is predictive of the attainment of manhood.
Whims, no doubt, there are, passing phases
through which natural growth carries us, flutter-
ings of the needle when too near some powerful
influence; yet amidst all variations the true direc-
tion will be discernible and ultimately will be
dominant. And it is a great art to discover what
we are fit for, so that we may settle down to our
own work, or patiently wait for our own place,
without enviously striving to rob every other
man of his crown and so losing our own. It is
an art that saves us much fretting and disap-
pointment and waste of time, to understand early
in life what it is we can accomplish, and what
precisely we mean to be at; "to recognise in
our personal gifts or station, in the circum-
stances and complications of our life, in our re-
lations to others, or to the world — the will of
God teaching us what we are, and for what we
ought to live." How much of life often is gone
before its possessor sees the use he can put jt to
and ceases to beat the air! How much of life is
an ill-considered but passionate striving after
what can never be attained, or a vain imitation
Genesis xxxvii.]
JOSEPH'S DREAMS.
87
of persons who have quite different talents and
opportunities from ourselves, and who are there-
fore set to quite another work than ours.
It was because Joseph's dreams embodied his
waking ambition that they were of importance.
Dreams become significant when they are the
concentrated essence of the main stream of the
waking thoughts, and picturesquely exhibit the
tendency of the character. " In a dream," says
Elihu, " in a vision of the night, when deep sleep
falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed;
then He openeth the ears ot men, and sealeth
their instruction, that He may withdraw man
from his purpose." This is precisely the use of
dreams: our tendencies, unbridled by reason and
fact, run on to results; the purposes which the
business and other good influences of the day
have kept down act themselves out in our
dreams, and we see the character unimpeded by
social checks, and as it would be were it un-
modified by the restraints and efforts and exter-
nal considerations of our conscious hours. Our
vanity, our pride, our malice, our impurity, our
deceit, our every evil passion, has free play, and
shows us its finished result, and in so vivid and
true though caricatured a form that we are
startled and withdrawn from our purpose. The
evil thought we have suffered to creep about
our heart seems in our dreams to become a deed,
and we wake in horror and thank God we can
yet refrain. Thus the poor woman, who in utter
destitution was beginning to find her child a bur-
den, dreamt she had drowned it, and woke in
horror at the fancied sound of the plunge — woke
to clasp her little one to her breast with the thrill
of a grateful affection that never again gave way.
So that while no man is so foolish as to expect
instruction from every dream any rnore than
from every thought that visits his waking mind,
yet every one who has been accumulating some
knowledge of himself is aware that he has drawn
a large part of this from his unconscious hours.
As the naturalist would know but a small part
of the animal kingdom by studying the creatures
that show themselves in the daylight, so there
are moles and bats of the spirit that exhibit
themselves most freely in the darkness; and there
are jungles and waste places in the character
which, if you look on them only in the sunshine,
may seem safe and lovely, but which at night
show themselves to be fall of all loathsome and
savage beasts.
With the simplicity of a guileless mind, and
with the natural proneness of members of one
family to tell in the morning the dreams they
have had, Joseph tells to the rest what seems to
himself interesting, if not very suggestive. Pos-
sibly he thought very little of his dream till he
saw how much importance his brothers attached
to it. Possibly there might be discernible in his
tone and look some mixture of youthful arro-
gance. And in his relation of the second dream,
there was discernible at least a confidence that it
would be realised, which was peculiarly intoler-
able to his brothers, and to his father seemed a
dangerous symptom that called for rebuke. And
yet " his father observed the saying;" as a parent
has sometimes occasion to check his child, and
yet, having done so, feels that that does not end
the matter; that his boy and he are in somewhat
different spheres, so that while he was certainly
justified m punishing such and such a manifesta-
tion of his character, there is yet something be-
hind that he does not quite understand, and for
which possibly punishment may not be exactly
the suitable award.
We fall into Jacob's mistake when we refuse
to acknowledee as genuine and God-inspired any
religious experience which we ourselves have not
passed through, and which appears in a guise
that is not only unfamiliar, but that is in some
particulars objectionable. Up to the measure of
our own religious experience, we recognise as
genuine, and sympathise with, the parallel ex-
perience of others; but when they rise above us
and get beyond us, we begin to speak of them
as visionaries, enthusiasts, dreamers. We con-
tent ourselves with pointing again and again to
the blots in their manner, and refuse to read the
future through the ideas they add to our knowl-
edge. But the future necessarily lies, not in the
definite and finished attainment, but in the in-
definite and hazy and dream-like germs that have
yet growth in them. The future is not with
Jacob, the rebuker, but with the dreaming, and,
possibly, somewhat offensive Joseph. It was
certainly a new element Joseph introduced into
the experience of God's people. He saw, ob-
scurely indeed, but with sufficient clearness to
make him thoughtful, that the man whom God
chooses and makes a blessing to others is so far
advanced above his fellows that they lean upon
him and pay him homage as if he were in the
place of God to them. He saw that his higher
powers were to be used for his brethren, and
that the high destiny he somehow felt to be his
was to be won by doing service so essential that
his family would bow before him and give them-
selves into his hand. He saw this, as every man
whose love keeps pace with his talent sees it,
and he so far anticipated the dignity of Him who,
in the deepest self-sacrifice, assumed a position
and asserted claims which enraged His brethren
and made even His believing mother marvel.
Joseph knew that the welfare of his family rested
not with the Esau-like good-nature of Reuben,
still less with the fanatical ferocity of Simeon
and Levi, not with the servile patience of Issa-
char, nor with the natural force and dignity of
Judah, but with some deeper qualities which, if
he himself did not yet possess, he at least valued
and aspired to.
//' Whatever Joseph thought of the path by
which he was to reach the high dignity which
his dreams foreshadowed, he was soon to learn
that the path was neither easy nor short. Each
man thinks that, for himself at least, an excep-
tional path will be broken out, and that without
difficulties and humiliations he will inherit the
kingdom. But it cannot be so. And as the first
step a lad takes towards the attainment of his
position often involves him in trouble and covers
him with confusion, and does so even although
he ultimately finds that it was the only path by
which he could have reached his goal; so, that
which was really the first step towards Joseph's
high destiny, no doubt seemed to him most •
calamitous and fatal. It certainly did so to his
brothers, who thought that they were effectually
and for ever putting an end to Joseph's preten-
sions. "Behold, this dreamer cometh; come
now therefore, and let us slay him, and we shall
see what will become of his dreams." They
were, however, so far turned from their purpose
by Reuben as to put him in a pit, meaning to
leave him to die, and doubtless they thought
themselves lenient in doing so. The less violent
the death inflicted, the less of murder seems to be
88
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
in it: so that he who slowly kills the body by
only wounding the affections often counts him-
self no murderer at all, because he strikes no
blood-shedding blow, and can deceive hirnself
into the idea that it is the working of his victim's
own spirit that is doing the damage.
The tank into which Joseph's brethren cast
him was apparently one of those huge reservoirs
excavated by shepherds in the East, that they
may have a supply of water for their flocks in the
end of the dry season, when the running waters
fail them. Bemg so narrow at the mouth that
they can be covered by a single stone, they
gradually widen a. id form a large subterranean
room; and the facility they thus afiford for the
confinement of prisoners was from the first too
obvious not to be commonly taken advantage of.
In such a place was Joseph left to die: under the
ground, sinking in mire, his flesh creeping at
the touch of unseen slimy creatures, in darkness,
alone: that is to say, in a species of confinement
which tames the most reckless and maddens the
best balanced spirits, which shakes the nerve of
the calmest, and has sometimes left the blankness
of idiocy in masculine understandings. A few
wild cries that ring painfully round his prison
show him he need expect no help from without;
a few wild and desperate beatings round the
shelving walls of rock show him there is no pos-
sibility of escape; he covers his face, or casts
himself on the floor of his dungeon to escape
within himself, but only to find this also in vain,
and to rise and renew efforts he knows to be
fruitless. Here, then, is what has come of his
fine dreams. With shame he now remembers
the beaming confidence with which he had re-
lated them; with bitterness he thinks of the
bright life above him, from which these few feet
cut him so absolutely ofif, and of the quick
termination that has been put to all his
hopes.
Into such tanks do young persons especially
get cast: finding themselves suddenly dropped
out of the lively scenery and bright sunshine in
which they have been living, down into roomy
graves where they seem left to die at leisure.
They had conceived a way of being useful in the
world: they had found an aim or a hope; they
had, like Joseph, discerned their place and were
making towards it. when suddenly they seem to
he thrown out and are left to learn that the world
can do very well without them, that the sun and
moon and the eleven stars do not drop from
their courses or make wail because of their sad
condition. High aims and commendable pur-
poses are not so easily fulfilled as they fancied.
The faculty and desire in them to be of service
are not recognised. Men do not make room for
them, and God seems to disregard the hopes He
has excited in them. The little attempt at living
they have made seems only to have got them-
selves and others into trouble. They begin to
, think it a mistake their being in the world at all;
they curse the day of their birth. Others are en-
joying this life, and seem to be making some-
thing of it, having found work that suits and
develops them; but. for their own part, they can-
not get fitted into life at any point, and are ex-
cluded from the onward movement of the world.
They are again and again flung back, until they
fear they are not to see the fulfilment of any one
bright dream that has ever visited them, and that
they are never, never at all, to live out the life
it is in them to live, or find light and scope for
maturing those germs of the rich human nature
that they feel within them.
All this is in the way to attainment. This or
that check, this long burial for years, does not
come upon you merely because stoppage and
hindrance have been useful to others, but be-
cause your advancement lies through these ex-
periences. Young persons naturally feel strongly
that life is all before them, that this life is, in the
first place, their concern, and that God must be
proved sufficient for this life, able to bring them
to their ideal. And the first lesson they have to
learn is, that mere youthful confidence and
energy are not the qualities that overcome the
world. They have to learn that humility, and
the ambition that seeks great things, but not for
ourselves, are the qualities really indispensable.
But do men become humble by being told to
become so, or by knowing they ought to be so?
God must make us humble by the actual experi-
ence we meet with in our ordinary life. Joseph,
no doubt, knew very well, what his aged grand-
father must often have told him, that a man
must die before he begins to live. But what
could an ambitious, happy youth make of this,
till he was thrown into the pit and left there? as
truly passing through the bitterness of death
as Isaac had passed through it, and as keenly
feeling the pain of severance from the light of
life. Then, no doubt, he thought of Isaac, and
of Isaac's God, till between himself and the im-
penetrable dungeon-walls the everlasting arms
seemed to interpose, and through the darkness
of his death-like solitude the face of Jacob's God
appeared to beam upon him, and he came to feel
what we must, by some extremity, all be made to
feel, that it was not in this world's life but in
God he lived, that nothing could befall him
which God did not will, and that what God had
for him to do, God would enable him to do.
The heartless barbarity with which the breth-
ren of Joseph sat down to eat and drink the very
dainties he had brought them from his fathc,
while they left him, as they thought, to starve,
has been regarded by all later generations as the
height of hard-hearted indifference. Amos, at a
loss to describe the recklessness of his own gen-
eration, falls back upon this incident, and cries
woe upon those " that drink wine in bowls, and
anoint themselves with the chief ointment, but
they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph."
We reflect, if we do not substantially reproduce,
their sin when we are filled with animosity
against those who usher in some higher kind of
life, effort, or worship, than we ourselves as yet
desire or are fit for. and which, therefore, reflects
shame on our incapacity; and when we would
fain, without using violence, get rid of such per-
sons. There are often schemes set on foot by
better men than ourselves, against which some-
how our spirit rises, yet which, did we con-
sider, we should at the most say with the cau-
tious Gamaliel, Let us beware of doing anything
to hinder this; let us see whether, perchance, it
he not of God. Sometimes there are in families
individuals who do not get the encouragement
in well-doing they might expect in a Christian
family, but are rather frowned upon and hin-
dered by the other members of it, because they
seem to be inaugurating a higher style of re-
ligion than the family is used to. and to be
reflecting from their own conduct a condemna-
tion of what has hitherto been current.
This treatment, who among us has not ex-
/
Genesis xxxix.]
jOSi-:?!! IN PRISON.
85
tended to Him who in His whole experience so
close!}^ resembles Joseph? So long as Christ is
to us merely, as it were, the pet of the family,
the innocent, guileless, loving Being on whom
we can heap prettv epithets, and in whom we
find play for our best affections, to whom it is
easier to show ourselves affectionate and well-
disposed than to the brothers who mingle with
us in all our pursuits: so long as He remains to
us as a child whose demands it is a relaxation to
fulfil, we fancy that we are giving Him our
hearts, and that He. if any. has our love. But
when He declares to us His dreams, and claims
to be our Lord, to whom with most absolute
homage we must bow, who has a right to rule
and means to rule over us, who will have His
will done by us and not our own, then the love
we fancied seems to pass into something like
aversion. His purposes we would fain believe
to be the idle fancies of a dreamer which He
Himself does not expect us to pay much heed to.
And if we do not resent the absolute surrender
of ourselves to Him which He demands, if the
bowing down of our fullest sheaves and brightest
glory to Him is too little understood by us to
be resented; if we think such dreams are not to
come true, and that He does not mean much by
demanding our homage, and therefore do not
resent the demand; yet possibly we can remem-
ber with shame how we have " anointed our-
selves with the chief ointment," lain listlesly en-
joying some of those luxuries which our Brother
has brought us from the Father's house, and yet
let Himself and His cause be buried out of sight
—enjoyed the good name of Christian, the pleas-
ant social refinements of a Christian land, even
the peace of conscience which the knowledge of
the Christian's God produces, and yet turned
away from the deeper emotions which His per-
sonal entreaties stir, and from those self-sacri-
ficing efforts which His cause requires if it is to
prosper.
There are, too, unstable Reubens still, whom
something always draws aside, and who are ever
out of the way when most needed; who, like him,
are on the other side of the hill when Christ's
cause is being betrayed; who still count their
own private business that which must be done,
and God's work that which may be done — work
for themselves necessary, and God's work only
voluntary and in the second place. And there
are also those who, though they would be hon-
estly shocked to be charged with murdering
Christ's cause, can yet leave it to perish.
CHAPTER XXVI.
JOSEPH IN PRISON.
Genesis xxxix.
"Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for
when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life."—
James i. 12.
Dramatists and novelists, who make it their
business to give accurate representations of hu-
man life, proceed upon the understanding that
there is a plot in it, and that if you take the be-
ginning or middle without the end, you must
fail to comprehend these- prior parts. And a
plot is pronounced good in proportion as. with-
out violating truth to nature, it brings the lead-
ing characters into situations of extreme danger
or distress, from which there seems no possible
exit, and in which the characters themselves may
have fullest opportunity to display and ripen
their individual excellences. A life is judged
poor and without significance, certainly un-
worthy of any longer record than a monumental
epitaph may contain, if there be in it no critical
passages, no emergencies when all anticipation
of the next step is baffled, or when ruin seems
certain. Though it has been brought to a suc-
cessful issue, yet, to make it worthy of our con-
sideration, it must have been brought to this
issue through hazard, through opposition, con-
trary to many expectations that were plausibly
entertained at the several stages of its career.
All men, in short, are agreed that the value of a
human life consists very much in the hazards and
conflicts through which it is carried; and yet we
resent God's dealing with us when it comes to
be our turn to play the hero, and by patient en-
durance and righteous endeavour to bring our
lives to a successful issue. How flat and tame
would this narrative have read had Joseph by
easy steps come to the dignity he at last reached
through a series of misadventures that called out
and ripened all that was manly and strong and
tender in his character. And take out of your
own life all your difficulties, all that ever pained,
agitated, depressed you, all that disappointed or
postponed your expectations, all that suddenly
called upon you to act in trying situations, all
that thoroughly put you to the proof — take all
this away, and what do you leave but a blank
insipid life that not even yourself can see any
interest in?
And when we speak of Joseph's life as typical,
we mean that it illustrates on a great scale and
in picturesque and memorable situations prin-
ciples which are obscurely operative in our own
experience. It pleases the fancy to trace the in-
cidental analogies between the life of Joseph and
that of our Lord. As our Lord, so Joseph was
the beloved of his father, sent by him to visit his
brethren, and see Aittr their well-being, seized
and sold by them to strangers, and thus raised
to be their Saviour and the Saviour of the world.
Joseph in prison pronouncing the doom of one
of his fellow-prisoners and the exaltation of the
other, suggests the scene on Calvary where the
one fellow-sufferer was taken, the other left.
Joseph's contemporaries had of course no idea
that his life foreshadowed the life of the Re-
deemer, yet they must have seen, or ought to
have seen, that the deepest humiliation is often
the path to the highest exaltation, that the de-
liverer sent by God to save a people may come
in the guise of a slave, and that false accusations,
imprisonment, years of suffering, do not make
it impossible nor even unlikely that he who en-
dures all these may be God's chosen Son.
In Joseph's being lifted out of the pit only to
pass into slavery, many a man of Joseph's years
has seen a picture of what has happened to him-
self. From a position in which they have been
as if buried alive, yoimg men not uncommonly"
emerge into a position preferable certainly to
that out of which they have been brought, but in
which they are compelled to work beyond their
strength, and that for some superior in whom
they have no special interest. Grinding toil, and
often cruel insult, are their portion; and no neck-
lace heavy with tokens of honour that afterwards
may be allotted them can ever quite hide the
scars made bv the iron collar of the slave. One
90
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
need not pity them over much, for they are
young and have a whole life-time of energy and
power of resistance in their spirit. And yet they
will often call themselves slaves, and complain
that all the fruit of their labour passes over to
others and away from themselves, and all pros-
pect of the fulfilment of their former dreams is
quite cut off. That which haunts their heart by
day and by night, that which they seem destined
and fit for, they never get time nor liberty to
work out and attain. They are never viewed as
proprietors of themselves, who may possibly
have interests of their own and hopes of their
own.
In Joseph's case there were many aggravations
of the soreness of such a condition. He had not
one friend in the country. He had no knowl-
edge of the language, no knowledge of any
trade that could make him valuable in Egypt —
nothing, in short, but his own manhood and his
faith in God. His introduction to Egypt was of
the most dispiriting kind. What could he ex-
pect from strangers, if his own brothers had
found him so obnoxious? Now when a man is
thus galled and stung by injury, and has learned
how little he can depend upon finding good faith
and common justice in the world, his character
will show itself in the attitude he assumes to-
wards men and towards life generally. A weak
nature, when it finds itself thus deceived and in-
jured, will sullenly surrender all expectation of
good and will vent its spleen on the world by
angry denunciations of the heartless and ungrate-
ful ways of men. A proud nature will gather
itself up from every blow, and determinedly work
its way to an adequate revenge. A mean nature
will accept its fate, and while it indulges in cyni-
cal and spiteful observations on human life, will
greedily accept the paltriest rewards it can
secure. But the supreme healthiness of Joseph's
nature resists all the infectious influences that
emanate from the world around him, and pre-
serves him from every kind of morbid attitude
towards the world and lif^. So easily did he
throw off all vain regrets and stifle all vindictive
and morbid feelings, so readily did he adjust
himself to and so heartily enter into life as it
presented itself to him, that he speedily rose to
be overseer in the house of Potiphar. His ca-
pacity for business, his genial power of devoting
himself to other men's interests, his clear in-
tegrity, were such, that this officer of Pharaoh's
could find no more trustworthy servant in all
Egypt — " he left all that he had in Joseph's hand:
and he knew not aught he had, save the bread
which he did eat."
Thus Joseph passed safely through a critical
period of his life — the period during which men
assume the attitude towards life and their fellow-
men which they commonly retain throughout.
Too often we accept the weapons with which the
world challenges us, and seek to force our way
by means little more commendable than the in-
justice and coldness we ourselves resent. Joseph
gives the first great evidence of moral strength
by rising superior to this temptation, to which
almost all men in one degree or other succumb.
You can hear him saying, deep down in his heart,
and almost unconsciously to himself: If the world
is full of hatred, there is all the more need that at
least one man should forgive and love; if men's
hearts are black with selfishness, ambition, and
lust, all the more reason for me to be pure and to
do my best for all whom my service can reach;
if cruelty, lying, and fraud meet me at every step,
all the more am I called to conquer these by in-
tegrity and guilelessness.
His capacity, then, and power of governing
others, were no longer dreams of his own, but
qualities with which he was accredited by those
who judged dispassionately and from the bare
actual results. But this recognition and pro-
motion brought with it serious temptation. So
capable a person was he that a year or two had
brought him to the highest post he could expect
as a slave. His advancement, therefore, only
brought his actual attainment into more painful
contrast with the attainment of his dreams. As
this sense of disappointment becomes more
familiar to his heart, and threatens, under the
monotonous routine of his household work, to
deepen into a habit, there suddenly opens to him
a new and unthought-of path to high position.
An intrigue with Potiphar's wife might lead to
the very advancement he sought. It might lift
him out of the condition of a slave. It may
have been known to him that other men had not
scrupled so to promote their own interests. Be-
sides, Joseph was young, and a nature like his,
lively and sympathetic, must have felt deeply that
in his position he was not likely to meet such a
woman as could command his cordial love.
That the temptation was in any degree to the
sensual side of his nature there is no evidence
whatever. For all that the narrative says, Poti-
phar's wife may not have been attractive in per-
son. She may have been; and as she used per-
sistently, " day by day," every art and wile by
which she could lure Joseph to her mind, in
some of his moods and under such circumstances
as she would study to arrange he may have felt
even this element of the temptation. But it is
too little observed, and especially by young men
who have most need to observe it, that in such
temptations it is not only what is sensual that
needs to be guarded against, but also two much
deeper-lying tendencies — the craving for loving
recognition, and the desire to respond to the
feminine love for admiration and devotion. The
latter tendency may not seem dangerous, but I
am sure that if an analysis could be made of the
broken hearts and shame-crushed lives around
us, it would be found that a large proportion of
misery is due to a kind of uncontrolled and mis-
taken chivalry. Men of masculine make are
prone to show their regard for women. This re-
gard, when genuine and manly, will show itself
in purity of sympathy and respectful attention.
But when this regard is debased by a desire to
please and ingratiate one's self, men are precipi-
tated into the unseemly expressions of a spurious
manhood. The other craving — the craving for
love — acts also in a somewhat latent way. It is
this craving which drives men to seek to satisfy
themselves with the expressions of love, as if
thus they could secure love itself. They do not
distinguish between the two; they do not recog-
nise that what they most deeply desire is love,
rather than the expression of it; and they awake
to find that precisely in so far as they have ac-
cepted the expression without the sentiment, in
so far have they put love itself beyond their
reach.
This temptation was, in Joseph's case, aggra-
vated by his beine in a foreign country, unre-
strained by the expectations of his own family,
or by the eye of those he loved. He had, how-
ever, that which restrained him, and made the
Genesis xxxix.]
JOSEPH IN PRISON.
91
sin seem to him an impossible wickedness, the
thought of which he could not, for a moment,
entertain. " Behold, my master wotteth not
what is with me in the house, and he hath com-
mitted all that he hath to my hand; there is none
greater in this house than I; neither hath he
kept back anything from me but thee, because
thou art his wife: how then can I do this great
wickedness, and sin against God?" Gratitude
to the man who had pitied him in the slave
market, and shown a generous confidence in a
comparative stranger, was, with Joseph, a
stronger sentiment than any that Potiphar's wife
could stir in him. One can well believe it. We
know what enthusiastic devotedness a young
man of any worth delights to give to his superior
who has treated him with justice, generosity, and
confidence; who himself occupies a station of
importance in public life; and who, by a dignified
graciousness of demeanour, can make even the
slave feel that he too is a man, and that through
his slave's dress his proper manhood and worth
are recognised. There are few stronger senti-
ments than the enthusiasm or quiet fidelity that
can thus be kindled, and the influence such a
superior wields over the young mind is para-
mount. To disregard the rights of his master
seemed to Joseph a great wickedness and sin
against God. The treachery of the sin strikes
him; his native discernment of the true rights of
every party in the case cannot, for a moment, be
hoodwinked. He is not a man who can, even in
the excitement of temptation, overlook the con-
sequences his sin may have on others. Not un-
steadied by the flattering solicitations of one so
much above him in rank, nor sullied by the con-
tagion of her vehement passion; neither afraid to
incur the resentment of one who so regarded
him, nor kindled to any impure desire by contact
with her blazing lust; neither scrupling thor-
oughly to disappoint her in himself, nor to make
her feel her own great guilt, he flung from him
the strong inducements that seemed to net him
round and entangle him as his garment did, and
tore himself, shocked and grieved, from the be-
seeching hand of his temptress.
The incident is related not because it was the
most violent temptation to which Joseph was
ever exposed, but because it formed a necessary
link in the chain of circumstances that brought
him before Pharaoh. And however strong this
temptation may have been, more men would be
found who could thus have spoken to Potiphar's
wife than who could have kept silence when ac-
cused by Potiphar. For his purity you will find
his equal, one among a thousand; for his mercy
scarcely one. For there is nothing more in-
tensely trying than to live under false and pain-
ful accusations, which totally misrepresent and
damage, your character, which effectually bar
your advancement, and which yet you have it in
your power to disprove. Joseph, feeling his in-
debtedness to Potiphar, contents himself with the
simple averment that he himself is innocent.
1 he word is on his tongue that can put a very
different face on the matter, but rather than
u'ter that word, Joseph will suffer the stroke
that otherwise must fall on his master's honour;
will pass from his high place and office of trust,
through the jeering or possibly compassionating
sUves, branded as one who has betrayed the
frankest confidence, and is fitter for the dungeon
than the stewardship of Potiphar. He is con-
tent to lie under the cruel suspicion that he had
in the foulest way wronged the man whom most
he should have regarded, and whom in point of
fact he did enthusiastically serve. There was one
man in Egypt whose good-will he prized, and
this man now scorned and condemned him, and
this for the very act by which Joseph had proved
most faithful and deserving.
And even after a long imprisonment, when he
had now no reputation to maintain, and when
such a little bit of court scandal as he could have
retailed would have been highly palatable and
possibly useful to some of those polished ruffians
and adventurers who made their dungeon ring
with questionable tales, and with whom the free
and levelling intercourse of prison life had put
him on the most familiar footing, and when they
twitted and taunted him with his supposed crime,
and gave him the prison sobriquet that would
most pungently embody his villainy and failure,
and when it might plausibly have been pleaded
by himself that such a woman should be exposed,
Joseph uttered no word of recrimination, but
quietly endured, knowing that God's providence
could allow him to be merciful; protesting, when
needful, that he himself was innocent, but
seeking to entangle no one else in his mis-
fortune.
It is this that has made the world seem so ter-
rible a place to many — that the innocent must so
often suffer for the guilty, and that, without ap-
peal, the pure and loving must lie in chains and
bitterness, while the wicked live and see good
days. It is this that has made men most despair-
ingly question whether there be indeed a God in
heaven Who knows who the real culprit is, and
yet suffers a terrible doom slowly to close
around the innocent; Who sees where the guilt
lies, and yet moves no finger nor speaks the
word that would bring justice to light, shaming
the secure triumph of the wrongdoer, and sav-
ing the bleeding spirit from its agony. It was
this that came as the last stroke of the passion of
our Lord, that He was numbered among the
transgressors; it was this that caused or materi-
ally increased the feeling that God had deserted
Him; and it was this that wrung from Him the
cry which once was wrung from David, and may
well have been wrung from Joseph, when, cast
into the dungeon as a mean and treacherous vil-
lain, whose freedom was the peril of domestic
peace and honour, he found himself again help-
less and forlorn, regarded now not as a mere
worthless lad, but as a criminal of the lowest
type. And as there always recur cases in which
exculpation is impossible just in proportion as
the party accused is possessed of honourable
feeling, and where silent acceptance of doom is
the result not of convicted guilt, but of the very
triumph of self-sacrifice, we must beware of over-
suspicion and injustice. There is nothing in
which we are more frequently mistaken than in
our suspicions and harsh judgments of others.
" But the Lord was with Joseph, and allowed
him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of
the keeper of the prison." As in Potiphar's
house, so in the king's house of detention, Jo-
seph's fidelity and serviceableness made him
seem indispensable, and by sheer force of char-
acter he occupied the place rather of governor
than of prisoner. The discerning men he had to
do with, accustomed to deal with criminals and
suspects of all shades, very quickly perceived that
in Joseph's case justice was at fault, and that he
was a mere scape-goat. Well might Potiphar's
92
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
wife, like Pilate's, have had warning dreams re-
garding the innocent person who was being con-
demned; and probably Potiphar himself had
suspicion enough of the true state of matters to
prevent him from going to extremities with Jo-
seph, and so to imprison him more out of de-
ference to the opinion of his household, and for
the sake of appearances, than because Joseph
alone was the object of his anger. At any rate,
such was the vitality of Joseph's confidence in
God, and such was the light-heartedness that
sprang from his integrity of conscience, that he
was free from all absorbing anxiety about him-
self, and had leisure to amuse and help his fel-
low-prisoners, so that such promotion as a gaol
could afford he won, from a dungeon to a chain,
from a chain to his word of honour. Thus even
in the unlatticed dungeon the sun and moon look
in upon him and bow to him; and while his sheaf
seems at its poorest, all rust and mildew, the
sheaves of his masters do homage.
After the arrival of two such notable criminals
as the chief butler and baker of Pharaoh — the
chamberlain and steward of the royal household
— Joseph, if sometimes pensive, must yet have
had sufficient entertainment at times in convers-
ing with men who stood by the king, and were
familiar with the statesmen, courtiers, and mili-
tary men who frequented the house of Potiphar.
He had now ample opportunity for acquiring in-
formation which afterwards stood him in good
stead, for apprehending the character of Pha-
raoh, and for making himself acquainted with
many details of his government, and with the
general condition of the people. Officials in dis-
grace would be found much more accessible and
much more communicative of important infor-
mation than officials in court favour could have
been to one in Joseph's position.
It is not surprising that three nights before
Pharaoh's birthday these functionaries of the
court should have recalled in sleep such scenes
as that day was wont to bring round, nor that
they should vividly have seen the parts they
themselves used to play in the festival. Neither
is it surprising that they should have had very
anxious thoughts regarding their own fate on a
day which was chosen for deciding the fate of
political or courtly offenders. But it is remark-
able that they having dreamed these dreams
Joseph should have been found willing to inter-
pret them. One desires some evidence of Jo-
seph's attitude towards God during this period
when God's attitude towards him might seem
doubtful, and especially one would like to know
what Joseph by this time thought of his juvenile
dreams, and whether in the prison his face wore
the same beaming confidence in his own future
which had smitten the hearts of his brothers with
impatient envy of the dreamer. We seek some
evidence, and here we find it. Joseph's willing-
ness to interpret the dreams of his fellow-pris-
oners proves that he still believed in his own,
that among his other qualities he had this char-
acteristic also of a steadfast and profound soul,
that he " reverenced as a man the dreams of his
youth." Had he not done so, and had he not
yet hoped that somehow God would bring truth
out of them, he would surely have said: Don't
you believe in dreams; they will only get you
into difficulties. He would have said what some
of us could dictate from our own thoughts: I
won't meddle with dreams any more; I am not
so young as I once was; doctrines and principles
that served for fervent romantic youth seem
puerile now, when I have learned what human
life actually is. I can't ask this man, who knows
the world and has held the cup for Pharaoh, and
is aware what a practical shape the king's anger
takes, to cherish hopes similar to those which
often seem so remote and doubtful to myself.
My religion has brought me into trouble: it has
lost me my situation, it has kept me poor, it has
niade me despised, it has debarred me from en-
joyment. Can I a?k this man to trust to inward
whisperings which seem to have so misled me?
No, no; let every man bear his own burden. If
he wishes to become religious, let not me bear
the responsibility. If he will dream, let him find
some other interpreter.
This casual conversation, then, with his fellow-
prisoners was for Joseph one of those perilous
moments when a man holds his fate in his hand,
and yet does not know that he is specially on
trial, but has for his guidance and safe-conduct
through the hazard only the ordinary safeguards
and lights by the aid of which he is framing his
daily life. A man cannot be forewarned of trial,
if the trial is to be a fair test of his habitual life.
He must not be called to the lists by the herald's
trumpet warning him to mind his seat and grasp
his weapon; but must be suddenly set upon if his,
habit of steadiness and balance is to be tested,
and the warrior-instinct to which the right
weapon is ever at hand. As Joseph, going the
round of his morning duty and spreading what
might stir the appetite of these dainty courtiers,
noted the gloom on their faces, had he not been
of a nature to take upon himself the sorrows of
others, he might have been glad to escape from
their presence, fearful lest he should be infected
by their depression, or should become an object
on which they might vent their ill-humour. But
he was girt with a healthy cheerfulness that
could bear more than his own burden; and his
pondering of his own experience made him sen-
sitive to all that affected the destinies of other
men.
Thus Joseph in becoming the interpreter of
the dreams of other men became the fulfiller of
his own. Had he made light of the dreams of
his fellow-prisoners because he had already made
light of his own, he would, for aught we can see,
have died in the dungeon. And, indeed, what
hope is left for a man, and what deliverance is
possible, when he makes light of his own most
sacred experience, and doubts whether after all
there was any Divine voice in that part of his
life which once he felt to be full of significance?
Sadness, cynical worldliness, irritability, sour
and isolating selfishness, rapid deterioration in
every part of the character — these are the results
which follow our repudiation of past experience
and denial of truth that once animated and puri-
fied us; when, at least, this repudiation and denial
are not themselves the results of our advance to
a higher, more animating, and more purifying
truth. We cannot but leave behind us many
" childish things," beliefs that we now recognise
as mere superstitions, hopes and fears which do
not move the maturer mind; we cannot but seek
always to be stripping ourselves of modes of
thinking which have served their purpose and
are out of date, but we do so only for the sake of
attaining freer movement in all serviceable and
righteous conduct, and more adequate covering
for the permanent weaknesses of our own nature
— " not for that we would be unclothed, but
Genesis xli.]
PHARAOH'S DREAMS.
95
clothed upon," that truth partial and dawning
may be swallowed up in the perfect light of noon.
And when a supposed advance in the knowledge
of things spiritual robs us of all that sustains
true spiritual iile in us, and begets an angry con-
tempt of our own past experience and a proud
scorning of the dreams that agitate other men;
when it ministers not at all to the growth in us
of what is tender and pure and loving and pro-
gressive, but hardens us to a sullen or coarsely
riotous or coldly calculating character, we can-
not but question whether it is not a delusion
rather than a truth that has taken possession
of us.
If it is fanciful, it is yet almost inevitable, to
compare Joseph at this stage of his career to
the great Interpreter who stands between God
and us. and makes all His signs intelligible.
Those Egyptians could not forbear honouring
Joseph, who was able to solve to them the mys-
teries on the borders of which the Egyptian mind
continually hovered, and which it symbolized by
its mysterious sphinxes, its strange chambers of
I imagery, its unapproachable divinities. And we
bow before the Lord Jesus Christ, because He
can read our fate and unriddle all our dim antici-
pations of good and evil, and make intelligible
to us the visions of our own hearts. There is
that in us, as in these men, from which a skilled
eye could already read our destiny. In the eye
of One who sees the end from the beginning,
and can distinguish between the determining in-
fluences of character and the insignificant mani-
festations of a passing mood, we are already de-
signed to our eternal places. And it is in Christ
alone your future is explained. You cannot
understand your future without taking Him into
your confidence. You go forward blindly to
meet you know not what, unless you listen to
His interpretation of the vague presentiments
that visit you. Without Him what can we make
of those suspicions of a future judgment, or of
those yearnings after God, that hang about our
hearts? Without Him what can we make of the
idea and hope of a better life than we are .tow
living, or of the strange persuasion that all will
yet be well — a persuasion that seems so ground-
less, and which yet will not be shaken ofi, but
finds its explanation in Christ? The excess of
side light that falls across our path from the
present seems only to make the future more ob-
scure and doubtful, and from Him alone do we
receive any interpretation of ourselves that even
seems to be satisfying. Our fellow-prisoners
are often seen to be so absorbed in their own
affairs that it is vain to seek light from them;
but He, with patient, self-forgetting friendliness,
is ever disengaged, and even elicits, by the kindly
and interrogating attitude He takes towards us,
the utterance of all our woes and perplexities.
And it is because He has had dreams Himself
that He has become so skilled an interpreter of
ours. It is because in His own life He had His
mind hard pressed for a solution of those very
problems which baffle us, because He had for
Himself to adjust God's promise to the ordinary
and apparently casual and untoward incidents of
a human life, and because He had to wait long
before it became quite clear how one Scripture
after another was to be fulfilled by a course of
simple confiding obedience — it is because of
this experience of His own, that He can now
enter into and rightly guide to its goal every
longing we cherish.
CHAPTER XXVII.
PHARAOH'S DREAMS.
Genesis xli.
"Thus saith the Lord, that frustrateth the tokens ot
the liars, and maketh divinei s mad ; that confirmeth the
word of His servant, and perforineth the counsel ot His
messengers; that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and
shall perform all My pleasure."— l.SA. xliv. 25, 28.
The preceding act in this great drama — the
act comprising the scenes of Joseph's temptation,
unjust imprisonment, and interpretation of his
fellow-prisoners' dreams — was written for the
sake of explaining how Joseph came to be intro-
duced to Pharaoh. Other friendships may have
been formed in the prison, and other threads
may have been spun which went to make up the
life of Joseph, but this only is pursued. For a
time, however, there seemed very little prospect
that this would prove to be the thread on which
his destiny hung. Joseph made a touching ap-
peal to the Chief Butler; " yet did not the Chief
Butler remember Joseph, but forgat him." You
can see him in the joy of his release affection-
ately pressing Joseph's hand as the king's mes-
sengers knocked off his fetters. You can see
him assuring Joseph, by his farewell look, that
he might trust him: mistaking mere elation at
his own release for warmth of feeling towards
Joseph, though perhaps even already feeling just
the slightest touch of awkwardness at being seen
on such intimate terms with a Hebrew slave.
How could he, when in the palace of Pharaoh
and decorated with the insignia of his office and
surrounded by courtiers, break through the for-
mal etiquette of the place? What with the pleas-
ant congratulations of old friends, and the ac-
cumulation of business since he had been im-
prisoned, and the excitement of restoration from
so low and hopeless to so high and busy a posi-
tion, the promise to Joseph is obliterated from
his mind. If it once or twice recurs to his mem-
ory, he persuades himself he is waiting for a
good opening to mention Joseph. It would per-
haps be unwarrantable to say that he admits the
idea that he is in no way indebted to Joseph,
since all that Joseph had done was to interpret,
but bj'^ no means to determine, his fate.
The analogy which we could not help seeing
between Joseph's relation to his fellow-prisoners,
and our Lord's relation to us, pursues us here.
For does not the bond between us and Him seem
often very slender, when once we have received
from Him the knowledge of the King's good-
will, and find ourselves set in a place of security?
Is not Christ with many a mere stepping-stone
for their own advancement, and of interest only
so long as they are in anxiety about their own
fate? Their regard for Him seems abruptly to
terminate as soon as they are ushered to freer
air. Brought for a while into contact with Him,
the very peace and prosperity which that inter-
course has introduced them to become opiates
to dull their memory and their gratitude. Thej'
have received all they at present desire, they have
no more dreams, their life has become so plain
and simple and glad that they need no inter-
preter. They seem to regard Him no more than
an official is regarded who is set to discharge to
all comers some duty for which he is paid; who
mingles no love with his work, and from whom
94
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
they would receive the same benefits whether he
had any personal interest in them or no. But
there is no Christianity where there is no loving
remembrance of Christ. If your contact with
Him has not made Him your Friend whom you
can by no possibility forget, you have missed the
best result of your introduction to Him. It
makes one think meanly of the Chief Butler that
such a personality as Joseph's had not more
deeply impressed him— that everything he heard
and saw among the courtiers did not make him
say to himself: There is a friend of mine, in
prison hard by, that for beauty, wisdom, and
vivacity would more than match the finest of you
all. And it says very little for us if we can have
known anything of Christ without seeing that in
Him we have what is nowhere else, and without
finding that He has become the necessity of our
life to whom we turn at every point.
But, as things turned out, it was perhaps as
well for Joseph that his promising friend did for-
get him. For, supposing the Chief Butler had
overcome his natural reluctance to increase his
own indebtedness to Pharaoh by interceding for
a friend, supposing he had been willing to risk
the friendship of the Captain of the Guard by
interfering in so delicate a matter, and supposing
Pharaoh had been willing to listen to him, what
would have been the result? Probably that Jo-
seph would have been sold away to the quarries,
for certainly he could not have been restored to
Potiphar's house; or, at the most, he might have
received his liberty, and a free pass out of Egypt.
That is to say, he would have obtained liberty to
return to sheep-shearing and cattle-dealing and
checkmating his brothers' plots. In any prob-
able case his career would have tended rather
towards obscurity than towards the fulfilment of
his dreams.
There seems equal reason to congratulate Jo-
seph on his friend's forgetfulness, when we con-
sider its probable effects, not on his career, but
on his character. When he was left in prison
after so sudden and exciting an incursion of the
outer world as the king's messengers would
make, his mind must have run chiefly in two
lines of thought. Naturally he would feel some
envy of the man who was being restored; and
when day after day passed and more than the
former monotony of prison routine palled on his
spirit; when he found how completely he was
forgotten, and how friendless and lone a crea-
ture he was in that strange land where things had
gone so mysteriously against him; when he saw
before him no other fate than that which he had
seen befall so many a slave thrown into a dun-
geon at his master's pleasure and never more
heard of, he must have been sorely tempted to
hate the whole world, and especially those breth-
ren who had been the beginning of all his mis-
fortunes. Had there been any selfishness in so-
lution in Joseph's character, this is the point at
which it would have quickly crystallized into
permanent forms. For nothing more certainly
elicits and confirms selfishness than bad treat-
ment. But from his conduct on his release, we
see clearly enough that through all this trying
time his heroism was not only that of the strong
man who vows that though the whole world is
against him the day will come when the world
shall have need of him, but of the saint of God
in whom suffering and injustice leave no bitter-
ness aeainst his fellows, nor even provoke one
slightest morbid utterance.
But another process must have been going on
in Joseph's mind at the same time. He must
have felt that it was a very serious thing that he
had been called upon to do in interpreting God's
will to his fellow-prisoners. No doubt he fell
into it quite naturally and aptly, because it was
liker his proper vocation, and more of his char-
acter could come out in it than in anything he
had yet done. Still, to be mixed up thus with
matters of life and death concerning other
people, and to have men of practical ability and
experience and high position listening to him as
to an oracle, and to find that in very truth a
great power was committed to him, was calcu-
lated to have some considerable result one way or
other on Joseph. And these two years of un-
relieved and sobering obscurity cannot but be
considered most opportune. For one of two
things is apt to follow the world's first recogni-
tion of a man's gifts. He is either induced to
pander to the world's wonder and become arti-
ficial and strained in all he does, so losing the
spontaneity and naturalness and sincerity which
characterise the best work; or he is awed and
steadied. And whether the one or the other re-
sult follow, will depend very much on the other
things that are happening to him. In Joseph's
case it was probably well that after having made
proof of his powers he was left in such circum-
stances as would not only give him time for re-
flection, but also give a humble and believing
turn to his reflections. He was not at once
exalted to the priestly caste, nor enrolled among
the wise men, nor put in any position in which
he would have been under constant temptation
to display and trifle with his power; and so he
was led to the conviction that deeper even than
the joy of receiving the recognition and grati-
tude of men was the abiding satisfaction of hav-
ing done the thing God had given him to do.
These two years, then, during which Joseph's
active mind must necessarily have been forced to
provide food for itself, and have been thrown
back upon his past experience, seem to have
been of eminent service in maturing his char-
acter. The self-possessed dignity and ease of
command which appear in him from the moment
when he is ushered into Pharaoh's presence have
their roots in these two years of silence. As
the bones of a strong man are slowly, impercep-
tibly knit, and gradually take the shape and
texture they retain throughout; so during these
years there was silently and secretly consolidat-
ing a character of almost unparalleled calmness
and power. One has no words to express how
tantalising it must have been to Joseph to see
this Egyptian have his dreams so gladly and
speedily fulfilled, while he himself, who had so
long waited on the true God, was left waiting
still, and now so utterly unbefriended that there
seemed no possible way of ever again connecting
himself with the world outside th6 prison walls.
Being pressed thus for an answer to the ques-
tion. What does God mean to make of my life?
he was brought to see and to hold as the most
important truth for him, that the first concern
is, that God's purposes be accomplished; the
second, that his own dreams be fulfilled. He
was enabled, as we shall see in the sequel, to put
God truly in the first place, and to see that by
forwarding the interests of other men, even
though they were but light-minded chief butlers
at a foreign court, he might be as serviceably
furthering the purposes of God, as if he were
Genesis xli.]
PHARAOH'S DREAMS.
95
forwarding his own interests. He was com-
pelled to seek for some principle that would sus-
tain and guide him in the midst of much disap-
pointment and perplexity, and he found it in the
conviction that the essential thing to be accom-
plished in this world, and to which every man
must lay his shoulder, is God's purpose. Let
that go on, and all else that should go on will
go on. And he further saw that he best fulfils
God's purpose who, without anxiety and impa-
tience, does the duty of the day, and gives him-
self without stint to the " charities that soothe
and heal and bless."
.His perception of the breadth of God's pur-
pose, and his profound and sympathetic and
active submission to it, were qualities too rare
not to be called into influential exercise. After
two years he is suddenly summoned to become
God's interoreter to Pharaoh. The Egyptian
king was in the unhappy though not uncommon
position of having a revelation from God which
he could not read, intimations and presentiments
he could not interpret. To one man is given the
revelation, to another the interpretation. The
official dignity of the king is respected, and to
bim is given the revelation which concerns the
welfare of the whole people. But to read God's
meaning in a revelation requires a spiritual in-
telligence trained to sympathy with His pur-
poses, and such a spirit was found in Joseph
alone.
The dreams of Pharaoh were thoroughly
Egyptian. The marvel is, that a symbolism so
familiar to the Egyptian eye should not have
been easily legible to even the most slenderly
gifted of Pharaoh's wise men. " In my dream,"
says the king, " behold, I stood upon the bank
of the river: and, behold, there came up out of
the river seven kine," and so on. Every land or
city is proud of its river, but none has such
cause to be so as Egypt of its Nile. The coun-
try is accurately as well as poetically called " the
gift of Nile." Out of the river do really come
good or bad years, fat or lean kine. Wholly
dependent on its annual rise and overflow for the
irrigating and enriching of the soil, the people
worship it and love it, and at the season of its
overflow give way to the most rapturous expres
sions of joy. The cow also was reverenced as
the symbol of the earth's productive power. If
then, as Joseph avers, God wished to show to
Pharaoh that seven years of plenty were ap-
proaching, this announcement could hardly have
been made plainer in the language of dreams
than by showing to Pharaoh seven well-favoured
kine coming up out of the bountiful river fo feed
on the meadow made richly green by its waters.
If the king had been sacrificing to the river, such
a sight, familiar as it was to the dwellers by the
Nile, might well have been accepted by him as a
promise of plenty in the land. But what agi-
tated Pharaoh, and gave him the shuddering
presentiment of evil which accompanies some
dreams, was the sequel. " Behold, seven other
kine came up after them, poor and very ill-
fi.voured and lean-fleshed, such as I never saw in
all the land of Egypt for badness: and the lean
and the ill-favoured kine did eat up the first seven
fat kine: and when they had eacen them up it
could not be known that they had eaten them;
b'lt they were still ill-favoured, as at the begin-
nmg," — a picture which to the inspired dream-
reader represented seven years of famine so
grievous, that the preceding plenty should be
7- Vol. I.
swallowed up and not be known. A similar
image occurred to a writer who, in describing
a more recent famine in the same land, says:
" The year presented itself as a monster whose
wrath must annihilate all the resources of life
and all the means of subsistence."
It tells in favour of the court magicians and
wise men that not one of them offered an inter-
pretation of dreams to which it would certainly
not have been difficult to attach some tolerably
feasible interpretation. Probably these men were
as yet sincere devotees of astrology and occult
science, and not the mere jugglers and charla-
tans their successors seem to have become.
When men cannot make out the purpose of God
regarding the future of the race, it is not won-
derful that they should endeavour to catch the
faintest, most broken echo of His voice to the
world, wherever they can find it. Now there is
a wide region, a borderland between the two
worlds of spirit and of matter, in which are found
a great many mysterious phenomena which can-
not be explained by any known laws of nature,
and through wTiich men fancy they get nearer to
the spiritual world. There are many singular
and startling appearances, coincidences, fore-
bodings, premonitions which men have always
been attracted towards, and which they have con-
sidered as open ways of communication between
God and man. There are dreams, visions,
strange apprehensions, freaks of memory, and
other mental phenomena, which, when all classed
together, assorted, and skilfully applied to the
reading of the. future, once formed quite a science
by itself. When men have no word from God
to depend upon, no knowledge at all of where
either the race or individuals are going to, they
will eagerly grasp at anything that even seems
to shed a ray of light on their future. We for
the most part make light of that whole category
of phenomena, because we have a more sure
word of prophecy by which, as with a light in a
dark place, we can tell where our next step
should be, and what the end shall be. But in-
variably in heathen countries, where no guid-
ing Spirit of God was believed in, and where the
absence of His revealed will left numberless
points of duty doubtful and all the future dark,
there existed in lieu of this a class of persons
who, under one name or other, undertook to
satisfy the craving of men to see into the future,
to forewarn them of danger, and advise them re-
garding matters of conduct and afifairs of state.
At various points of the history of God's reve-
lation these professors of occult science appear.
In each case a profound impression is made by
the superior wisdom or power displayed by the
" wise men " of God. But in reading the ac-
counts we have of these collisions between the
wisdom of God and that of the magicians, a
slight feeling of uneasiness sometimes enters the
mind. You may feel that these wonders of Jo-
seph, Moses, and Daniel have a romantic air
about them, and you feel, perhaps, a slight
scruple in granting that God would lend Himself
to such displays — displays so completely out of
date in our day. But we are to consider not
only that there is nothing of the kind more cer-
tain than that dreams do sometimes even now
impart most significant warning to men; but,
also, that the time in which Joseph lived was the
childhood of the world, when God had neither
spoken much to men, nor could speak much, be-
cause as yet they had not learned His language,
96
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
but were only being slowly taught it by signs
suited to their capacity. If these men were to
receive any knowledge beyond what their own
unaided efforts could attain, they must be taught
in a language they understood. They could not
be dealt with as if they had already attained a
knowledge and a capacity which could only be
theirs many centuries after; they must be dealt
with by signs and wonders which had perhaps
little moral teaching in them, but yet gave evi-
dence of God's nearness and power such as thej-
could and did understand. God thus stretched
out His hand to men in the darkness, and let
them feel His strength before they could look on
His face and understand His nature.
It is the existence at the court of Pharaoh of
this highly respected class of dream-interpreters
and wise men. which lends significance to the
conduct of Joseph when summoned into the
royal presence. Such wisdom as he displayed
in reading Pharaoh's visions was looked upon as
attainable by means within the reach of any man
who had sufficient faculty for the science. And
the first idea in the minds of the courtiers would
probably have been, had Joseph not solemnly
protested against it, that he was an adept where
they were apprentices and bunglers, and that his
?uccess was due purely to professional skill.
This was of course perfectly well known to Jo-
seph, who for a number of years had been
familiar with the ideas prevalent at the court of
Pharaoh; and he might have argued that there"
could be no great harm in at least effecting his
deliverance from an unjust imprisonment bj"-
allowing Pharaoh to suppose that it was to him
he was indebted for the interpretation of his
dreams. But his first word to Pharaoh is a self-
renouncing exclamation: " Not in me: God shall
give Pharaoh an answer of peace." Two years
had elapsed since anything had occurred which
looked the least like the fulfilment of his own
dreams, or gave him any '-"ope of release from
prison; and now, when measuring himself with
these courtiers and feeling able to take his place
with the best of them, getting again a breath of
free air and feeling once more the charm of life,
and having an opening set before his young am-
bition, being so suddenly transferred from a
place where his very existence seemed to be for-
gotten to a place where Pharaoh himself and all
his court eyed him with the intensest interest
and anxiety, it is significant that he should ap-
pear regardless of his own fate, but jealously
careful of the glory of God. Considering how
jealous men commonl}"- are of their own reputa-
tion, and how impatiently eager to receive all the
credit that is due to them for their own share in
any e^ood that is doing, and considering of what
essential importance it seemed that Joseph
should seize this opportunitv of providing for
his own safet}'^ and advancement, and should use
this as the tide in his affairs that led to fortune,
his words and bearing before Pharaoh undoubt-
edly disclose a deeply inwrought fidelity to God,
and a magnanimous patience regarding his own
personal interests.
For it is extremely unlikely that in proposing
to Pharaoh to set a man over this important
business of collecting corn to last through the
years of famine, it presented itself to Joseph as
a conceivable result that he should be the per-
son appointed — he a Hebrew, a slave, a prisoner,
cleaned but for the nonce, could not suppose
that Pharaoh would pass over all those tried
officers and ministers of state around him and
fix upon a youth who was wholly untried, and
who might, by his different race and religion,
prove obnoxious to the people. Joseph may
have expected to make interest enough with
Pharaoh to secure his freedom, and possibly
some subordinate berth where he could hope-
fully begin the world again; but his only allu-
sion to himself is of a depreciatory kind, while
his reference to God is marked with a profound
conviction that this is God's doing, and that to
Him is due whatever is due. Well may the
Hebrew race be proud of those men like Joseph
and Daniel, who stood in the presence of foreign
monarchs in a spirit of perfect fidelity to God.
commanding the respect of all. and clothed with
the dignity and simplicity which that fidelity im-
parted. It matters not to Joseph that there may
perhaps be none in that land who can appreciate
his fidelity to God or understand his motive.
It matters not what he may lose by it. or what
he could gain by falling in with the notions of
those around him. He himself knows the real
state of the case, and wall not act untruly to his
God, even though for years he seems to have
been forgotten by Him. With Daniel he says in
spirit, " Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy
rewards to another. As for me, this secret is
not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have
more than any living, but that the interpretation
may be known to the king, and that thou
mayest know the thoughts of thine heart. He
that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee
what shall come to pass." There is something
particularly noble and worthy of admiration in a
man thus standing alone and maintaining the
fullest allegiance to God, without ostentation
and with a quiet dignity and naturalness that
show he has a great fund of strength behind.
That we do not misjudge Joseph's character
or ascribe to him qualities which were invisible
to his contemporaries, is apparent from the cir-
cumstance that Pharaoh and his advisers, with
little or no hesitation, agreed that to no man
could they more safely entrust their country in'
this emergency. The mere personal charm of
Joseph might have won over those experienced
advisers of the crown to make compensation for
his imprisonment by an unusually handsome re-
ward, but no mere attractiveness of person and
manner, nor even the unquestionable guileless-
ness of his bearing, could have induced them to
put such an affair as this into his hands. Plainly
they were impressed with Joseph; almost super-
naturajly impressed, and felt God through him.
He stood before them as one mysteriously ap-
pearing in their emergency, sent out of un-
thought-of quarters to warn and save them.
Happily there was as yet no jealousy of the God
of the Hebrews, nor any exclusiveness on the
part of the chosen people: Pharaoh and Joseph
alike felt that there was one God over all and
through all. And it was Joseph's self-abnegat-
ing sympathy with the purposes of this Supreme
God that made him a transparent medium, so
that in his presence the Eg3'ptians felt them-
selves in the presence of God. It is so always.
Influence in the long run belongs to those who
rid their minds of all private aims, and get close
to the great centre in which all the race meets
and is cared for. Men feel themselves safe with
the unselfish, with persons in whom they meet
principle, justice, truth, love. God. We are un-
attractive, useless, uninfiuential, just because we
Genesisxli.37-57-xlvii. 13-26.] JOSEPH'S ADMINISTRATION.
97
are still childishly craving a private and selfish
good. We know that a life which does not
pour itself freely into the common stream of
public good is lost in dry and sterile sands. We
know that a life spent upon self is contemptible,
Darren, empty, yet how slowlj' do we come to
the attitude of Joseph, who watched for the ful-
fihnent of God's purposes, and found his happi-
ness in forwarding what God designed for the
people.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
JOSEPH'S ADMINISTRATION. '
Genesis xli. 37-57, and xlvii. 13-26.
"He made him lord of his house, and ruler of all his
substance : To bind his princes at his pleasure ; and teach
his senators wisdom." — Fsalm cv. 21, 22.
" Many a monument consecrated to the mem-
ory of some nobleman gone to his long home,
who during life had held high rank at the court
of Pharaoh, is decorated with the simple but
laudatory inscription, ' His ancestors were un-
known people' " — so we are told by our most
accurate informant regarding Egyptian affairs.
Indeed, the tales we read of adventurers in the
East, and the histories which recount how some
dynasties have been founded, are sufficient evi-
dence that, in other countries besides Egypt,
sudden elevation from the lowest to the highest
rank is not so unusual as amongst ourselves.
Historians have recently made out that in one
period of the history of Egypt there are traces of
a kind of Semitic mania, a strong leaning to-
wards Syrian and Arabian customs, phrases, and
persons. Such manias have occurred in most
countries. There was a period in the history of
Rome when everything that had a Greek flavour
was admired; an Anglomania once affected a
portion of the French population, and recipro-
cally, French manners and ideas have at times
found a welcome among ourselves. It is also
clear that for a time Lower Egypt was under the
dominion of foreign rulers who were in race
more nearly allied to Joseph than to the native
population. But there is no need that so com-
plicated a question as the exact date of this for-
eign domination be debated here, for there was
that in Joseph's bearing which would have com-
mended him to any sagacious monarch. Not
only did the court accept him as a messenger
from God, but they could not fail to recognise
substantial and serviceable human qualities
alongside of what was mysterious in him. The
ready apprehension with which he appreciated
the magnitude of the danger, the clear-sighted
promptitude with which he met it, the resource
and quiet capacity with which he handled a
matter involving the entire condition of Egypt,
showed them that they were in the presence of a
true statesman. No doubt the confidence with
which he described the best method of dealing
with the emergency was the confidence of one
who was convinced he was speaking for God.
This was the great distinction they perceived be-
tween Joseph and ordinary dream-interpreters.
It was not guesswork with him. The same dis-
tinction is always apparent between revelation
and speculation. Revelation speaks with au-
thoritv; speculation gropes its way, and when
wisest is most diffident. At the same time Pha-
raoh was perfectly right in his inference: " For-
asmuch as God hath shewed thee all this, there is,
none so discreet and wise as thou art." He be-
lieved that God had chosen him to deal with this
matter because he was wise in heart, and he be-
lieved his wisdom would remain because God
had chosen him.
At length, then, Joseph saw the fulfilment of
his dreams within his reach. The coat of many
colours with which his father had paid a tribute
to the princely person and ways of the boy, was
now replaced by the robe of state and the heavy
gold necklace which marked him out as second
to Pharaoh. Whatever nerve and self-command
and humble dependence on God his varied ex-
perience had wrought in him were all needed
when Pharaoh took his hand and placed his own
ring on it, thus transferring all his authority to
him, and when turning from the king he received
the acclamations of the court and the people,
bowed to by his old masters, and acknowledged
the superior of all the dignitaries and potentates
of Egypt. Only once besides, so far as the
Egyptian inscriptions h ve yet been deciphered,
does it appear tliat any subject was raised to
be Regent or Viceroy with similar powers.
Joseph is, as far as possible, naturalised as an
Egyptian. He receives a name easier of pro-
nunciation than his own, at least to Egyptian
tongues — Zaphnath-Paaneah. which, however,
was perhaps only an official title meaning " Gov-
ernor of the district of the place of life," the
name by which one of the Egyptian counties or
states was known. The king crowned his liber-
ality and completed the process of naturalisa-
tion by providing him with a wife, Asenath, the
daughter of Potipherah, priest of On. This city
was not far from Avaris or Haouar, where Jo-
seph's Pharaoh, Ra-apepi II., at this time re-
sided. The worship of the sun-god, Ra, had its
centre at On (or Heliopolis, as it was called by
the Greeks), and the priests of On took pre-
cedence of all Egyptian priests. Joseph was
thus connected with one of the most influential
families in the land, and if he had any scruples
about marrying into an idolatrous family, they
were too insignificant to influence his conduct,
or leave any trace in the narrative.
His attitude towards God and his own family
was disclosed in the names which he gave to his
children. In giving names which had a mean-
ing at all, and not merely a taking sound, he
showed that he understood, as well he might,
that every human life has a significance and ex-
presses some principle or fact. And in giving
names which recorded his acknowledgment of
God's goodness, he showed that prosperity had
as little influence as adversity to move him from
his allegiance to the God of his fathers. His
first son he called Manasseh, Making to forget,
" for God," said he, " hath made me forget all
my toil and all my father's house " — not as if he
were now so abundantly satisfied in Egypt that
the thought of his father's house was blotted
from his mind, but only that in this child the
keen longings he had felt for kindred and home
were somewhat alleviated. He again found an
object for his strong family affection. The void
in his heart he had so long felt was filled by the
little babe. A new home was begun around him.
But this new affection would not weaken, though
it would alter the character of, his love for his
father and brethren. The birth of this child
would really be a new tie to the land from which
98
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
he had been stolen. For, however ready men
are to spend their own life in foreign service, you
see them wishing that their children should
spend their days among the scenes with which
their own childhood was familiar.
In the naming of his second son Ephraim he
recognises that God had made him fruitful in the
most unlikely way. He does not leave it to us
to interpret his life, but records what he himself
saw in it_ It has been said: " To get at the truth
of any history is good; but a man's own history
— when he reads that truly, . . . and knows
what he is about and has been about, it is a Bible
to him." And now that Joseph, from the height
he had reached, could look back on the way by
which he had been led to it, he cordially ap-
proved of all that God had done. There was no
resentment, no murmuring. He would often
find himself looking back and thinking. Had I
found my brothers where I thought they were,
had the pit not been on the caravan-road, had
the merchants not come up so opportunely, had
I not been sold at all or to some other master,
had I not been imprisoned, or had I been put in
another ward — had any one of the many slender
links in the chain of my career been absent, how
difTerent might my present state have been.
How plainly I now see that all those sad mis-
haps that crushed my hopes and tortured my
spirit were steps in the only conceivable path
to my present position.
Many a man has added his signature to this ac-
knowledgment of Joseph's, and confessed a
providence guiding his life and working out
good for him through injuries and sorrows, as
well as through honours, marriages, births. As
in the heat of summer it is difficult to recall the
sensation of winter's bitter cold, so the fruitless
and barren periods of a man's life are sometimes
quite obliterated from his memory. God has it
in His power to raise a man higher above the
level of ordinary happiness than ever he has sunk
below it; and as winter and spring-time, when
the seed is sown, are stormy and bleak and gusty,
so in human life seed-time is not bright as sum-
mer nor cheerful as autumn; and yet it is then,
when all the earth lies bare and will yield us
nothing, that the precious seed is sown: and
when we confidently commit our labour or
patience of to-day to God, the land of our afflic-
tion, now bare and desolate, will certainly wave
for us, as it has waved for others, with rich
produce whitened to the harvest.
There is no doubt then that Joseph had learned
to recognise the providence of God as a most
important factor in his life. And the man who
does so gains for his character all the strength
and resolution that come with a capacity for
waiting. He saw, most legibly written on his
own life, that God is never in a hurry. And for
the resolute adherence to his seven-years' policy
such a belief was most necessary. Nothing, in-
deed, is said of opposition or incredulity on the
part of the Egyptians. But was there ever a
policy of such magnitude carried out in any
country without opposition or without evilly-
disposed persons using it as a weapon against its
promoter? No doubt during these years he had
need of all the personal determination as well
as of all the official authority he possessed. And
if, on the whole, remarkable success attended his
efforts, we must ascribe this partly to the unchal-
lengeable justice of his arrangements, and partly
to the impression of commanding genius Joseph
seems everywhere to have made. As with his
father and brethren he was felt to be superior, as
in Potiphar's house he was quickly recognised,
as in the prison no prison-garb or slave-brand
could disguise him, as in the court his superi-
ority was instinctively felt, so in his administra
tion the people seem to have believed in him.
And if, on the whole and in general, Joseph
was reckoned a wise and equitable ruler, and
even adored as a kind of saviour of the world,
it would be idle in us to canvass the wisdom of
his administration. When we have not sufficient
historical material to apprehend the full signifi-
cance of any policy, it is safe to accept the judg-
ment of men who not only knew the facts, but
were themselves so deeply involved in them that
they would certainly have felt and expressed dis-
content had there been ground for doing so.
The policy of Joseph was simply to economise
during the seven years of abundance to such an
extent that provision might be made against the
seven years of famine. He calculated that one-
fifth of the produce of years so extraordinarily
plenteous would serve for the seven scarce years.
This fifth he seems to have bought in the king's
name from the people, buying it, no doubt, at
the cheap rates of abundant years. When the
years of famine came, the people were referred to
Joseph; and, till their money was gone, he sold
corn to them, probably not at famine prices.
Next he acquired their cattle, and finally, in ex-
change for food, they yielaed to him both their
lands and their persons. So that the result of
the whole was, that the people who would other-
wise have perished were preserved, and in return
for this preservation they paid a tax or rent on
their farm-lands to the amount of one-fifth of
their produce. The people ceased to be pro-
prietors of their own farms, but they were not
slaves with no interest in the soil, but tenants
sitting at easy rents — a fair enough exchange for
being preserved in life. This kind of taxation is
eminently fair in principle, securing, as it does,
that the wealth of the king and government shall
vary with the prosperity of the whole land. The
chief difficulty that has always been experienced
in working it, has arisen from the necessity of
leaving a good deal of discretionary power in the
hands of the collectors, who have generally been
found not slow to abuse this power.
The only semblance of despotism in Joseph's
policy is found in the curious circumstance that
he interfered with the people's choice of resi-
dence, and shifted them from one end of the
land to another. This may have been necessary
not only as a kind of seal on the deed by which
the lands were conveyed to the king, and as a
significant sign to them that they were mere
tenants, but also Joseph probably saw that for
the interests of the country, if not of agricultural
prosperity, this shifting had become necessary
for the breaking up of illegal associations, nests
of sedition, and sectional prejudices and enmi-
ties which were endangering the community.*
Modern experience supplies us with instances in
which, by such a policy, a country might be re-
* It happened very often that the inhabitants of one dis-
trict threatened an attack on the occupants of another
on account of some dispute about divine or human ques-
tions. The hostile feelinprs of the opponents not unfre-
quentlv broke out into a hard struKgfle. and it required
the whole armed power of the king to extinsruish at its
first outburst the flaming torch of war, kindled by
domineering chiefs of nomes or ambitious priests." —
Brugsch, History of Egypt, i. i6.
;enesisxli.37-57-xlvii. 13-26.] JOSEPH'S ADMINISTRATION.
99
generated and a seven years' famine hailed as a
blessing if, without famishing the people, it put
them unconditionally into the hands of an able,
bold, and beneficent ruler. And this was a
policy which could be much better devised and
executed by a foreigner than by a native.
Egypt's indebtedness to Joseph was, in fact,
two-fold. In the first place he succeeded 'in
doing what many strong governments have
failed to do: he enabled a large population to
survive a long and severe famine. Even with all
modern facilities for transport and for making
the abundance of remote countries available for
times of scarcity, it has not always been found
possible to save our own fellow-subjects from
starvation. In a prolonged famine which oc-
curred in Egypt during the Middle Ages, the in-
habitants, reduced to the unnatural habits which
are the most painful feature of such times, not
only ate their own dead, but kidnapped the liv-
ing on the streets of Cairo and consumed them
in secret. One of the most touching memorials
of the famine with which Joseph had to deal is
found in a sepulchral inscription in Arabia. A
flood of rain laid bare a tomb in which lay a
woman having on her person a profusion of
jewels which represented a very large value. At
her head stood a cofifer filled with treasure, and
a tablet with this inscription: " In Thy name, O
God, the God of Himyar, I, Tayar, the daughter
of Dzu Shefar, sent my steward to Joseph, and
he delaying to return to me, I sent my handmaid
with a measure of silver to bring me back a
measure of flour; and not being able to procure
it, I sent her with a measure of gold; and not
being able to procure it, I sent her with a
measure of pearls; and not being able to procure
it, I commanded them to be ground; and finding
no profit in them, I am shut up here." If this
inscription is genuine — and there seems no rea-
son to call it in question — it shows that there is
no exaggeration in the statement of our narra-
tor that the famine was very grievous in other
lands as well as in Egypt. And, whether gen-
uine or not, one cannot but admire the grim
humour of the starving woman getting herself
buried in the jewels which had suddenly dropped
to less than the value of a loaf of bread.
But besides being indebted to Joseph for their
preservation, the Egyptians owed to him an ex-
tension of their influence; for, as all the lands
round about became dependent on Egypt for
provision, they must have contracted a respect
for the Egyptian administration. They must
also have added greatly to Egypt's wealth and
during those years of constant traffic many com-
mercial connections must have been formed
which in future years would be of untold value
to Egypt. But above all, the permanent altera-
tions made by Joseph on their tenure of land,
and on their places of abode, may have con-
vinced the most sagacious of the Egyptians that
it was well for them that their money had failed,
and that they had been compelled to yield them-
selves unconditionally into the hands of this re-
markable ruler. It is the mark of a competent
statesman that he makes temporary distress the
occasion for permanent benefit; and from the
confidence Joseph won with the people, there
seems every reaspn to believe that the perma-
nent alterations he introduced were considered
as beneficial as certainlv they were bold.
And for our own spiritual uses it is this point
which seems chiefly important. In Joseph is
illustrated the principle that, in order to the at-
tainment of certain blessings, unconditional sub-
mission to God's delegate is required. If we
miss this, we miss a large part of what his his-
tory exhibits, and it becomes a mere pretty story.
The prominent idea in his dreams was that he
was to be worshipped by his brethren. In his
exaltation by Pharaoh, the absolute authority
given to him is again conspicuous: "Without
thee shall no man lift up hand or foot in all the
land of Egypt." And still the same autocracy
appears in the fact that not one Egyptian who
was helpful to him in this matter is mentioned;
and no one has received such exclusive posses-
sion of a considerable part of Scripture, so per-
sonal and outstanding a place. All this leaves
upon the mind the impression that Joseph be-
comes a benefactor, and in his degree a saviour,
to men by becoming their absolute master.
When this was hinted in his dreams at first his
brothers fiercely resented it. But when they
were put to the push by famine, both they and
the Egyptians recognised that he was appointed
by God to be their saviour, while at the same
time they markedly and consciously submitted
themselves to him. Men may always be ex-
pected to recognise that he who can save them
alive in famine has a right to order the bounds of
their habitation; and also that in the hands of
one who, from disinterested motives, has saved
them, they are likely to be quite as safe as in
their own. And if we are all quite sure of this,
that men of great political sagacity can regulate
our affairs with tenfold the judgment and success
that we ourselves could achieve, we cannot won-
der that in matters still higher, and for which we
are notoriously incompetent, there should be
One into whose hands it is well to commit our-
selves— One whose judgment is not warped by
the prejudices which blind all mere natives of
this world, but who, separate from sinners yet
naturalised among us, can both detect and rectify
everything in our condition which is less than
perfect. If there are certainly many cases in
which explanations are out of the question, and
in which the governed, if they are wise, will yield
themselves to a trusted authority, and leave it to
time and results to justify his measures, any one,
I think, who anxiously considers our spiritual
condition must see that here too obedience is for
us the greater part of wisdom, and that, after all
speculation and efforts at sufficing investigation,
we can still do no better than yield ourselves ab-
solutely to Jesus Christ. He alone understands
our whole position; He alone speaks with the
authority that commands confidence, because it is
felt to be the authority of the truth. We feel the
present pressure of famine; we have discernment
enough, some of us, to know we are in danger, but
we cannot penetrate deeply either into the cause
or the possible consequences of our present state.
But Christ — if we may continue the figure — legis-
lates with a breadth of administrative capacity
which includes not only our present distress but
our future condition, and, with the boldness of
one who is master of the whole case, requires
that we put ourselves wholly into His hand.
He takes the responsibility of all the changes we
make in obedience to Him, and proposes so to
relieve us that the relief shall be permanent, and
that the very emergency which has thrown us
upon His help shall be the occasion of our trans-
ference not merely out of the present evil, but
into the best possible form of human life.
lOO
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
From this chapter, then, in the history of Jo-
seph, we may reasonably take occasion to remind
ourselves, first, that in all things pertaining to
God unconditional submission to Christ is neces-
sarily required of us. Apart from Christ we can-
not tell what are the necessary elements of a
permanently happy state; nor. indeed, even
whether there is any such state awaiting us.
There is a great deal of truth in what is urged by
unbelievers to the effect that spiritual matters are
in great measure beyond our cognizance, and
that many of our religious phrases are but, as it
were, thrown out in the direction of a truth but
do not perfectly represent it. No doubt we are
in a provisional state, in which we are not in
direct contact with the absolute truth, nor in a
final attitude of mind towards it; and certain
representations of things given in the Word of
God may seem to us not to cover the whole
truth. But this only compels the conclusion
that for us Christ is the way, the truth, and the
life. To probe existence to the bottom is plainly
not in our power. To say precisely what God is,
and how we are to carry ourselves towards Him,
is possible only to him who has been with God
and is God. To submit to the Spirit of Christ,
and to live under those influences and views
which formed His life, is the only method that
promises deliverance from that moral condition
which makes spiritual vision impossible.
We may remind ourselves, secondly, that this
submission to Christ should be consistently ad-
hered to in connection with those outward oc-
currences in our life which give us opportunity
of enlarging our spiritual capacity. There can
be little doubt that there would be presented to
Joseph many a plan for the better administra-
tion of this whole matter, and many a petition
from individuals craving exemption from the
seemingly arbitrary and certainly painful and
troublesome edict regulating change of resi-
dence. Many a man would think himself much
wiser than the minister of Pharaoh in whom was
the Spirit of God. When we act in a similar
manner, and take upon us to specify with pre-
cision the changes we should like to see in our
condition, and the methods by which these
changes might best be accomplished, we com-
monly manifest our own incompetence. The
changes which the strong hand of Providence
enforces, the dislocation which our life suffers
from some irresistible blow, the necessity laid
upon us to begin life again and on apparently
disadvantageous terms, are naturally resented;
but these things being certainly the result of
some unguardedness, improvidence, or weakness
in our past state, are necessarily the means most
appropriate for disclosing to us these elements
of calamity and for securing our permanent wel-
fare. We rebel against such perilous and sweep-
ing revolutions as the basing of our life on a
new foundation demnnds; we would disregard
the appointments of Providence if we could; but
both our voluntary consent to the authority of
Christ and the impossibility of resisting His
providential arrangements, prevent us from re-
fusing to fall in with them, however needless and
tyrannical they seem, and however little we per-
ceive that they are intended to accomplish our
permanent well-being. And it is in after years,
when the pain of severance from old friends and
habits is healed, and when the discomfort of
adapting ourselves to a new kind of life is re-
placed by peaceful and docile resignation to new
conditions, that we reach the clear perception
that the changes we resented have in point of
fact rendered harmless the seeds of fresh disaster,
and rescued us from the results of long bad gov-
ernment. He who has most keenly felt the
hardship of being diverted from his original
course in life will in after life tell you that had
he been allowed to hold his own land, and re-
main his own master in his old loved abode, he
would have lapsed into a condition from which
no worthy harvest could be expected. If a man
only wishes that his own conceptions of pros-
perity be realised, then let him keep his land in
his own hand ana work his material irrespective
of God's demands; for certainly, if he yields him-
self to God, his own ideas of prosperity will not
be realised. But if he suspects that God may
have a more liberal conception of prosperity and
may understand better than he what is eternally
beneficial, let him commit himself and all his
material of prosperity without doubting into
God's iiand, and let him greedily obey all God'i
precepts; for in neglecting one of these, he so
far neglects and misses what Cod would have
him enter into.
CHAPTER XXIX.
VISITS OF JOSEPH'S BRETHREN.
Genesis xlii.-xliv.
" Fear not : for am I in the place of God ? But as for
yon, ye thoujjht evil against n^e ; but God meant it unto
good."— Gen. 1. iq, 20.
The purpose of God to bring Israel into Egypt
was accomplished by the imconscious agency of
Joseph's natural affection for his kindred. Ten-
derness towards home is usually increased by
residence in a foreign land; for absence, like a
little death, sheds a halo round those separated
from us. But Joseph could not as yet either re-
visit his old home or invite his father's family
into Egypt. Even, indeed, when his brothers
first appeared before him. he seems to have had
no immediate intention of inviting them as a
family to settle in the country of his adoption, or
even to visit it. If he had cherished any such
purpose or desire he might have sent down
wagons at once, as he at last did, to bring his
father's household out of Canaan. Why, then,
did he proceed so cautiously? Whence this
mystery, and disguise, and circuitous compass-
ing of his end? What intervened between the
first and last visit of his brethren to make it
seeiri advisable to disclose himself and invite
them? Manifestly there had intervened enough
to give Joseph insight into the state of mind his
brethren were in, enough to satisfy him they
were not the men they had been, and that it was
safe to ask them and would be pleasant ^o have
them with him in Egypt. Fully alive to the
elements of disorder and violence that once ex-
isted among them, and having had no oppor-
tunity of ascertaining whether they were now
altered, there was no course open but that which
he adopted of endeavourinf; in some unobserved
way to discover whether twenty years had
wrought any change in theni.
For effecting this object he fell on the expe-
dient of imprisoning them, on pretence of their
being spies. This served the double purpose of
Gen
esi-
:dii.-:.I:v ]
VlSnS OF JOSEPH'S BRETHREN.
lOI
detaining them until he should have made up his
mind as to the best means of dealing with them,
and of securing their retention under his eye
until some display of character might sufficiently
certify him of their state of mind. Possibly he
adopted this expedient also because it was likely
deeply to move them, so that they might be ex-
pected to exhibit not such superficial feelings as
might have been elicited had he set them down
to a banquet and entered into conversation with
them over their wine, but such as men are sur-
prised to find in themselves, and know nothing
of in their lighter hours. Joseph was, of course,
well aware that in the analysis of character the
most potent elements are only brought into clear
view when the test of severe trouble is applied,
and when men are thrown out of all conventional
modes of thinking and speaking.
The display of character which Joseph awaited
he speedily obtained. For so new an experience
to these free dwellers in tents as imprisonment
under grim Egyptian guards worked wonders in
them. Men who have experienced such treat-
ment aver that nothing more effectually tames
and breaks the spirit: it is not the being confined
for a definite time with the certainty of release in
the end, but the being shut up at the caprice of
another on a false and absurd accusation; the
being cooped up at the will of a stranger in a
foreign country, uncertain and hopeless of re-
lease. To Joseph's brethren so sudden and great
a calamity seemed explicable only on the theory
that it was retribution for the great crime of their
life. The uneasy feeling which each of them had
hidden in his own conscience, and which the
lapse of twenty years had not materially alle-
viated, finds expression: "And they said one to
another. We are verily guilty concerning our
brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul,
when he besought us, and we would not hear;
tl'.erefore is this distress come upon us." The
similarity of their position to that in which they
had placed their brother stimulates and assists
their conscience. Joseph, in the anguish of his
soul, had protested his innocence, but they had
not listened; and now their own protestations
are treated as idle wind by this Egyptian. Their
own feelings, representing to them what they
had caused Joseph to suffer, stir a keener sense
of their guilt than they seem ever before to have
reached. Under this new light they see their
sin more clearly, and are humbled by the distress
into which it has brought them.
When Joseph sees this, his heart warms to
them. He may not yet be quite sure of them.
A prison-repentance is perhaps scarcely to be
trusted. He sees they would for the moment
deal differently with him had they the oppor-
tunity, and would welcome no one more heartily
than himself, whose coming among them had
once so exasperated them. Himself keen in his
affections, he is deeply moved, and his eyes fill
with tears as he witnesses their emotion and
grief on his account. Fain would he relieve
them from their remorse and apprehension —
why, then, does he forbear? Why does he not
at this juncture disclose himself? It has been
satisfactorily proved that his brethren counted
their sale of him the great crime of their life.
Their imprisonment has elicited evidence that
that crime had taken in their conscience the capi-
tal place, the place which a man finds some ono
sin or series of sins will take, to follow him with
its appropriate curse, and hang over his future
like a cloud — a sin of which he thinks when any
strange thing happens to him, and to which he
traces all disaster — a sin so iniquitous that it
seems capable of producing any results however
grievous, and to which he has so given himself
that his life seems to be concentrated there, and
he cannot but connect with it all the greater ills
that happen to him. Was not this, then, security
enough that they would never again perpetrate
a crime of like atrocity? Every man who has
almost at all observed the history of sin in him-
self, will say that most certainly it was quite in-
sufficient security against their ever again doing
the like. Evidence that a man is conscious of
his sin, and, while suffering from its conse-
quences, feels deeply its guilt, is not evidence
that his character is altered.
And because we believe men so much more
readily than God, and think that they do not re-
quire, for form's sake, such needless pledges of
a changed character as God seems to demand, it
is worth observing that Joseph, moved as he
was even to tears, felt that common prudence
forbade him to commit himself to his brethren
without further evidence of their disposition.
They had distinctly acknowledged their guilt,
and in his hearing had admitted that the great
calamity that had befallen them was no more
than they deserved; yet Joseph, judging merely
as an intelligent man who had worldly interests
depending on his judgment, could not discern
enough here to justify him in supposing that his
brethren were changed men. And it might
sometimes serve to expose the insufficiency of
our repentance were clear-seeing men the judges
of it, and did they express their opinion of its
trustworthiness. We may think that God is
needlessly exacting when He requires evidence
not only of a changed mind about past sin, but
also of such a mind being now in us as will pre-
serve us from future sin; but the truth is, that no
man whose common worldly interests were at
stake would com.mit himself to us on any less
evidence. God, then, meaning to bring the
house of Israel into Egypt in order to make
progress in the Divine education He was giving
to them, could not introduce them into that land
in a state of mind which would negative all the
discipline they were there to receive.
These men then had to give evidence that they
not only saw, and in some sense repented of,
their sin, but also that they had got rid of the
evil passion which had led to it. This is what
God means by repentance. Our sins are in gen-
eral not so microscopic that it reauires very keen
spiritual discernment to perceive them. But to '^^
quite aware of our sin, and to acknowledge it, is
not to repent of it. Everything falls short of
thorough repentance which does not prevent us
from committing the sin anew. We do not so
much desire to be accurately informed about our
past sins, and to get right views of our past
selves; we wish to be no longer sinners, we wish
to pass through some process by which we may
be separated from that in us which has led us
into sin. Such a process there is, for these men
passed through it.
The test which revealed the thoroughness of
his brothers' repentance was unintentionally ap-
plied by Joseph. When he hid his cup in Ben-
jamin's sack, all that he intended was to furnish
a pretext for detaining Benjamin, and so gratify-
ing his own affection. But, to his astonishment,
Jhis trick effected far more than he intended; for
I02
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
the brothers, recognising now their brother-
hood, circled round Benjamin, and, to a man,
resolved to go back with him to Egypt. We
cannot argue from this that Joseph had misap-
prehended the state of mind in which his
brothers were, and in his judgment of them had
been either too timorous or too severe; nor need
we suppose that he was hampered by his rela-
tions to Pharaoh, and therefore unwilling to con-
nect himself too closely with men of whom he
might be safer to be rid; because it was this very
peril of Benjamin's that matured their brotherly
affection. They themselves could not have an-
ticipated that they would make such a sacrifice
for Benjamin. But throughout their dealings
with this mysterious Egyptian, they felt them-
selves under a spell, and were being gradually,
though perhaps unconsciously, softened, and in
order to complete the change passing upon them,
they but required some such incident as this of
Benjamin's arrest. This incident seemed by
some strange fatality to threaten them with a re-
newed perpetration of the very crime they had
committed against Rachel's other son. It
threatened to force them to become again the in-
strument of bereaving their father of his darling
child, and bring about that very calamity which
they had pledged themselves should never hap-
pen. It was an incident, therefore, which, more
than any other, was likely to call out their family
love.
The scene lives in every one's memory. They
were going gladly back to their own country
with corn enough for their children, proud of
their entertainment by the lord of Egypt; antici-
pating their father's exultation when he heard
how generously they had been treated and when
he saw Benjamin safely restored, feeling that in
bringing him back they almost compensated for
having bereaved him of Joseph. Simeon is re-
velling in the free air that blew from Canaan and
brought with it the scents of his native land, and
breaks into the old songs that the strait confine-
ment of his prison had so long silenced — all of
them together rejoicing in a scarcely hoped-for
success; when suddenly, ere the first elation is
spent, they are startled to see the hasty approach
of the Egyptian messenger, and to hear the stern
summons that brought them to a halt, and boded
all ill. The few words of the just Egyptian, and
his calm, explicit judgment. " Ye have done evil
in so doing," pierce them like a keen blade — that
they should be suspected of robbing one who
had dealt so generously with them; that all Israel
should be put to shame in the sight of the stran-
ger! But they begin to feel relief as one brother
after another steps forward with the boldness of
innocence; and as sack after sack is emptied,
shaken, and flung aside, they already eye the
steward with the bright air of triumph; when, as
the very last sack is emptied, and as all breath-
lessly stand round, amid the quick rustle of the
corn, the sharp rattle of metal strikes on their
ear, and the gleam of silver dazzles their eyes as
the cup rolls out in the sunshine. This, then, is
the brother of whom their father was so careful
that he dared not sufifer him out of his sight!
This is the precious youth whose life was of
more value than the lives of all the brethren, and
to keep whom a few months longer in his father's
sight Simeon had been left to rot in a dungeon!
This is how he repays the anxiety of the family
and their love, ana this is how he repays the ex-
traordinary favour of Joseph! By one rash
childish act had this fondled youth, to all appear-
ance, brought upon the house of Israel irretriev-
able disgrace, if not complete extinction. Had
these men been of their old temper, their knives
had very speedily proved that their contempt for
the deed was as great as the Egyptian's; by
violence towards Benjamin they might have
cleared themselves of all suspicion of complicity;
or, at the best, they might have considered them-
selves to be acting in a fair and even lenient
manner if they had surrendered the culprit to
the steward, and once again carried back to their
father a tale of blood. But they were under the
spell of their old sin. In all disaster, however
innocent they now were, they saw the retribution
of their old iniquity; they seem scarcely to con-
sider whether Benjamin was innocent or guilty,
but as humbled, God-smitten men, " they rent
their clothes, and laded every man his ass, and
returned to the city."
Thus Joseph in seeking to gain one brother
found eleven — for now there could be no doubt
that they were very different men from those
brethren who had so heartlessly sold into slavery
their father's favourite — men now with really
brotherly feelings, by penitence and regard for
their father so wrought together into one family,
that this calamity, intended to fall only on one of
their number, did in falling on him fall on them
all. So far from wishing now to rid themselves
of Rachel's son and their father's favourite, who
had been put by their father in so prominent a
place in his affection, they will not even give him
up to suffer what seemed the just punishment of
his theft, do not even reproach him with having
brought them all into disgrace and difficulty, but,
as humbled men who knew they had greater sms
of their own to answer for, went quietly back to
Egypt, determined to see their younger brother
through his misfortune or to share his bondage
with him. Had these men not been thoroughly
changed, thoroughly convinced that at all costs
upright dealing and brotherly love should con-
tinue; had they not possessed that first and last
of Christian virtues, love to their brother, then
nothing could so certainly have revealed their
want of it as this apparent theft of Benjamin's.
It seemed in itself a very likely thing that a lad
accustomed to plain modes of life, and whose
character it was to " ravin as a wolf," should,
when suddenly introduced to the gorgeous
Egyptian banqueting-house with all its sump-
tuous furnishings, have coveted some choice
specimen of Egyptian art, to carry home to his
father as proof that he could not only bring him-
self back in safety, but scorned to come back
from any expedition empty-handed. It was not
unlikely either that, with his mother's own super-
stition, he might have conceived the bold design
of robbing this Egyptian, so mysterious and so
powerful, according to his brothers' account, and
of breaking that spell which he had thrown over
them: he may thus have conceived the idea_ of
achieving for himself a reputation in the family,
and of once for all redeeming himself from the
somewhat undignified, and to one of his spirit
somewhat uncongenial, position of the youngest
of a family. If, as is possible, he had let any
such idea ooze out in talking with his brethren
as they went down to Egypt, and only aban-
doned it on their indignant and urgent remon-
strance, then when the cup, Joseph's chief treas-
ure according to his own account, was discovered
in Benjamin's sack, the case must have looked
Genesis xlii.-xliv.]
VISITS OF JOSEPH'S BRETHREN.
103
I
sadly against him even in the eyes of his breth-
ren. No protestations of innocence in a par-
ticular instance avail much when the character
and general habits of the accused point to guilt.
It is quite possible, therefore, that the brethren,
though willing to believe Benjamin, were yet
not so thoroughly convinced of his innocence as
they would have desired. The fact that they
themselves had found their money returned in
their sacks, made for Benjamin; yet in most
cases, especially where circumstances corrobo-
rate it, an accusation even against the innocent
takes immediate hold and cannot be summarily
and at once got rid of.
Thus was proof given that the house of Israel
was now in truth one family. The men who, on
very slight instigation, had without compunc-
tion sold Joseph to a life of slavery, cannot now
find it in their heart to abandon a brother who.
to all appearance, was worthy of no better life
than that of a slave, and who had brought them
all into disgrace and danger. Judah had no
doubt pledged himself to bring the lad back
without scathe to his father, but he had done so
without contemplating the possibility of Benja-
min becoming amenable to Egyptian law. And
no one can read the speech of Judah — one of the
most pathetic on record — in which he replies to
Joseph's judgment that Benjamin alone should
remain in Egypt, without perceiving that he
speaks not as one who merely seeks to redeem a
pledge, but as a good son and a good brother.
He speaks, too, as the mouth-piece of the rest,
and as he had taken the lead in Joseph's sale, so
he does not shrink from standing forward and
accepting the heavy responsibility which may
now light upon the man who represents these
brethren. His former faults are redeemed by the
courage, one may say heroism, he now shows.
And as he spoke, so the rest felt. They could
not bring themselves to inflict a new sorrow on
their aged father; neither could they bear to
leave their young brother in the hands of stran-
gers. The passions which had alienated them
from one another, and had threatened to break
up the family, are subdued. There is now dis-
cernible a common feeling that binds them to-
gether, and a common object for which they
willingly sacrifice themselves. They are, there-
fore, now prepared to pass into that higher
school to which God called them in Egypt. It
mattered little what strong and equitable laws
they found in the land of their adoption, if they
had no taste for upright living; it mattered little
what thorough national organisation they would
be brought into contact with in Egypt, if in point
of fact they owned no common brotherhood, and
were willing rather to live as units and every
man for himself than for any common interest.
But now they were prepared, open to teaching,
and docile.
To complete our apprehension of the state of
mind into which the brethren were brought by
Joseph's treatment of them, we must take into
account the assurance he gave them, when he
made himself known to them, that it was not
they but God who had sent him into Egypt, and
that God had done this for the purpose of pre-
serving the whole house of Israel. At first sight
this might seem to be an injudicious speech, cal-
culated to make the brethren think lightly of
their guilt, and to remove the just impressions
they now entertained of the unbrotherliness of
their conduct to Joseph. And it might have
been an injudicious speech to impenitent men;
but no further view of sin can lighten its hein-
ousness to a really penitent sinner. Prove to
him that his sin has become the means of untold
good, and you only humble him the more, and
more deeply convince him that while he was
recklessly gratifying himself and sacrificing
others for his own pleasure, God has been mind-
ful of others, and, pardoning him, has blessed
them. God does not need our sins to work out
His good intentions, but we give Him little
other material; and the discovery that through
our evil purposes and injurious deeds God has
worked out His beneficent will, is certainly not
calculated to make us think more lightly of our
sin or more highly of ourselves.
Joseph in thus addressing his brethren did, in
fact, but add to their feelings the tenderness that
is in all religious conviction, and that springs
out of the consciousness that in all our sin there
has been with us a holy and loving Father, mind-
ful of His children. This is the final stage of
penitence. The knowledge that God has pre-
vented our sin from doing the harm it might
have done does relieve the bitterness and despair
with which we view our life, but at the same time
it strengthens the most efifectual bulwark be-
tween us and sin — love to a holy, over-ruling
God. This, therefore, may always be safely said
to penitents: Out of your worst sin God can
bring good to yourself or to others, and good of
an apparently necessary kind; but good of a per-
manent kind can result from your sin only when
you have truly repented of it, and sincerely wish
you had never done it. Once this repentance is
really wrought in you, then, though your life
can never be the same as it might have been had
you not sinned, it may be, in some respects, a
more richly developed life, a life fuller of hu-
mility and love. You can never have what you
sold for your sin; but the poverty your sin has
brought may excite within you thoughts and
energies more valuable than what you have lost,
as these men lost a brother but found a Saviour.
The wickedness that has often made you bow
your head and mourn in secret, and which is in
itself unutterable shame and loss, may, in God's
hand, become food against the day of famine.
You cannot ever have the enjoyments which are
possible only to those whose conscience is laden
with no evil remembrances, and whose nature,
uncontracted and unwithered by familiarity with
sin, can give itself to enjoyment with the aban-
donment and fearlessness reserved for the inno-
cent. No more at all will you have that fineness
of feeling which only ignorance of evil can pre-
serve; no more that high and great conscien-
tiousness which, once broken, is never repaired;
no more that respect from other men which for
ever and instinctively departs from those who
have lost self-respect. But you may have a more
intelligent sympathy with other men and a
keener pity for them; the experience you have
gathered too late to save yourself may put it in
your power to be of essential service to others.
You cannot win your way back to the happy,
useful, evenly-developed life of the compara-
tively innocent, but the life of the true-hearted
penitent is yet open to you. Every beat of
your heart now may be as if it throbbed against
a poisoned dagerer. every duty may shame you,
every day bring weariness and new humiliation,
but let no pain or discouragement avail to de-
fraud you of the good fruits of true reconcilia-
I04
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
tion to God and submission to His lifelong dis-
cipline. See that you lose not both lives, the
life of the comparatively innocent and the life of
the truly penitent.
his brethren. It is his love for them making its
way through all his ability to do without them,
and sweeping away as a flood the bulwarks he
had built round his heart, — it is this that breaks
him down before them., a man conquered by his
own love, and unable to control it. It compels
him to make himself known, and to possess him-
self of its objects, those unconscious brethren.
It is a signal instance of the law by which love
brings all the best and holiest beings into con-
tact with their inferiors, and, in a sense, puts
them in their power, and thus eternally provides
that the superiority of those that are high in the
^cale of being shall ever be at the service of
those who in themselves are not so richly en-
dowed. The higher any being is, the more love
is in him: that is to say, the higher he is, the
more surely is he bound to all who are beneath
him. If God is highest of all, it is because there
is in Him sufficiency for all His creatures, and
love to make it universally available.
It is one of our most familiar intellectu:xl
pleasures to see in the experience of others, or
to read, a lucid and moving account of emotions
CHAPTER XXX.
THE RECONCILIATION.
Genesis xlv.
" Bv faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the
departing of the children of Israel ; and gave command-
ment concerning his bones."— HEB. xi. 22.
/
It is generally by some circumstance or event
which perplexes, troubles, or gladdens us, that
new thoughts regarding conduct are presented
to us. and new impulses communicated to our
life. And the circumstances through which Jo-
seph's brethren passed during the famine not
onlv subdued and softened them to a genuine
fam'ilv feeling, but elicited in Joseph himself a , . , ,
more' tender affection for them than he seems at identical with those which have once been our
first to have cherished. For the first time since own. In reading an account of what others have
his entrance into Egypt did he feel, when Judah passed through, our pleasure is derived mainly
spoke so touchingly and effectively, that the from two sources— either from our being
family of Israel was one; and that he himself brought, by sympathy with them and in imagi-
would be reprehensible did he make further nation, into circumstances we ourselves have
breaches in it by carrying out his intention of never been placed in, and thus artificially enlarge
detaining Benjamin. Moved by Judah's pathetic ing our sphere of life, and adding to our experi-
appeal and yielding to the generous impulse of ence feelings which could not have been derived
the moment, and being led by a right state of from anything we ourselves have met with; or,
■ ■ from our living over again, by means of their
experience, a part of our life which had great
interest and meaning to us. It may be excusa-
ble, therefore, if we divert this narrative from its
original historical significance, and use it as the
mirror in which we may see reflected an impor-
feeling to a right judgment regarding duty, he
claimed his brethren as brethren, and proposed
that the whole family be brought into Egypt.
The scene in which the sacred writer describes
the reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers is
one of the most touching on record;— the long . . , , .
estrangement so happily terminated; the caution, tant passage or crisis in our own spiritual his-
the doubts the hesitation on Joseph's part, swept tory. For though some may find in it little that
awav at last by the resistless tide of long pent-
up emotion; the surprise and perplexity of the
brethren as they dared now to lift their eyes and
scrutinise the face of the governor, and discerned
the lighter complexion of the Hebrew, the fea-
tures of the family of Jacob, the expression of
reflects their own experience, others cannot fail
to be reminded of feelings with which they were
very familiar when first they were introduced to
Christ, and acknov^Iedged by Him.
I. The modes in which our Lord makes Him-
self known to men are various as their lives and
their own brother; the anxiety with which they characters. But frequently the forerunning
wait to know how he means to repay their crime, choice of a sinner by Christ is discovered in
and the relief with which they hear that he bears such gradual and ill-understood dealings as Jo-
them no ill-will— everything, in short, conduces seph used with those brethren ^^ -- -^
It is the clos-
to render this recognition of the brethren inter
csting and affecting. That Joseph, who had
controlled his feeling in many a trying situation,
sliould now have " wept aloud." needs no expla-
nation. Tears always express a mingled feelmg;
at least the tears of a man do. They may ex
ing of a net around them. They do not see
what is driving them forward, nor whither they
are being driven; they are anxious and ill at
ease; and not comprehending what ails them,
they make only ineffectual efforts for deliverance.
There is no recognition of the hand that is guid-
press grief but it is grief with some remorse in ing all this circuitous and mysterious prepara-
it or it is 'grief passing into resignation. They tory work, nor of the eye that affectionately
niay express joy. but it is joy born of long sor- watches their perplexity, nor are they aware of
row the joy of deliverance, joy that can now an^r friendly ear that catches each sigh in which
afford to let the heart weep out the fears it has they seem hopelessly to resign themselves to the
been holding down. It is as with a kind of relentless past from which they cannot escape,
breaking of the heart, and apparent unmanning They feel that they are left alone to make what
of the man. that the human soul takes possession they can now of the life they have chosen and
of its greatest treasures; unexpected success and made for themselves; that there is floating be-
unmerited joy humble a man: and as laughter hind and around them a cloud bearing the very
expresses the surprise of the intellect, so tears essence exhaled from their past, and ready to
express the amazement of the soul when it is burst over them; a phantom that is yet real and
stormed suddenly by a great joy. Joseph had that belongs both to the spiritual and material
been hardening himself to lead a solitary life in world, and can follow them in either. Ihey
Egypt, and it is with all this strong self-sufi^- seem to be doomed men— men who are never at
ci?ncy breaking down within him that he eyes all to get disentangled from their old sin.
Genesis xlv.]
THE RECONCILIATION.
105
If any one is in this baffled and heartless con-
dition, fearing even good lest it turn to
evil in his hand; afraid to take the money that
lies in his sack's mouth, because he feels there is
a snare in it; if any one is sensible that life has
become unmanageable in his hands, and that he
is being drawn on by an unseen power which he
does not understand, then let him consider in the
scene before us how such a condition ends or
may end. It took many months of doubt, and
fear, and mystery to bring those brethren to such
a state of mind as made it advisable for Joseph
to disclose himself, to scatter the mystery, and
relieve them of tlic unaccountable uneasiness
that possessed their minds. And your perplexity
will not be allowed to last longer than it is need-
ful. But it is often needful that we should first
learn that in sinning we have introduced into our
lifca bafHing, perplexing element, have brought
our life into connection with inscrutable laws
which we cannot control, and which we feel may
at any moment destroy us utterly. It is not
from carelessness on Christ's part that His
people are not always and from the first rejoicing
in the assurance and appreciation of His love.
It is His carefulness which lays a restraining
hand on the ardour of His affection. We see
that this burst of tears on Joseph's part was
genuine, we have no suspicion that he was feign-
ing an emotion he did not feel; we believe that
his afYection at last could not be restrained, that
he was fairly overcome, — can we not trust Christ
for as genuine a love, and believe that His emo-
tion is as deep? We are, in a word, reminded
by this scene, that there is always in Christ a
greater love seeking the friendship of the sinner
than there is in the sinner seeking for Christ.
The search of the sinner for Christ is always a
dubious, hesitating, uncertain groping; while on
Christ's part there is a clear-seeing, affectionate
solicitude which lays joyful surprises along the
sinner's path, and enjoys by anticipation the
gladness and repose which are prepared for him
in the final recognition and reconcilement.
2. In finding their brother again, those sons of
Jacob found also their own better selves which
thev had long lost. They had been living in a
lie, unable to look the past in the face, and so
becoming more and more false. Trying to leave
their sin behind them, they always found it ris-
ing in the path before them, and again they had
to resort to some new mode of laying this un-
easy ghost. They turned away from it, busied
themselves among other people, refused to think
of it, assumed all kinds of disguise, professed to
themselves that they had done no great wrong;
but nothing gave them deliverance — there was
their old sin quietly waiting for them in their
tent door when they went home of an evening,
laying its hand on their shoulder in the most un-
looked-for places, and whispering in their ear at
the most unwelcome seasons. A great part of
their mental energy had been spent in deleting
this mark from their memory, and yet day by
day it resumed its supreme place in their life,
holding them under arrest as they secretly felt,
and keeping them reserved to judgment.
So, too, do many of us live as if yet we -had
not found the life eternal, the kind of life that
we can always go on with — rather as those who
are but making the best of a life which can never
be very valuable, nor ever perfect. There seem
voices calling us back, assuring us we must yet
retrace our steps, that there are passages in our
past with which we are not done, that there is an
inevitable humiliation and penitence awaiting
us. It is through that we can alone get back
to the good we once saw and hoped for; there
were right desires and resolves in us once, view?
of a well-spent life which have been forgotten
and pressed out of remembrance, but all these
rise again in the presence of Christ. Reconciled
to Him and claimed by Him, all hope is renewed
within us. If He makes Himself known to us,
if He claims connection with us, have we not
here the promise of all good? If He, after care-
ful scrutiny, after full consideration of all the cir-
cumstances, bids us claim as our brother Him to
whom all power and glory are given, ought not
this to quicken within us everything that is hope-
ful, and ought it not to strengthen us for all
frank acknowledgment of the past and true hu-
miliation on account of it?
3. A third suggestion is made by this narrative.
Joseph commanded from his presence all who
might be merely curious spectators of his burst
of feeling, and might, themselves unmoved, criti-
cise this new feature of the governor's character.
In all love there is a similar reserve. The true
friend of Christ, the man who is profoundly con-
scious that between himself and Christ there is a
bond unique and eternal, longs for a time when
he may enjoy greater liberty in uttering what he
feels towards his Lord and Redeemer, and when,
too, Christ Himself shall by telling and sufficient
signs put it for ever beyond doubt that this love
is more than responded to. Words sufiiciently
impassioned have indeed been put into our lips
by men of profound spiritual feeling, but the
feeling continually weighs upon us that some
more palpable mutual recognition is desirable
between persons so vitally and peculiarly knit
together as Christ and the Christian are. Such
recognition, indubitable and reciprocal, must
one day take place. And when Christ Himself
shall have taken the initiative, and shall have
caused us to understand that we are verily the
objects of His love, and shall have given such
expression to His knowledge of us as we cannot
now receive, we on our part shall be able to re-
ciprocate, or at least to accept, this greatest of
possessions, the brotherly love of the Son of
God. Meanwhile this passage in Joseph's his-
tory may remind us that behind all sternness of
expression there may pulsate a tenderness that
needs thus to disguise itself; and that to those
who have not yet recognised Christ, He is bet-
ter than He seems. Those brethren no doubt
wonder now that even twenty years' alienation
should have so blinded them. The relaxation of
the expression from the sternness of an Egyptian
governor to the fondness of family love, the
voice heard now in the familiar mother tongue,
reveal the brother; and they who have shrunk
from Christ as if He were a cold official, and
who have never lifted their eyes to scrutinise
His face, are reminded that He can so make
Himself known to them that not all the wealth
of Egypt would purchase from them one of the
assurances they have received from Him.
The same warm tide of feeling which carried
away all that separated Joseph from his brethren
bore him on also to the decision to invite his
father's entire hoTisehold into Egypt. We are
reminded that the history of Joseph in Egypt is
an episode, and that Jacob is still the head of
the house, maintaining its dignity and guiding
its movements. The notices we get of him in
io6
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
this latter part of his history are very character-
istic. The indomitable toughness of his youth
remained with him in his old age. He was one
of those old men who maintain their vigour to
the end, the energy of whose age seems to
shame and overtax the prime of common men;
whose minds are still the clearest, their advice
the safest, their word waited for, their perception
of the actual state of affairs always in advance of
their juniors, more modern and fully abreast of
the times in their ideas than the latest born of
their children. Such an old age we recognise
in Jacob's half-scornful chiding of the helpless-
ness of his sons, even after they had heard that
there was corn in Egypt. " Why look ye one
upon another? Behold! I have heard that there
is corn in Egypt; get ye down thither and buy
for us from thence." Jacob, the man who had
wrestled through life and bent all things to his
will, cannot put up with the helpless dejection of
this troop of strong men, who have no wit to
devise an escape for themselves, and no resolu-
tion to enforce upon the others any device that
may occur to them. Waiting still like children
for some one else to help them, having strength
to endure but no strength to undertake the re-
sponsibility of advising in an emergency, they
are roused by their father, who has been eyeing
this condition of theirs with some curiosity and
with some contempt, and now breaks in upon it
with his " Why look ye one upon another? " It
is the old Jacob, full of resources, prompt and
imperturbable, equal to every turn of fortune,
and never knowing how to yield.
Even more clearly do we see the vigour of
Jacob's old age when he comes in contact with
Joseph. For many years Joseph had been ac-
customed to command; he had unusual natural
sagacity and a special gift of insight from God,
but he seems a child in comparison with Jacob.
When he brings his two sons to get their grand-
father's blessing, Jacob sees what Joseph has no
inkling of, and peremptorily declines to follow
the advice of his wise son. With all Joseph's
sagacity there were points in which his blind
father saw more clearly than he. Joseph, who
could teach the Egyptian senators wisdorn,
standing thus at a loss even to understand his
father, and suggesting in his ignorance futile
corrections, is a picture of the incapacity of
natural affection to rise to the wisdom of God's
love, and of the finest natural discernment to an-
ticipate God's purposes or supply the place of a
lifelong experience.
Jacob's warm-heartedness has also survived
the chills and shocks of a long lifetime. He
clings now to Benjamin as once he clung to Jo-
seph. And as he had wrought for Rachel four-
teen years, and the love he bare to her made
them seem but a few days, so for twenty years
now had he remembered Joseph who had in-
herited this love, and he shows by his frequent
reference to him that he was keeping his word
and going down to the grave mourning for his
son. To such a man it must have been a severe
trial indeed to be left alone in his tents, deprived
of all his twelve sons; and we hear his old faith
in God steadying the voice that yet trembles
with emotion as he says, " If I be bereaved of
my children, I am bereaved." It was a trial not,
indeed, so painful as that of Abraham when he
lifted the knife over the life of his only son; but
it was so similar to it as inevitably to suggest it
to the mind. Jacob also had to yield up all his
children, and to feel, as he sat solitary in his
tent, how utterly dependent upon God he was
for their restoration; that it was not he but
God alone who could build the house of
Israel.
The anxiety with which he gazed evening after
evening towards the setting sun, to descry the
returning caravan, was at last relieved. But his
joy was not altogether unalloyed. His sons
brought with them a summons to shift the pa-
triarchal encampment into Egypt — a summons
which evidently nothing would have induced
Jacob to respond to had it not come from his
long-lost Joseph, and had it not thus received
what he felt to be a divine sanction. The ex-
treme reluctance which Jacob showed to the
journey, we must be careful to refer to its true
source. The Asiatics, and especially shepherd
tribes, move easily. One who thoroughly knows
the East says: " The Oriental is not afraid to~go
far, if he has not to cross the sea; for, once up-
rooted, distance makes little difference to him.
He has no furniture to carry, for, except a carpet
and a few brass pans, he uses none. He has no
trouble about meals, for he is content with
parched grain, which his wife can cook any-
where, or dried dates, or dried flesh, or anything
obtainable which will keep. He is, on a march,
careless where he sleeps, provided his family are
around him — in a stable, under a porch, in the
open air. He never changes his clothes at
night, and he is profoundly indifferent to every-
thing that the Western man understands by
' comfort.' " But there was in Jacob's case a
peculiarity. He was called upon to abandon,
for an indefinite period, the land which God had
given him as the heir of His promise. With
very great toil and not a little danger had Jacob
won his way back to Canaan from Mesopotamia;
on his return he had spent the best years of his
life, and now he was resting there in his old age,
having seen his children's children, and expect-
ing nothing but a peaceful departure to his
fathers. But suddenly the wagons of Pharaoh
stand at his tent-door, and while the parched and
bare pastures bid him go to the plenty of Egypt,
to which the voice of his long-lost son invites
him, he hears a summons which, however trying,
he cannot disregard.
Such an experience is perpetually reproduced.
Many are they who having at length received
from God some long-expected good are quickly
summoned to relinquish it again. And while
the waiting for what seems indispensable to us
is trying, it is tenfold more so to have to part
with it when at last obtained, and obtained at the
cost of much besides. That particular arrange-
ment of our worldly circumstances which we
have long sought, we are almost immediately
thrown out of. That position in life, or that
object of desire, which God Himself seems in
many ways to have encouraged us to seek, is
taken from us almost as soon as we have tasted
its sweetness. The cup is dashed from our lips
at the very moment when our thirst was to be
fully slaked. In such distressing circumstances
we cannot see the end God is aiming at; but of
this we may be certain, that He does not wan-
tonly annoy, or relish our discomfiture, and that
when we are compelled to resign what is partial,
it is that we may one day enjoy what is complete,
and that if for the present we have to forego
much comfort and delight, this is only an abso-
lutely necessary step towards our permanent
Genesis xlv.J
THE RECONCILIATION.
107
establishment in all that can bless and pros-
per us.
It is this state of feeling which explains the
words of Jacob when introduced to Pharaoh.
A recent writer, who spent some years on the
banks of the Nile and on its waters, and who
mixed freely with the inhabitants of Egypt, says:
" Old Jacob's speech to Pharaoh really made me
laugh, because it is so exactly like what a Fellah
says to a Pacha, ' Few and evil have the days of
the years of my life been,' Jacob being a most
prosperous man, but it is manners to say all
that." But Eastern manners need scarcely be
:alled in to explain a sentiment which we find re-
peated by one who is generally esteemed the
most self-sufficing of Europeans. " I have ever
been esteemed," Goethe says, " one of Fortune's
chiefest favourites; nor will I complain or find
fault with the course my life has taken. Yet,
truly, there has been nothing but toil and care;
and I may say that, in all my seventy-five years,
I have never had a month of genuine comfort.
It has been the perpetual rolling of a stone,
which I have always had to raise anew." Jacob's
life had been almost ceaseless disquiet and disap-
pointment. A man who had fled his country,
who had been cheated into a marriage, who had
been compelled by his own relative to live like
a slave, who was only by flight able to save him-
self from a perpetual injustice, whose sons made
his life bitter, — one of them by the foulest out-
rage a father could suffer, two of them by mak-
ing him, as he himself said, to stink in the nos-
trils of the inhabitants of the land he was trying
to settle in, and all of them by conspiring to de-
prive him of the child he most dearly loved — a
man who at last, when he seemed to have had
experience of every form of human calamity,
was compelled by famine to relinquish the land
for the sake of which he had endured all and
spent all, might surely be forgiven a little plain-
tiveness in looking back upon his past. The
wonder is to find Jacob to the end unbroken,
dignified, and clear-seeing, capable and com-
manding, loving and full of faith.
Cordial as the reconciliation between Joseph
and his brethren seemed, it was not as thorough
as might have been desired. So long, indeed, as
Jacob lived, all went well ; but " when Joseph's
brethren saw that their father was dead, they
said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will
certainly requite us all the evil which we did
unto him." No wonder Joseph wept when he
received their message. He wept because he
saw that he was still misunderstood and dis-
trusted by his brethren; because he felt, too, that
had they been more generous men themselves,
they would more easily have believed in his for-
giveness; and because his pity was stirred for
these men, who recognised that they were so
completely in the power of their younger
brother. Joseph had passed through severe con-
flicts of feeling about them, had been at great
expense both of emotion and of outward good
on their account, had risked his position in order
to be able to serve them, and here is his reward!
They supposed he had been but biding his time;
that his apparent forgetfulness of their injury had
been the crafty restraint of a deep-seated resent-
ment; or, at best, that he had been unconsciously
influenced by regard for his father, and now,
when that influence was removed, the helpless
condition of his brethren might tempt him to re-
taliate. This exhibition of a craven and suspi-
cious spirit is unexpected, and must have been
profoundly saddening to Joseph. Yet here, as
elsewhere, he is magnanimous. Pity for them
turns his thoughts from the injustice done to
himself. He comforts them, and speaks kindly
to them, saying, Fear ye not; I will nourish you
and your little ones.
Many painful thoughts must have been sug-
gested to Joseph by this conduct. If, after all
he had done for his brethren, they had not yet
learned to love him, but met his kindness with
suspicion, was it not probable that underneath
his apparent popularity with the Egyptians there
might lie envy, or the cold acknowledgment that
falls far short of love? This sudden disclosure
of the real feeling of his brethren towards him
must necessarily have made him uneasy about
his other friendships. Did every one merely
make use of him, and did no one give him pure
love for his own sake? The people he had saved
from famine, was there one of them that re-
garded him with anything resembling personal
affection? Distrust seemed to pursue Joseph
from first to last. First his own family mis-
understood and persecuted him. Then his
Egyptian master had returned his devoted serv-
ice with suspicion and imprisonment. And now
again, after sufficient time for testing his char-
acter might seem to have elapsed, he was still
looked upon with distrust by those who of all
others had best reason to believe in him. But
though Joseph had through all his life been thus
conversant with suspicion, cruelty, falsehood, in-
gratitude, and blindness, though he seemed
doomed to be always misread, and to have his
best deeds made the ground of accusation against
him, he remained not merely unsoured, but
equally ready as ever to be of service to all. The
•finest natures may be disconcerted and deadened
by universal distrust; characters not naturally
unamiable are sometimes embittered by suspi-
cion; and persons who are in the main high-
minded do stoop, when stung by such treatment,
to rail at the world, or to question all generous
emotion, steadfast friendship, or unimpeachable
integrity. In Joseph there is nothing of this. If
ever man had a right to complain of being un-
appreciated, it was he; if ever man was tempted
to give up making sacrifices for his relatives, it
was he. But through all this he bore himself
with manly generosity, with simple and persist-
ent faith, with a dignified respect for himself and
for other men. In the ingratitude and injustice
he had to endure, he only found opportunity for
a deeper unselfishness, a more God-like forbear-
ance. And that such may be the outcome of the
sorest parts of human experience we have one
day or other need to remember. When our
good is evil spoken of, our motives suspected,
our most sincere sacrifices scrutinised by an
ignorant and malicious spirit, our most substan-
tial and well-judged acts of kindness received
with suspicion, and the love that is in them quite
rejected, it is then we have opportunity to show
that to us belongs the Christian temper that can
pardon till seventy times seven, and that can per-
sist in loving where love meets no response, and
benefits provoke no gratitude.
How Joseph spent the years which succeeded
the famine we have no means of knowing; but
the closing act of his life seemed to the narrator
so significant as to be worthy of record. " Jo-
seph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will
surely visit you, and bring you out of this land
io8
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath
of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely
visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from
hence." The Egyptians must have chiefly been
struck by the simnlicity of character which this
request betokened. To the great benefactors of
our country, the highest award is reserved to be
given after death. So long as a man lives, some
rude stroke of fortune or some disastrous error
of his own may blast his fame; but when his
bones are laid with those who have served their
country best, a seal is set on his life, and a sen-
tence pronounced which the revision of posterity
rarely revokes. Such honours were customary
among the Egyptians; it is from their tombs that
their history can now be written. And to none
were such honours more accessible than to Jo~
seph. But after a life in the service of the state
he retains the simplicity of the Hebrew lad.
With the magnanimity of a great and pure soul,
he passed uncontaminated through the flatteries
and temptations of court-life; and, like Moses,
" esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches
than the treasures of Egypt." He has not in-
dulged in any affectation of simplicity, nor has
he, in the pride that apes humility, declined the
ordinary honours due to a man in his position.
He wears the badges of office, the robe and the
gold necklace, but these things do not reach his
spirit. He has lived in a region in which such
honours make no deep impression; and in his
death he shows where his heart has been. The
small voice of God, spoken centuries ago to his
forefathers, deafens him to the loud acclaim with
which the people do him homage.
By later generations this dying request of Jo-
seph's was looked upon as one of the most re-
markable instances of faith. For many years
there had been no new revelation. The rising
generations, that had seen no man with whom
God had spoken, were little interested in the
land which was said to be theirs, but which they
very well knew was infested by fierce tribes who,
on at least one occasion during this period, in-
flicted disastrous defeat on one of the boldest of
their own tribes. They were, besides, extremely
attached to the country of their adoption; they
luxuriated in its fertile meadows and teeming
gardsBS, which kept them supplied at little cost
of labour with delicacies unknown on the hills
of Canaan. This oath, therefore, which Joseph
made them swear, may have revived the droop-
ing hopes of the small remnant who had any of
his own spirit. They saw that he, their most
sagacious man, lived and died in full assurance
that God would visit His people. And through
all the terrible bondage they were destined to
suffer, the bones of Joseph, or rather his em-
balmed body, stood as the most eloquent advo-
cate of God's faithfulness, ceaselessly reminding
the despondent generations of the oath which
God would yet enable them to fulfil. As often
as they felt inclined to give up all hope and the
last surviving Israelitish peculiarity, there was
the unburied coffin remonstrating; Joseph still,
even when dead, refusing to let his dust mingle
with Egyptian earth.
And thus, as Joseph had been their pioneer
who broke out a way for them into Egypt, so did
he continue to hold open the gate and point the
way back to Canaan. The brethren had sold
him into this foreign land, meaning to bury him
for ever; he retaliated by requiring that the tribes
should restore him to the land from which he
had been expelled. Few men have opportunity
of showing so noble a revenge; fewer still, hav-
ing the opportunity, would so have used it.
Jacob had been carried up to Canaan as soon as
he was dead: Joseph declines this exceptional
treatment, and prefers to share the fortunes of
his brethren, and will then only enter on the
promised land when all his people can go with
him. As in life, so in death, he took a large
view of things, and had no feeling that the world
ended in him. His career had taught him to
consider national interests; and now, on his
death-bed, it is from the point of view of his
people that he looks at the future.
Several passages in the life of Joseph have
shov.m us that where the Spirit of Christ is
present, many parts of the conduct will suggest,
if they do not actually resemble, acts in the life
of Christ. The attitude towards the future in
which Joseph sets his people as he leaves them,
can scarcely fail to suggest the attitude which
Christians are called to assume. The prospect
which the Hebrews had of fulfilling their oath
grew increasingly faint, but the difficulties in
the way of its performance must only have made
them more clearly see that they depended on
God for entrance on the promised inheritance.
And so may the difficulty of our duties as
Christ's followers measure for us the amount of
grace God has provided for us. The commands
that make you sensible of your weakness, and
bring to light more clearly than ever how unfit
for good you are, are witnesses to you that God
will visit you and enable you to fulfil the oath
He has required you to take. The children of
Israel could not suppose that a man so wise as
Joseph had ended his life with a childish folly,
when he made them swear this oath, and could
not but renew their hope that the day would
come when his wisdom would be justified by
their ability to discharge it. Neither ought it to
be beyond our belief that, in requiring from us
such and such conduct, our Lord has kept in
view our actual condition and its possibilities,
and that His commands are our best guide to-
wards a state of permanent felicity. He that
aims always at the performance of the oath he
has taken, will assuredly find that God will not
stultify Himself by failing to support him.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE TRIBES.
Genesis xlviii. and xlix.
Jacob's blessing of his sons marks the close of
the patriarchal dispensation. Henceforth the
channel of God's blessing to man does not con-
sist of one person only, but of a people or nation.
It is still one seed, as Paul reminds us, a unit
that God will bless, but this unit is now no
longer a single person — as Abraham, Isaac, or
Jacob — but one people, composed of several
parts, and yet one whole; equally representa-
tive of Christ, as the patriarchs were, and of
equal effect every way in receiving God's bless-
ing and handing it down until Christ came. The
Old Testament Church, quite as truly as the
New, formed one whole with Christ. .A.part
from Him it had no meaning, and would have
had no existence. It was the promised seed, al-
Genesis xlvui.-xlix.J THE BLESSINGS OF THE TRIBES. 109
ways growing more and more to its perfect de- ^hey would reveal themselves in worldly matters;
velopment in Christ. As the promise was kept '^."^ these teatures were found m all the genera-
to Abraham when Isaac was born, and as Isaac t!'^"^ of the tribes, and displayed themselves in
was truly the promised seed— in so far as he things spiritual also. For a man has not two
was a part of the series that led on to Christ, and characters, but one; and what he is in the world,
was given in fumhnent of the promise that that he is in his religion. In our own country, it
promised Christ to the world— so all through the '^ seen how the forms of worship, and even the
history of Israel we must bear in mind that in aoctrines believed, and certainly the modes of
them God is fulfining this same promise, and religious thought and feeling, depend on the
that they are the promised seed in so far as they natural character, and the natural character on
are one with Christ. And this interprets to us the local situation of the respective sections of
all those passages of the prophets regarding the community. No doubt in a country like
which men have disputed whether they are to be ours, where men so constantly migraf^ from
applied to Israel or to Christ : passages in which place to place, and where one common literature
God addresses Israel in such words as, "Behold tends to mould us all to the same way of think-
My servant," " Mine elect," and so forth, and in ing, you do get men of all kinds in every place;
the interpretation of which it has been thought yet even among ourselves the character of a
sufficient proof that they do not apply to Christ, place is generally still visible, and predomi
to prove that they do apply to Israel ; whereas, nates over all that mingles with it. Much more
on the principle just laid down, it might much must this character have been retained in a
more safely be argued that because they apply to country where each man could trace his ancestry
Israel, therefore they apply to Christ. And it up to the father of the tribe, and cultivated with
is at this point — where Israel distributes among pride the family characteristics, and had but
his sons the blessing which heretofore had all little intercourse, either literary or personal, with
lodged in himself— that we see the finst multi- other minds and other manners. As we know
plication of Christ's representatives ; the media- by dialect and by the manners of the people
tion going on no longer through individuals, when we pass into a new countrj^ so must the
but through a nation ; and where individuals are Israelite have known by the eye and ear when
still chosen by God, as commonly they are, for he had crossed the county frontier, when he
the conveyance of God's communications to was conversing with a Benjamite, and when with
earth, these individuals, whether priests or a descendant of Judah. We are not therefore
prophets, are themselves but the official repre- to suppose that any of these utterances of Jacob
sentatives of the nation. are mere geographical predictions, or that they
As the patriarchal dispensation ceases, it se- depict characteristics which might appear in
cures to the tribes all the blessing it has itself civil life, but not in religion and the Church, or
contained. Every father desires to leave to his that they would die out with the first generation,
sons whatever he has himself found helpful, but In these blessings, therefore, we have the his-
as they gather round his dying bed, or as he sits tory of the Church in its most interesting form,
setting his house in order, and considering what In these sons gathered round him, the patriarch
portion is appropriate for each, he recognizes sees his own nature reflected piece by piece, and
that to some of them it is quite useless to be- he sees also the general outline of all that must
queath the most valuable parts of his propert}-, be produced by such natures as these men have.
while in others he discerns a capacity which The whole destiny of Israel is here in germ, and
promises the improvement of all that is entrusted the spirit of prophecy in Jacob sees and declares
to it. And from the earliest times the various it. It has often been remarked * that as a man
characters of the tribes were destined to modify draws near to death, he seems to see many
the blessing conveyed to them by their father, things in a much clearer light, and especially
The blessing of Israel is now distributed, and gets glimpses into the future, which are hidden
each receives what each can take ; and while in from others.
some of the individual tribes there may seem to „ ^,^ ,.,,... i, .. j ^ ^ j
u i-iii r ui • i. 11 i. i. 1 i " The souls dark cottajare, battered and decaved,
be very little of blessing at all, yet, taken to- Lets in new light through chinks that timehath made."
gether, they form a picture of the common out-
standing features of human nature, and of that Being nearer to eternity, he instinctively meas-
nature as acted upon by God's blessing, and ures things by its standard, and thus comes
forming together one body or Church. A pe- nearer a just valuation of all things before his
culiar interest attaches to the history of some mind, and can better distinguish reality from
nations, and is not altogether absent from our appearance. Jacob has studied these sons of
own, from the precision with which we can trace his for fifty years, and has had his acute percep-
the character of families, descending often with tion of character painfully enough called to
the same unmistakable lineaments from father exercise itself on them. He has all his life long
to son for many generations.* One knows at had a liking for analysing men's inner life,
once to what families to look for restless and tur- knowing that, when he understands that, he can
bulent spirits, ready for conspiracy and revolu- better use them for his own ends; and these sons
tion; and one knows also where to seek steady of his own have cost him thought over and
and faithful loyalty, public-spiritedness, or native above that sometimes penetrating interest which
ability. And in Israel's national character there a father will take in the growth of a son's char-
was room for the great distinguishing features acter; and now he knows them thoroughly,
of the tribes, and to show the richness and understands their temptations, their weaknesses,
variety with which the promise of God could their capabilities, and, as a wise head of a house,
fulfil itself wherever it was received. The dis- can, with delicate and unnoticed skill, balance
tinguishing features which Jacob depicts in the the one against the other, ward off awkward
blessings of his sons are necessarily veiled under collisions, and prevent the evil from destroying
the poetic figures of prophecy, and spoken of as the good. This knowledge of Jacob prepares
* Merivale's Rofnans under the Empire, vi. 261. * Plato, Repub.y i. 5, etc.
no
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
him for being the intelligent agent by whom God
predicts in outline the future of His Church.
One cannot but admire, too, the faith which
enables Jacob to apportion to his sons the bless-
ings of a land which had not been much of a
resting-place to himself, and regarding the occu-
pation of which his sons might have put to him
some very difficult questions. And we admire
this dignified faith the more on reflecting that it
has often been very grievously lacking in our
own case — that we have felt almost ashamed of
having so little of a present tangible kind to
ofifer, and of being obliged to speak only of in-
visible and future blessings; to set a spiritual
consolation over against a worldly grief; to
point a man whose fortunes are ruined to an
eternal inheritance; or to speak to one who
knows himself quite in the power of sin of a
remedy which has often seemed illusory to our-
selves. Some of us have got so little comfort or
strength from religion ourselves, that we have
no heart to ofifer it to others; and most of us
have a feeling that we should seem to trifle were
we to offer invisible aid against very visible
calamity. At least we feel that we are doing a
daring thing in making such an offer, and can
scarce get over the desire that we had some-
thing to speak of which sight could appreciate,
and which did not require the exercise of faith.
Again and again the wish rises within us that to
the sick man we could bring health as well as
the promise of forgiveness, and that to the poor
we could grant an earthly, while we make known
a heavenly, inheritance. One who has experi-
enced these scruples, and known how hard it is
to get rid of them, will know also how to honour
the faith of Jacob, by which he assumes the
right to bless Pharaoh — though he is himself a
mere sojourner by sufferance in Pharaoh's land,
and living on his bounty — and by which he
gathers his children round him and portions out
to them a land which seemed to have been most
barren to himself, and which now seemed quite
beyond his reach. The enjoyments of it, which
he himself had not very deeply tasted, he yer
knew were real; and if there were a look of scep-
ticism, or of scorn, on the face of any one of his
sons; if the unbelief of any received the pro-
phetic utterances as the ravings of delirium, or
the fancies of an imbecile and worn-out mind
going back to the scenes of its youth, in Jacob
himself there was so simple and unsuspecting a
faith in God's promise, that he dealt with the
land as if it were the only portion worth be-
queathing to his sons, as if every Canaanite were
already cast out of it, and as if he knew his sons
could never be tempted by the wealth of Egypt
to turn with contempt from the land of promise.
And if we would attain to this boldness of his,
and be able to speak of spiritual and future bless-
ings as very substantial and valuable, we must
ourselves learn to make much of God's promise,
and leave no taint of unbelief in our reception
of it.
And often we are rebuked by finding that when
we do offer things spiritual, even those who are
wrapped in earthly comforts appreciate and ac-
cept the better gifts. So it was in Joseph's case.
No doubt the highest posts in Egypt were open
to his sons; they might have been naturalised, as
he himself had been, and, throwing in their lot
with the land of their adoption, might have
turned to their advantage the rank their father
held, and the reputation he had earned. But
Joseph turns from this attractive prospect, brings
them to his father, and hands them over to the
despised shepherd-life of Israel. One need
scarcely point out how great a sacrifice this was
on Joseph's part. So universally acknowledged
and legitimate a desire is it to pass to one's chil-
dren the honour achieved by a life of exertion,
that states have no higher rewards to confer on
their most useful servants than a title which their
descendants may wear. But Joseph would not
suffer his children to risk the loss of their share
in God's peculiar blessing, not for the most
promising openings in life, or the highest civil
honours. If the thoroughly open identification
of them with the shepherds, and their profession
of a belief in a distant inheritance, which must
have made them appear madmen in the eyes of
the Egyptians, if this was to cut them off from
worldly advancement, Joseph was not careful of
this, for resolved he was that, at any cost, they
should be among God's people. And his faith
received its reward ; the two tribes that sprang
from him received about as large a portion of
the promised land as fell to the lot of all the
other tribes put together.
You will observe that Ephraim and Manasseh
were adopted as sons of Jacob. Jacob tells Jo-
seph, "They shall be mine," not my grandsons,
but as Reuben and Simeon. No other sons whom
Joseph might have were to be received
into this honor, but these two were to take
their place on a level wdth their uncle, as heads of
tribes, so that Joseph is represented through the
whole history by the two populous and powerful
tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. No greater
honour could have been put on Joseph, nor any
more distinct and lasting recognition made of
the indebtedness of his family to him, and of
how he had been as a father bringing new life to
his brethren, than this, that his sons should be
raised to the rank of heads of tribes, on a level
with the immediate sons of Jacob. And no
higher honour could have been put on the two
lads themselves than that they should thus be
treated as if they were their father Joseph — as
if they had his worth and his rank. He is
merged in them, and all that he has earned is,
throughout the history, to be found, not in his
own name, but in theirs. It all proceeds from
him ; but his enjo)mient is found in their enjoy-
ment, his worth acknowledged in their fruitful-
ness. Thus did God familiarise the Jewish mind
through its whole history with the idea, if they
chose to think and have ideas, of adoption, and
of an adoption of a peculiar kind, of an adoption
where already there was an heir who, by this
adopter, has his name and worth merged in
the persons now received into his place. Eph-
raim and Manasseh were not received alongside
of Joseph, but each received what Joseph him-
self might have had, and Joseph's name as a
tribe was henceforth only to be found in these
two. This idea was fixed in such a way, that for
centuries it was steeping into the minds of men,
so that they might not be astonished if God
should in some other case, say the case of His
own Son, adopt men into the rank He held, and
let His estimate of the worth of His Son, and
the honour He puts upon Him, be seen in the
adopted. This being so, we need not be alarmed
if men tell us that imputation is a mere legal
fiction, or human invention ; a legal fiction it may
be, but in the case before us it was the never-
disputed foundation of very substantial blessings
Genesis xlviii.-xHx.] THE BLESSINGS OF THE TRIBES. iii
to Ephraim and Manasseh; and we plead for spised hath God chosen, yea, and things which
nothing more than that God would act with us are not, to bring to naught things that are?
as here He did act with these two, that He would In Reuben, the firstborn, conscience must
make us His direct heirs, make us His own sons, have been sadly at war with hope as he looked at
and give us what He who presents us to Him to the blind, but expressive, face of his father. He
receive His blessing did earn, and merits at the may have hoped that his sin had not been
Father's hand. severely thought of by his father, or that the
We meet with these crossed hands of blessing father's pride in his first-born would prompt
frequently in Scripture; the younger son blessed him to hide, though it could not make him for-
above the elder — as was needful, lest grace get it. Probably the gross offence had not been
should become confounded with nature, and the made known to the family. At least, the word.s
belief gradually grow up in men's minds that " he went up " may be understood as addressed
natural effects could never be overcome by in explanation to the brethren. It may indeed
grace, and that in every respect grace waited have been that the blind old man, forcibly recall-
upon nature. And these crossed hands we ing the long-past transgression, is here uttering
meet still; for how often does God quite reverse a mournful, regretful soliloquy, rather than ad-
our order, and bless most that about which we dressing: any one. It may be that these words
had less concern, and seem to put a slight on were uttered to himself as he went back upon the
that which has engrossed our best affection. It one deed that had disclosed to him his son's real
is so, often in precisely the way in which Joseph character, and rudely hurled to the ground all
found it so; the son whose youth is most anx- the hopes he had built up for his first-born. Yet
iously cared for, to whom the interests of the there is no reason to suppose, on the other hand,
younger members of the family are sacrificed, that the sin had been previously known or
and who is commended to God continually to alluded to in the family. Reuben's hasty, pas-
receive His right-hand blessing, this son seems sionate nature could not understand that if
neither to receive nor to dispense much bless- Jacob had felt that sin of his deeply, he should
ing; but the younger, less thought of, left to not have shown his resentment; he had stunned
work his own way, is favoured by God, and be- his father with the heavy blow, and because he
comes the comfort and support of his parents did not cry out and strike him in return, he
when the elder has failed of his duty. And in thought him little hurt. So do shallow natures
the case of much that we hold dear, the same tremble for a night after their sin, and when they
rule is seen; a pursuit we wish to be successful find that the sun rises and men greet them as
in we can make little of, and are thrown back cordially as before, and that no hand lays hold
from continually, while something else into on them from the past, they think little more of
which we have thrown ourselves almost acci- their sin — do not understand that fatal calm that
dentally prospers in our hand and blesses us. precedes the storm. Had the memory of Reu-
Again and again, for years together, we put for- ben's sin survived in Jacob's mind all the sad
ward some cherished desire to God's right hand, events that had since happened, and all the stir-
and are displeased, like Joseph, that still the ring incidents of the emigration and the new life
hand of greater blessing should pass to some in Egypt? Could his father at the last hour,
other thing. Does God not know what is and after so many thronged years, and before
oldest with us, what has been longest at our his brethren, recall the old sin? He is relieved
hearts, and is dearest to us? Certainly He does: and confirmed in his confidence by the first
" I know it. My son. I know it," He answers to words of Jacob, words ascribing to him his
all our expostulations. It is not because He natural position, a certain conspicuous dignity
does not understand or regard your predilec- too, and power such as one may often see pro-
tions, your natural and excusable preferences, duced in men by occupying positions of au-
that He sometimes refuses to gratify your whole thority, though in their own character there be
desire, and pours upon you blessings of a kind weakness. But all the excellence that Jacob
somewhat different from those you most ear- ascribes to Reuben serves only to embitter the
nestly covet. He will give you the whole that doom pronounced uoon him. Men seem often
Christ hath merited; but for the application and to expect that a future can be given to them
distribution of that grace and blessing you must irrespective of what they themselves are, that a
be content to trust Him. You may be at a loss series of blessings and events might be prepared
to know why He does no more to deliver yoti for them, and made over to them; whereas every
from some sin, or why He does not make you man's future must be made by himself, and is
more successful in your efforts to aid others, or already in great part formed by the past. It was
why, while He so liberally prospers you in one a vain expectation of Reuben to expect that he,
part of your condition, you get so much less in the impetuous, unstable, superficial son, could
another that is far nearer your heart; but God have the future of a deep, and earnest, and duti-
dces what He will with His own, and if you do ful nature, or that his children should derive no
net find in one point the whole blessing and taint from their parent, but be as the children of
pi osperity you think should flow from such a Joseph. No man's future need be altogether a
M ediator as you have, you may only conclude doom to him, for God may bless to him the evil
that what is lacking there will elsewhere be fruit his life has borne; but certainly no man
found more wisely bestowed. And is it not a need look for a future which has no relation to
perpetual encouragement to us that God does his own character. His future will always be
not merely crown what nature has successfully made up of his deeds, his feelings, and the cir-
begun, that it is not the likely and the naturally cumstances which his desires have brought him
good that are most blessed, but that God hath into.
chosen the foolish things of the world to con- The future of Reuben was of a negative, blank
found the wise, and the weak things of the world kind — " Thou shalt not excel;" his unstable char-
to confound the things that are mighty; and base acter must empty it of all great success. And
things of the world and things which are de- to many a heart since have these words struck a
8- Vol. I.
112
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
chill, for to many they are as a mirror suddenly
held up before them. They see themselves when
they look on the tossing sea, rising and pointing
to the heavens with much noise, but only to sink
back again to the same everlasting level. Men
of brilliant parts and great capacity are con-
tinually seen to be lost to society by instability
of purpose. Would they only pursue one direc-
tion, and concentrate their energies on one sub-
ject, they might become true heirs of promise,
blessed and blessing; but they seem to lose relish
for every pursuit on the first taste of success — all
their energy seems to have boiled over and evap-
orated in the first glow, and sinks as the water
that has just been noisily boiling when the fire
is withdrawn from under it. No impression
made upon them is permanent: like water, they
are plastic, easily impressible, but utterly incapa-
ble of retaining an impression; and therefore,
like water, they have a downward tendency, or
at the best are but retained in their place by
pressure from without, and have no eternal
power of growth. And the misery of this char-
acter is often increased by the desire to excel
which commonly accompanies instability. It is
generally this very desire which prompts a man
to hurry from one aim to another, to give up one
path to excellence when he sees that other men
are making way upon another: having no inter-
nal convictions of his own, he is guided mostly
by the successes of other men, the most danger-
ous of all guides. So that such a man has all
the bitterness of an eager desire doomed never
to be satisfied. Conscious to himself of capacity
for something, feeling in him the excellency of
power, and having that " excellency of dignity,"
or graceful and princely refinement, which the
knowledge of many things, and intercourse with
many kinds of people, have imparted to him, he
feels all the more that pervading weakness, that
greedy, lustful craving for all kinds of priority,
and for enjoying all the various advantages which
other men severally enjoy, which will not let him
finally choose and adhere to his own line of
things, but distracts him by a thousand purposes
which ever defeat one another.*
T!ie sin of the next oldest sons was also re-
m(''"bered against them, and remembered ap-
parently for the same reason — because the char-
acter was expressed in it. The massacre of the
Shechemites was not an accidental outrage that
any other of the sons of Jacob might equally
have perpetrated, but the most glaring of a nurn-
ber of expressions of a fierce and cruel disposi-
tion in these two men. In Jacob's prediction of
their future, he seems to shrink with horror
from his own progeny— like her who dreamt she
would give birth to a firebrand. He sees the
possibility of the direst results flowing from such
a temper, and, under God, provides against these
by scattering the tribes, and thus weakening
their power for evil. They had been banded to-
gether so as the more easily and securely to ac-
complish their murderous purposes. " Simeon
and Levi are brethren " — showing a close affinity,
and seeking one another's society and aid, but it
is for bad purposes; and therefore they must be
divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel. This
was accomplished by the tribe of Levi being dis-
tributed over all the other tribes as the ministers
* The subsequent history of the tribe shows that the
character of its father was transmitted. "No judge, no
prophet, not one of the tribe of Reuben, is mentioned."
{Vide Smith's Dictionar)-, Reuben.)
of religion. The fiery zeal, the bold independ-
ence, and the pride of being a distinct people,
which had been displayed in the slaughter of
the Shechemites, might be toned down and
turned to good account when the sword was
taken out of their hand. Qualities such as these,
which produce the most disastrous results when
fit instruments can be found, and when men of
like disposition are suffered to band themselves
together, may, when found in the individual and
kept in check by circumstances and dissimilar
dispositions, be highly beneficial.
In the sin, Levi seems to have been the mov-
ing spirit, Simeon the abetting tool, and in the
punishment, it is the more dangerous tribe that
is scattered, so that the other is left companion-
less. In the blessings of Moses, the tribe of
Simeon is passed over in silence; and that the
tribe of Levi should have been so used for God's
immediate service stands as evidence that pun-
ishments, however severe and desolating, even
threatening something bordering on extinction,
may yet become blessings to God's people. The
sword of murder was displaced in Levi's hand by
the knife of sacrifice; their fierce revenge against
sinners was converted into hostility against sin.
their apparent zeal for the forms of their religion
was consecrated to the service of the tabernacle
and temple; their fanatical pride, which prompted
them to treat all other people as the offscouring
of the earth, was informed by a better spirit, and
used for the upbuilding and instruction of the
people of Israel. In order to understand why
this tribe, of all others, should have been chosen
for the service of the sanctuary and for the in-
struction of the people, we must not only recog-
nise how their being scattered in punishment of
their sin over all the land fitted them to be the
educators of the nation and the representatives
of all the tribes, but also we must consider that
the sin itself which Levi had committed broke
the one command which men had up till this
time received from the mouth of God; no law
had as yet been published but that which had
been given to Noah and his sons regarding
bloodshed, and which was given in circumstances
so appalling, and with sanctions so emphatic,
that it might ever have rung in men's ears, and
stayed the hand of the murderer. In saying,
'' At the hand of every man's brother will I re-
quire the life of man," God had shown that hu-
man life was to be counted sacred. He Himself
had swept the race from the face of the earth,
but adding this command immediately after. He
showed all the more forcibly that punishment
was His own prerogative, and that none but
those appointed by Him might shed blood
— " Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord." To
take private revenge, as Levi did, was to take the
sword out of God's hand, and to say that God
was not careful enough of justice, and but a poor
guardian of right and wrong in the world; and
to destroy human life in the wanton and cruel
manner in which Levi had destroyed the Shech-
emites, and to do it under colour and by the aid
of religious zeal, was to God the most hateful of
sins. Put none can know the hatefulness of a
sin so distinctly as he who has fallen into it, and
is enduring the punisliment of it penitently and
graciously, and therefore Levi was of all others
the best fitted to be entrusted with those sacri-
ficial symbols which set forth the value of all
human life, and especially of the life of God's
own Son, Very humbling must it have been for
Genesis xlviii.-xlix.]
THE BLiCSSlNGS OF THE TRIBES.
"3
the Levite who remembered the history of his
tribe to be used by God as the hand of His jus-
tice on the victims that were brought in substi-
tution for that which was so precious in the sight
of God.
The blessing of Judah is at once the most im-
portant and the most dif^cult to interpret in the
series. There is enough in the history of Judah
himself, and there is enough in the subsequent
history of the tribe, to justify the ascription to
him of all lion-like qualities — a kingly fearless-
ness, confidence, power, and success; in action
a rapidity of movement and might that make him
irresistible, and in repose a majestic dignity of
bearing. As the serpent is the cognisance of
Dan, the wolf of Benjamin, the hind of Naphtali,
so is the lion of the tribe of Judah. He scorns
to gain his end by a serpentine craft, and is him-
self easily taken in; he does not ravin like a
wolf, merely plundering for the sake of booty,
but gives freely and generously, even to the sac-
rifice of his own person: nor has he the mere
graceful and ineffective swiftness of the hind,
but the rushing onset of the lion — a character
which, more than any other, men reverence and
admire — " Judah, thoti art he whom thy breth-
ren shall praise " — and a character which, more
than any other, fits a man to take the lead and
rule. If there were to be kings in Israel, there
could be little doubt from which tribe they could
best be chosen; a wolf of the tribe of Benjamin,
like Saul, not only hung on the rear of retreating
Philistines and spoiled them, but made a prey
of his own people, and it is in David we find the
true king, the man who more than any other
satisfies men's ideal of the prince to whom they
will pay homage; — falling indeed into grievous
error and sin, like his forefather, but. like him
also, right at hfart, so generous and self-sacrific-
ing that men served him with the most devoted
loyalty, and were willing rather to dwell in caves
with him than in palaces with any other.
The kingly supremacy of Judah was here
spoken of in words which have been the subject
of as prolo':ged and violent contention as any
others in the Word of God. " The sceptre shall
not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from be-
tween his feet, until Shiloh come." These words
are very generally understood to mean that
Judah's supremacy would continue until it cul-
minated or flowered into the personal reign of
Shiloh; in other words, that Judah's sovereignty
was to be perpetuated in the person of Jesus
Christ. So that this prediction is but the first
whisper of that which was afterwards so dis-
tinctly declared, that David's seed should sit on
the throne for ever and ever. It was not accom-
plished in the letter, any more than the promise
to David was; the tribe of Judah cannot in any
intelligible sense be said to have had rulers of
her own up to the coming of Christ, or for some
centuries previous to that date. For those who
would quicTdy judge God and His promise by
what they could see in their own da_v. there was
enough to provoke them to challenge God for
forgetting His promise. But in due time the
King of men. He to whom all nations have gath-
ered, did spring from this tribe: and need it be
said that the very fact of His appearance proved
that the suprem;'cy had not departed from
Judah? This prediction, then, partook of the
character of very many of the Old Testament
prophecies: there was sufficient fulfilment in the
letter to seal, as it were, the promise, and give
men a token that it was being accomplished, and
yet so mysterious a falling short, as to cause
men to look beyond the literal fulfilment, on
which alone their hopes had at first rested, to
some far higher and more perfect spiritual ful-
filment.
But not only has it been objected that the
sceptre departed from Judah long before Christ
came, and that therefore the word Shiloh cannot
refer to Him, but also it has been truly said that
wherever else the word occurs it is the name of
a town — that town, viz., where the ark for a long
time was stationed, and from which the allotment
of territory was made to the various tribes; and
the prediction has been supposed to mean that
Judah should be the leading tribe till the land
was entered. Many objections to this naturally
occur, and need not be stated. But it comes to
be an inquiry of some interest. How much infor-
mation regarding a personal Messiah did the
brethren receive from this prophecy? A ques-
tion very difficult indeed to answer. The word
Shiloh means " peace-making," and if they
understood this as a proper name, they must
have thought of a person such as Isaiah desig-
nates as the Prince of Peace — a name it was
similar to that wherewith David called his son
Solomon, in the expectation that the results of
his own lifetime of disorder and battle would be
reaped by his successor in a peaceful and pros-
perous reign. It can scarcely be thought likely,
indeed, that this single term " Shiloh," which
might be applied to many things besides a per-
son, should give to the sons of Jacob any dis-
tinct idea of a personal Deliverer; but it might
be sufficient to keep before their eyes, and
specially before the tribe of Judah, that the aim
and consummation of all lawgiving and ruling
was peace. And there was certainly contained in
this blessing an assurance that the purpose of
Judah would not be accomplished, and therefore
that the existence of Judah as a tribe would not
terminate, until peace had been through its
means brought into the world: thus was the
assurance given, that the productive power of
Judah should not fail until out of that tribe there
had sprung that which should give peace.
But to us who have seen the prediction accom-
plished it plainly enough points to the Lion of
the tribe of Judah, who in His own person com-
bined all kingly qualities. In Him we are taught
by this prediction to discover once more the
single Person who stands out on the page of this
world's history as satisfying men's ideal of what
their King should be, and of how the race
should be represented; — the One who without
any rival stands in the mind's eye as that for
which the best hopes of men were waiting, still
feeling that the race could do more than it had
done, and never satisfied but in Him.
Zebulun. the sixth and last of Leah's sons, was
so called because said Leah, " Now will my hus-
band dzvcll with me " (such being the meaning of
the name), " for I have borne him six sons."
All that is predicted regarding this tribe is that
his dzuelling should be by the sea. and near the
Phoenician city Zidon. This is not to be
taken as a strict geographical definition of the
tract of country occupied by Zebulun, as we see
when we compare it with the lot assigned to it
and marked out in the Book of Joshua: but
though the border of the tribe did not reach to
Zidon, and though it can only have been a mere
tongue of land belonging to it that ran down to
114
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
the Mediterranean shore, yet the situation as-
cribed to it is true to its character as a tribe that
had commercial relations with the Phoenicians,
and was of a decidedly mercantile turn. We find
this same feature indicated in the blessing of
Moses: " Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out, and
Issachar in thy tents " — Zebulun having the
enterprise of a seafaring community, and Issa-
char the quiet bucolic contentment of an agricul-
tural or pastoral population: Zebulun always
restlessly eager for emigration or commerce, for
going out of one kind or other; Issachar satisfied
to live and die in his own tents. It is still, there-
fore, character rather than geographical position
that is here spoken of — though it is a trait of
character that is peculiarly dependent on geo-
graphical position: we, for example, because
islanders, having become the maritime power
and the merchants oi the world; not being shut
off from other nations by the encompassing sea,
but finding paths by it equally in all directions
ready provided for every kind of trafSc.
Zebulun, then, was to represent the commerce
of Israel, its outgoing tendency; was to supply a
means of communication and bond of connection
with the world outside, so that through it might
be conveyed to the nationsv what was saving in
Israel, and that what Israel needed from other
lands might also find entrance. In the Church
also, this is a needful quality: for our well-being
there must ever exist among us those who are
not afraid to launch on the wide and pathless sea
of opinion, those in whose ears its waves have
from their childhood sounded with a fascinating
invitation, and who at last, as if possessed by
some spirit of unrest, loose frorh the firm earth,
and go in quest of lands not yet discovered, or
are impelled to see for themselves what till now
they have believed on the testimony of others.
It is not for all men to quit the shore, and risk
themselves in the miseries and disasters of so
comfortless and hazardous a life; but happy the
people which possesses, from one generation to
another, men who must see with their own eyes,
and to whose restless nature the discomforts and
dangers of an unsettled life have a charm. It is
not the instability of Reuben that we have in
these men, but the irrepressible longing of the
born seaman, who must lift the misty veil of the
horizon and penetrate its mystery. And we are
not to condemn, even when we know we should
not imitate, men who cannot rest satisfied with
the ground on which we stand, but venture into
regions of speculation, of religious thought
which we have never trodden, and may deem
hazardous. The nourishment we receive is not
all native-grown; there are views of truth which
may very profitably be imported from strange
and distant lands; and there is no land, no prov-
ince of thought, from which we may not derive
what may advantageously be mixed with our
own ideas; no direction in which a speculative
mind can go in which it may not find something
which may give a fresh zest to what we already
use, or be a real addition to our knowledge. No
doubt men who refuse to confine themselves to
one way of viewing truth — men who venture to
go close to persons of very different ooinions
from their own, who determine for themselves -to
prove all things, Vfho have no very special love
for what they were native to and originally
taught, who show rather a ta^te for strange and
new opinions — these persons live a life of great
hazard, and in the end are generally, like men
who have been much at sea, unsettled; they have
not fixed opinions, and are in themselves, as in-
dividual men, unsatisfactory and unsatisfied; but
still they have done good to the community, by
bringing to us ideas and knowledge which other-
wise we could not have obtained. Such men
God gives us to widen our views; to prevent us
from thinking that we have the best of every-
thing; to bring us to acknowledge that others,
who perhaps in the main are not so favoured as
ourselves, are yet possessed of some things we
ourselves would be the better of. And though
these men must themselves necessarily hang
loosely, scarcely attached very firmly to any part
of the Church, like a seafaring population, and
often even with a border running very close to
heathenism, yet let us own that the Church has
need of such — that without them the different
sections of the Church would know too little of
one another, and too little of the facts of this
world's life. And as the seafaring population of
a country might be expected to show less
interest in the soil of their native land than
others, and yet we know that in point of fact we
are dependent on no class of our population so
much for leal patriotism, and for the defence of
our country, so one has observed that the
Church also must make similar use of her Zebu-
luns — of men who, by their very habit of rest-
lessly considering all views of truth which are
alien to our own ways of thinking, have become
familiar with, and better able to defend us against
the error that mingles with these views.
Issachar receives from his father a character
which few would be proud of or would envy,
but which many are very content to bear. As
the strong ass that has its stall and its provender
provided can afford to let the free beasts of the
forest vaunt their liberty, so there is a very
numerous class of men who have no care to
assert their dignity as human beings, or to agi-
tate regarding their rights as citizens, so long as
their obscurity and servitude provide them with
physical comforts, and leave them free of heavy
responsibilities. They prefer a life of ease and
plenty to a life of hardship and glory. They are
not lazy nor idle, but are quite willing to use
their strength so long as they are not overdriven
out of their sleekness. They have neither ambi-
tion nor enterprise, and willingly bow their
shoulders to bear, and become the servants of
tliose who will free them from the anxiety of
planning and managing, and give them a fair and
regular remuneration for their labour. This is
not a noble nature, but in a world in which am-
bition so frequently runs through a thorny and
difficult path to a disappointing and shameful
end, this disposition has much to say in its own
defence. It will often accredit itself with un-
challengeable common sense, and will maintain
that it alone enjoys life and gets the good of it.
They will tell you they are the only true utili-
tarians, that to be one's own master only brings
cares, and that the degradation of servitude is
only an idea; that really servants are quite as
well off as masters. Look at them: the one is as
a strong, powerful, well-cared-for animal, his
work but a pleasant exercise to him, and when
it is over never following him into his rest; he
eats the good of the land, and has what all seem
to be in vain striving for, rest and contentrnent:
the other, the master, has indeed his position,
but that only multiplies his duties; he has wealth,
but that Droverbially only increases his cares and
Genesis xlviii.-xlix.]
THE BLESSINGS OF THE TRIBES.
"5
the mouths that are to consume it; it is he who
has the air of a bondsman, and never, meet him
when you may, seems wholly at ease and free
from care.
Yet, after jill that can be said in favour of the
bargain an Issachar makes, and however he may
be satisfied to rest, and in a quiet, peaceful way
enjoy life, men feel that at the best there is some-
thing despicable about such a character. He
gives his labour and is fed, he pays his tribute
and is protected; but men feel that they ought
to meet the dangers, responsibilities, and dififi-
culties of life in their own persons, and at first
hand, and not buy themselves off so from the
burden of individual self-control and responsi-
bility. The animal enjoyment of this life and its
physical comforts may be a very good ingredient
in a national character: it might be well for
Israel to have this patient, docile mass of
strength in its midst: it may be well for our
country that there are among us not only men
eager for the highest honours and posts, but a
great multitude of men perhaps equally service-
able and capable, but whose desires never rise
beyond the ordinary social comforts; the con-
tentedness of such, even though reprehensible,
tempers or balances the ambition of the others,
and when it comes into personal contact rebukes
its feverishness. They, as well as the other parts
of society, have amidst their error a truth — the
truth that the ideal world in which ambition, and
hope, and imagination live is not everything;
that the material has also a reality, and that
though hope does bless mankind, yet attainment
is also something, even though it be a little. Yet
this truth is not the whole truth, and is only use-
ful as an ingredient, as a part, not as the whole;
and when we fall from any high ideal of human
life which we have formed, and begin to find
comfort and rest in the mere physical good
things of this world, we may well despise our-
selves. There is a pleasantness still in the land
that appeals to us all; a luxury in observing the
risks and struggles of others while ourselves
secure and at rest; a desire to make life easy, and
to shirk the responsibility and toil that public-
spiritedness entails. Yet of what tribe has the
Church more cause to complain than of those
persons who seem to imagine that they have
done enough when they have joined the Church
and received their own inheritance to enjoy; who
are alive to no emergency, nor awake to the need
of others; who have no idea at all of their being
a part of the community, for which, as well as
for themselves, there are duties to discharge;
who couch, like the ass of Issachar, in their com-
fort without one generous impulse to make com-
mon cause against the common evils and foes of
the Church, and are unvisited by a single com-
punction that while they lie there, submitting to
whatever fate sends, there are kindred tribes of
their own being oppressed and spoiled?
There seems to have been an improvement in
this tribe, an infusion of some new life into it.
In the time of Deborah, indeed, it is with a note
of surprise that, while celebrating the victory of
Israel, she names even Issachar as having been
roused to action, and as having helped in the
common cause — " the princes of Issachar were
with Deborah, even Issachar;" but we find them
again in the days of David wiping out their re-
proach, and standing by him manfully. And
there an apparently new character is given to
them — " the children of Issachar. which were
men that had understanding of the times, to
know what Israel ought to do." This quite ac-
cords, however, with the kind of practical phi-
losophy which we have seen to be imbedded in
Issachar's character. Men they were not dis-
tracted by high thoughts and ambitions, but
who judged things according to their substantial
value to themselves; and who were, therefore, in
a position to give much good advice on practi-
cal matters — advice which would always have a
tendency to trend too much towards mere utili-
tarianism and worldliness, and to partake rather
of crafty politic diplomacy than of far-seeing
statesmanship, yet trustworthy for a certain class
of subjects. And here, too, they represent the
same class in the Church, already alluded to; for
one often finds that men who will not interrupt
their own comfort, and who have a kind of stolid
indifference as to what comes of the good of the
Church, have yet also much shrewd practical
wisdom; and were these men, mstead of spend-
ing their sagacity in cynical denunciation of what
the Church does, to throw themselves into the
cause of the Church, and heartily advise her what
she ought to do, and help in the doing of it, their
observation of human affairs, and political under-
standing of the times, would be turned to good
account, instead of being a reproach.
Next came the eldest son of Rachel's hand-
maid, and the eldest son of Leah's handmaid,
Dan and Gad. Dan's name, meaning " judge,"
is the starting point of the prediction — " Dan
shall judge his people." This word " judge " we
are perhaps somewhat apt to misapprehend; it
means rather to defend than to sit in judgment
on; it refers to a judgment passed between one's
own people and their foes, and an execution of
such judgment in the deliverance of the people
and the destruction of the foe. We are familiar
with this meaning of the word by the constant
reference in the Old Testament to God's judging
His people; this being always a cause of joy as
their sure deliverance from their enemies. So
also it is used of those men who, when Israel
had no king, arose from time to time as the
champions of the people, to lead them against
the foe, and who are therefore familiarly called
" The Judges." From the tribe of Dan the most
conspicuous of these arose, Samson, namely, and
it is probably mainly with reference to this fact
that Jacob so emphatically predicts of this tribe,
" Dan shall judge his people." And notice the
appended clause (as reflecting shame on the
sluggish Issachar), " as one of the tribes of
Israel," recognising always that his strength
was not for himself alone, but for his country;
that he was not an isolated people who had to
concern himself only with his own affairs, but
one of the tribes of Israel. The manner, too,
in which Dan was to do this was singularly de-
scriptive of the facts subsequently evolved. Dan
was a very small and insignificant tribe, whose
lot originally lay close to the Philistines on the
southern border of the land. It might seem to
be no obstacle whatever to the invading Philis-
tines as they passed to the richer portion of Ju-
dah, but this little tribe, through Samson, smote
these terrors of the Israelites with so sore and
alarming a destruction as to cripple them for
years and make them harmless. We see, there-
fore, how aptly Jacob compares them to the
venomous snake that lurks in the road and bites
the horses' heels; the dust-coloured adder that a
man treads on before he is aware, and whose
ii6
THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
poisonous stroke is more deadly than the foe he
is looking for in front. And especially signifi-
cant did the imagery appear to the Jews, with
whom this poisonous adder was indigenous, but
to whom the horse was the symbol of foreign
armament and invasion. The whole tribe of
Dan, too, seems to have partaken of that " grim
humour " with which Samson saw his foes walk
time after time into the traps he set for them, and
give themselves an easy prey to him — a humour
which comes out with singular piquancy in the
narrative given in the Book of Judges of one of
the forays of this tribe, in which they carried off
Micah's priest and even his gods.
But why, in the full flow of his eloquent de-
scription of the varied virtues of his sons, does
the oatriarch suddenly check himself, lie back on
his pillows, and quietly say, " I have waited for
Thy salvation, O God? " Does he feel his
strength leave him so that he cannot go on to
bless the rest of his sons, and has but time to
yield his own spirit to God? Are we here to
interpolate one of those scenes we are all fated to
witness when some eagerly watched breath seems
altogether to fail before the last words have been
uttered, when those who have been standing
apart, through sorrow and reverence, quickly
gather round the bed to catch the last look, and
when the dying man again collects himself and
finishes his work? Probably Jacob, having, as
it were, projected himself forward into those
stirring and warlike times he has been speaking
of, so realises the danger of his people, and the
futility even of such help as Dan's when God
does not help, that, as if from the midst of doubt-
ful war, he cries, as with a battle cry, " I have
waited for Thy salvation, O God." His longing
for victory and blessing to his sons far overshot
the deliverance from Philistines accomplished
by Samson. That deliverance he thankfully ac-
cepts and joyfully predicts, but in the spirit of
an Israelite indeed, and a genuine child of the
promise, he remains unsatisfied, and sees in all
such deliverance only the pledge of God's com-
ing nearer and nearer to His people, bringing
with Him His eternal salvation. In Dan, there-
fore, we have not the catholic spirit of Zebulun,
nor the practical, though sluggish, temper of
Issachar; but we are guided rather to the dispo-
sition which ought to be maintained through all
Christian life, and which, with special care,_ needs
to be cherished in Church-life — a disposition to
accept with gratitude all success and triumph,
but still to aim through all at that highest victory
which God alone can accomplish for His people.
It is to be the battle-cry with which every Chris-
tian and every Church is to preserve itself, not
merely against external foes, but against the far
more disastrous influence of self-confidence,
pride, and glorying in man — " For Thy salvation,
O God, do we wait."
Gad also is a tribe whose history is to be Avar-
like, his very name signifying a marauding,
guerilla troop; and his history was to illustrate
the victories which God's people gain by tena-
cious, watchful, ever-renewed warfare. The
Church has often prospered by her Dan-like in-
significance; the world not troubling itself to
make war upon her. But oftener Gad is a bet-
ter representative of the mode in which her suc-
cesses are gained. We find that the men of Gad
were among the most valuable of David's war-
riors, when his necessity evoked all the various
skill and energy of Israel. " Of the Gadites,"
we read, " there separated themselves unto David
into the hold of the wilderness men of might,
and men of war fit for the battle, that could
handle shield and buckler, whose faces were like
the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes
upon the mountains: one of the least of them
was better than an hundred, and the greatest
mightier than a thousand." And there is some-
thing particularly inspiriting to the individual
Christian in finding this pronounced as part of
the blessing of God's people — " a troop shall
overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last."
It is this that enables us to persevere — that we
have God's assurance that present discomfiture
does not doom us to final defeat. If you be
among the children of promise, among those that
gather round God to catch His blessing, you
shall overcome at the last. Ycu may now feel
as if assaulted by treacherous, murderous foes,
irregular troops, that betake themselves to every
cruel deceit, and are ruthless in spoiling you; you
may be assailed by so many and strange tempta-
tions that you are bewildered and cannot lift a
hand to resist, scarce seeing where your danger
comes from; you may be buffeted by messengers
of Satan, distracted by a sudden and tumultuous
incursion of a crowd of cares so that you are
moved away from the old habits of your life
amid which you seem to stand safely; your heart
may seem to be the rendezvous of all ungodly
and wicked thoughts, you may feel trodden under
foot and overrun by sin, but, with the blessing of
God, you shall overcome at the last. Only culti-
vate that dogged pertinacity of Gad, which has
no thought of ultimate defeat, but rallies cheer-
fully and resolutely after every discomfiture.
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
PREFACE.
Much is now denied or doubted, within the Church itself, concerning the Book of
Exodus, which was formerly accepted with confidence by all Christians.
But one thing can neither be doubted nor denied. Jesus Christ did certainly treat
this book, taking it as He found it, as possessed of spiritual authority, a sacred scrip-
ture. He taught His disciples to regard it thus, and they did so.
Therefore, however widely His followers may differ about its date and origin, they
must admit the right of a Christian teacher to treat this book, taking it as he finds it,
as a sacred scripture and invested with spiritual authority. It is the legitimate subject
of exposition in the Church. ■
Such work this volume strives, however imperfectly, to perform. Its object is to
edify in the first place, and also, but in the second place, to inform. Nor has the
author consciously shrunk from saying what seemed to him proper to be said because
the utterance would be unwelcome, either to the latest critical theory, or to the last
sensational gospel of an hour.
But since controversy has not been sought, although exposition has not been sup-
pressed when it carried weapons, by far the greater part of the volume appeals to all
who accept their Bible as, in any true sense, a gift from God. '
No task is more dif^cult than to exhibit the Old Testament in the light of the
New discovering the permanent in the evanescent, and the spiritual in the form and
type' which it inhabited and illuminated. This book is at least the result of a firm
belief that such a connection between the two Testaments does exist, and of a patient
endeavour to receive the edification offered by each Scripture, rather than to force
into it, and then extort from it, what the expositor desires to f^nd. Nor has it been
supposed that by allowing the imagination to assume, in sacred things that rank as a
guide which reason holds in all other practical affairs, any honor would be done to
Him Who is called the Spirit of knowledge and wisdom, but not of fancy and quaint
conceits.
1 111 IS
If such an attempt does, in any degree, prove successful and bear fruit, this fact
will be of the nature of a scientific demonstration.
If this ancient Book of Exodus yields solid results to a sober devotional exposition
in the nineteenth Christian century, if it is not an idle fancy that its teaching har-
monises with the principles and theology of the New Testament, and even demands
the New Testament as the true commentary upon the Old, what follows? How
comes it that the oak is potentially in the acorn, and the living creature in the egg f
No germ is a manufactured article : it is a part of the system of the universe.
IS?
CONTENTS.
Chapter I.
The Prologue,
•God in History,
The Oppression,
PAGE
121
122
124
PAGE
Chapter XII.
The Passover, . 163
The Tenth Plague 169
The Exodus, 170
Chapter II. Chapter XIII
The Rescue of Moses, 127 The Law of the Firstborn,
The Choice of Moses, . . . . .129 The Bones of Joseph,
Moses in Midian . 130
171
172
Chapter III.
The Burning Bush, 131
A New Name, 134
The Commission, ...... 137
Chapter IV.
Moses Hesitates, 138
Moses Obeys 141
Chapter V.
Pharaoh Refuses,
143
Chapter VI.
The Encouragement of Moses,
Chapter VII.
The Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart, .
The Plagues,
The First Plague
Chapter VIII.
The Second Plague,
The Third Plague, . . ....
The Fourth Plague, ......
Chapter IX.
The Fifth Plague,
The Sixth Plague,
The Seventh Plague,
• •
Chapter X.
The Eighth Plague.
The Ninth Plague,
Chapter XI.
The Last Plague Announced,
154
155
155
156
157
157
159
161
163
Chapter XIV.
The Red Sea 173
On the Shore, 174
Chapter XV.
The Song of Moses,
Shur,
Chapter XVI.
Murmuring for Food, . .
Manna, . . . •
Spiritual Meat,
175
177
179
180
Chapter XVII,
Meribah 183
. 145 Amalek, 184
Chapter XVIII,
149 Jethro, 186
151
153 THE TYPICAL BEARINGS OF THE
HISTORY.
Chapter XIX.
At Sinai 188
Chapter XX.
The Law, ....
The Prologue, ....
The First Commandment,
The Second Commandment,
The Third Commandment,
The Fourth Commandment,
The Fifth Commandment,
The Sixth Commandment,
The Seventh Commandment,
The Eighth Commandment,
The Ninth Commandment,
The Tenth Commandment,
19 i
192
193
194
196
197
199
200
201
201
202
203
119
I20
THE LESSER LAW.
I. The Law of Worship, ....
THE LESSER LAW {Continued).
Chapter XXL
IL Rights of the Person, ....
in. Rights of Property, ....
THE LESSER LAW [Continued).
. Chapter XXII.
IV. Various Enactments, ....
Sorcery, .......
The Stranger, ......
THE LESSER LAW {Continued).
Chapter XXIII.
Lesser Law, V. Its Sanctions,
Chapter XXIV.
The Covenant Ratified. The Vision of God,
Chapter XXV.
The Shrine and Its Furniture, . . .
The Pattern in the Mcuat, . . .
Chapter XXVI.
The Tabernacle,
CONTENTS.
page PAGe
Chapter XXVII.
. 205 The Outer Court 220
Chapter XXVIII.
The Holy Garments, 221
,Qg The Priesthood, 222
• 207 _
Chapter XXIX.
Consecration Services, ..... 223
Chapter XXX.
, 208 Incense 225
. 208 A Census, ....... 226
. 209 The Laver, . . . . •. . . 227
Anointing Oil and Incense, .... 227
Chapter XXXI.
Bezaleel and Aholiab, 228
Chapter XXXII. ^
The Golden Calf, ...... 229
• ^^3 Chapter XXXIII.
Prevailing Intercession, ..... 229
. 215 Chapter XXXIV.
• '^'^'^ The Vision of God, 230
Chapters XXXV.— XL.
218 Conclusion, 230
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
BY THE VERY REV, G. A. CHADWICK, D. D.
CHAPTER I.
THE PROLOGUE.
Exodus i. i-6.
" And these are the names of the children of Israel which
came into Egypt."
Many books of the Old Testament begin with
the conjunction And. This fact, it has been
often pointed out, is a silent indication of truth,
that each author was not recording certain
isolated incidents, but parts of one great drama,
events which joined hands with the past and
future, looking before and after.
Thus the Book of the Kings took up the tale
from Samuel, Samuel from Judges, and Judges
from Joshua, and all carried the sacred move-
ment forward towards a goal as yet unreached.
Indeed, it was impossible, remembering the first
promise that the seed of the woman should
bruise the head of the serpent, and the later
assurance that in the seed of Abraham should be
the universal blessing, for a faithful Jew to for-
get that all the history of his race was the evolu-
tion of some grand hope, a pilgrimage towards
some goal unseen. Bearing in mind that there
is now revealed to us a world-wide tendency
toward the supreme consummation, the bring-
ing all things under the headship of Christ, it is
not to be denied that this hope of the ancient
Jew is given to all mankind. Each new stage in
universal history may be said to open with this
same conjunction. It links the history of Eng-
land with that of Julius Caesar and of the Red In-
dian; nor is the chain composed of accidents: it
is forged by the hand of the God of providence.
Thus, in the conjunction which binds these Old
Testament narratives together, is found the germ
of that instinctive and elevating phrase, the Phi-
losophy of History. But there is nowhere in
Scripture the notion which too often degrades
and stiffens that Philosophy — the notion that his-
tory is urged forward by blind forces, amid
which the individual man is too puny to assert
himself. Without a Moses the Exodus is incon-
ceivable, and God always achieves His purpose
through the providential man.
The Books of the Pentateuch are held together
in a yet stronger unity than the rest, being sec-
tions of one and the same narrative, and having
been accredited with a common authorship from
the earliest mention of them. Accordingly, the
Book of Exodus not only begins with this con-
junction (-which assumes the previous narrative),
but also rehearses the descent into Egypt.
" And these are the names of the sons of Israel
which came into Egypt." — names blotted with
many a crime, rarely suggesting any lovable or
great association, yet the names of men with a
marvellous heritage, as being "the sons of
Israel," the Prince who prevailed with God.
Moreover they are consecrated: their father's
dying words had conveyed to every one of them
some expectation, some mysterious import which
the future should disclose. In the issue would
be revealed the awful influence of the past upon
the future, of the fathers upon the children even
beyond the third and fourth generation — an in-
fluence which is nearer to destiny, in its stern,
subtle and far-reaching strength, than any other
recognised by religion. Destiny, however, it is
not, or how should the name of Dan have faded
out from the final list of " every tribe of the chil-
dren of Israel " in the Apocalypse (Rev. vii. 5-8),
where Manasseh is reckoned separately from Jo^
seph to complete the twelve?
We read that with the twelve came their pos-
terity, seventy souls in direct descent from
Jacob; but in this number he is himself included,
according to that well-known Orientalism which
Milton strove to force upon our language in the
phrase:
"The fairest of her daughters Eve."
Joseph is also reckoned, although he " was in
Egypt already." Now, it must be observed that
of these seventy, sixty-eight were males, and
therefore the people of the Exodus must not be
reckoned to have sprung in the interval from
seventy, but (remembering polygamy) from
more than twice that number, even if we refuse
to make any account of the household which is
mentioned as coming with every man. These
households were probably smaller in each case
than that of Abraham, and the famine in its early
stages may have reduced the number of retainers;
yet they account for much of what is pronounced
incredible in the rapid expansion of the clan into
a nation.* But when all allowance has been
made, the increase continues to be, such as the
narrator clearly regards it, abnormal, well-nigh
preternatural, a fitting type of the expansion,
amid fiercer persecutions, of the later Church of
God, the true circumcision, who also sprang
from the spiritual parentage of another Seventy
and another Twelve.
" And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and
all that generation." Thus the connection with
Canaan became a mere tradition, and the power-
ful courtier who had nursed their interests dis-
appeared. When they remembered him, in the
bitter time which lay before them, it was only to
reflect that all- mortal help must perish. It is
thus in the spiritual world also. Paul reminds
the Philippians that they can obey in his absence
and not in his presence only, working out their
own salvation, as no apostle can work it out on
their behalf. And the reason is that the one real
support is ever present. Work out your own
salvation, for it is God (not any teacher) Who
worketh in you. The Hebrew race was to learn
its need of Him, and in Him to recover its free-
dom. Moreover, the influences which mould all
men's characters, their surroundings and mental
atmosphere, were completely changed. These
wanderers for pasture were now in the presence
of a compact and impressive social system, vast
* Professor Ctirtiss quotes a volume of family memoirs
which shows that s,564 persons are known to be de.scended
from Lieutenant John Hollister, who emigrated to Amer-
ica in the vear i6.}2 (Expositor, Nov., 1887. p. 329). This is
probably equal m ratio to the increase of Israel in
Egypt.
121
122
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
cities, gorgeous temples, an imposing ritual.
They were infected as well as educated there, and
we find the men of the Exodus not only mur-
muring for Egyptian comforts, but demanding
visible gods to go before them.
Yet, with all its drawbacks, the change was a
necessary part of their development. They
should return from Egypt relying upon no
courtly patron, no mortal might or wisdom,
aware of a name of God more profound than was
spoken in the covenant of their fathers, with their
narrow family interests and rivalries and their
family traditions expanded into national hopes,
national aspirations, a national religion.
Perhaps there is another reason why Scripture
has reminded us of the vigorous and healthy
stock whence came the race that multiplied ex-
ceedingly. For no book attaches more weight
to the truth, so miserably perverted that it is dis-
credited by multitudes, but amply vindicated by
modern science, that good breeding, in the
strictest sense of the word, is a powerful factor
in the lives of men and nations. To be well
born does not of necessity require aristocratic
parentage, nor does such parentage involve it:
but it implies a virtuous, temperate, and pious
stock. In extreme cases the doctrine of race is
palpable; for who can doubt that the sins of dis-
solute parents are visited upon their puny and
short-lived children, and that the posterity of
the just inherit not only honour and a welcome
in the world, " an open door," but also immu-
nity from many a physical blemish and many a
perilous craving? If the Hebrew race, after
eighteen centuries of calamity, retains an unri-
valled vigour and tenacity, be it remembered
how its iron sinew has been twisted, from what
a sire it sprang, through what ages of more than
" natural selection " the dross was thoroughly
purged out, and (as Isaiah loves to reiterate) a
chosen remnant left. Already, in Egypt, in the
vigorous multiplication of the race, was visible
the germ of that amazing vitality which makes
it, even in its overthrow, so powerful an element
in the best modern thought and action.
It is a well-known saying of Goethe that the
quality for which God chose Israel was probably
toughness. Perhaps the saying would better be
inverted: it was among the most remarkable en-
dowments, unto which Israel was called, and
called by virtue of qualities in which Goethe
himself was remarkably deficient.
Now, this principle is in full- operation still,
and ought to be solemnly pondered by the
young. Self-indulgence, the sowing of wild oats,
the seeing of life while one is young, the taking
one's fling before one settles down, the having
one's day (like " every dog," for it is to be ob-
served that no person says, " every Christian "),
these things seem natural enough. And their
unsuspected issues in the next generation, dire
and subtle and far-reaching, these also are more
natural still, being the operation of the laws of
God.
On the other hand, there is no youth living in
obedience alike to the higher and humbler laws
of our complex nature, in purity and gentleness
and healthful occupation, who may not con-
tribute to the stock of happiness in other lives
beyond his own, to the future v.'ell-being of his
native land, and to the day when the sadly
polluted stream of human existence shall
again flow clear and glad, a pure river .of water
of life.
GOD IN HISTORY.
Exodus
1. 7-
With the seventh verse, the new narrative, the
course of events treated in the main body of this
book, begins.
And we are at once conscious of this vital
difference between Exodus and Genesis, — that
we have passed from the story of men and fami-
lies to the history of a nation. In the first book
the Canaanites and Egyptians concern us only
as they affect Abraham or Joseph. In the
second book, even Moses himself concerns us
only for the sake of Israel. He is in some re-
spects a more imposing and august character
than any who preceded him; but what we are
told is no longer the story of a soul, nor are we
pointed so much to the development of his
spiritual life as to the work he did, the tyrant
overthrown, the nation moulded, the law and the
ritual imposed on it.
For Jacob it was a discovery that God was in
Bethel as well as in his father's house. But now
the Hebrew nation was to learn that He could,
plague the gods of Egypt in their stronghold,
that His way was in the sea, that Horeb in
Arabia was the Mount of God, that He could
lead them like a horse through the wilderness.
When Jacob in Peniel wrestles with God and
prevails, he wins for himself a new name, ex-
pressive of the higher moral elevation which he
has attained. But when Moses meets God in
the bush, it is to receive a commission for the
public benefit; and there is no new name for
Moses, but a fresh revelation of God for the
nation to learn. And in all their later history
we feel that the national life which it unfolds
was nourished and sustained by these glorious
early experiences, the most unique as well as the
most inspiriting on record.
Here, then, a question of great moment is sug-
gested. Beyond the fact that Abraham was the
father of the Jewish race, can we discover any
closer connection between the lives of the pa-
triarchs and the history of Israel? Is there a
truly spiritual coherence between them, or
merely a genealogical sequence? For if the
Bible can make good its claim to be vitalised
throughout by the eternal Soirit of God, and
leading forward steadily to His final revelation
in Christ, then its parts will be symmetrical, pro-
portionate, and well designed. If it be a uni-
versal book, there must be a better reason for
the space devoted to preliminary and half secular
stories, which is a greater bulk than the whole of
the New Testament, than that these histories
chance to belong to the nation whence Christ
came. If no such reason can be found, the
failure may not perhaps outweigh the great evi-
dences of the faith, but it will score. for some-
thing on the side of infidelity. But if upon
examination it becomes plain that all has its part
in one great movement, and that none can be
omitted without marring the design, and if more-
over this design has become visible only since
the fulness of the time is come, the discovery
will go far to establish the claim of Scripture to
reveal throughout a purpose truly divine, dealing
with man for ages, and consummated in tlie gift
of Christ.
Now. it is to St. Paul that we turn for light
upon the connection between the Old Testament
and the New. And he distinctly lays down two
Exodus i. 7.j
GOD IN HISTORY.
123
great principles. The first is that the Old Testa-
ment is meant to educate men for the New; and
especially that the sense of failure, impressed
upon men's consciences by the stern demands of
the Law, was necessary to make them accept the
Gospel.
The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to
Christ: it entered that sin might abound. And
it is worth notice that this effect was actually
wrought, not only upon the gross transgressor
by the menace of its broken precepts, but even
more perhaps upon the high-minded and pure,
by the creation in their breasts of an ideal, in-
accessible in its loftiness. He who says. All
these things have I kept from my youth up, is
the same who feels the torturing misgiving,
What good thing must I do to attain life? . . .
What lack I yet? He who was blameless as
touching the righteousness of the law, feels that
such superficial innocence is worthless, that the
law is spiritual and he is carnal, sold under sin.
Now, this principle need by no means be re-
stricted to the Mosaic institutions. If this were
the object of the law, it would probably explain
much more. And when we return to the Old
Testament with this clue, we find every condi-
tion in life examined, every social and political
experiment exhausted, a series of demonstra-
tions made with scientific precision, to refute the
arch-heresy which underlies all others — that in
favourable circumstances man might save him-
self, that for the evil of our lives our evil sur-
roundings are more to be blamed than we.
Innocence in prosperous circumstances, un-
warped by evil habit, untainted by corruption in
the blood, uncompelled by harsh surroundings,
simple innocence had its day in Paradise, a
brief day with a shameful close. God made
man upright, but he sought out many inven-
tions, until the flood swept away the descend-
ants of him who was made after the image of
God.
Next we have a chosen family, called out from
all the perilous associations of its home beyond
the river, to begin a new career in a new land,
in special covenant with the Most High, and
with every endowment for the present and every
hooe for the future which could help to retain its
loyalty. Yet the third generation reveals the
thirst of Esau for his brother's blood, the
treachery of Jacob, and the distraction and guilt
of his fierce and sensual family. It is when in-
dividual and family life have thus proved m-
effectual amid the happiest circumstances, that,
the tribe and the nation essay the task. Led up
from the furnace of affliction, hardened and
tempered in the stern free life of- the desert, im-
pressed by every variety of fortune, by slavery
and escape, by the pursuit of an irresistible foe
and by a rescue visibly divine, awed finally bj'
the sublime revelations of Sinai, the nation is
ready for the covenant (which is also a chal-
lenge)— The man that doeth these things shall
live by them: if thou diligently hearken unto the
voice of the Lord thy God . . . He shall set thee
on high above all nations.
Such is the connection between this narrative
and what went before. And the continuation of
the same experiment, and the same failure, can
be traced through all the subsequent history.
Whether in so loose an organisation that every
man does what is right in his own eyes, or under
the sceptre of a hero or a sage, — whether so hard
pressed that self-preservation ought to have
driven them to their God, or so marvellously de-
livered that gratitude should have brought them
to their knees, — whether engulfed a second time
in a more hopeless captivity, or restored and
ruled by a hierarchy whose authority is entirely
spiritual, — in every variety of circumstances the
same melancholy process repeats itself; and law-
lessness, luxury, idolatry, and self-righteousness
combine to stop every mouth, to make every
man guilty before God, to prove that a greater
salvation is still needed, and thus to pave the
way for the Messiah.
The second great principle of St. Paul is that
faith in a divine help, in pardon, blessing, and
support, was the true spirit of the Old Testament
as well as of the New. The challenge of the law
was meant to produce self-despair, only that men
might trust in God. Appeal was made especially
to the cases of Abraham and David, the founder
of the race and of the dynasty, clearly because
the justification without works of the patriarch
and of the king were precedents to decide the
general question (Rom. iv. 1-8). Now, this is
pre-eminently the distinction between Jewish
history and all others, that in it God is every-
thing and man is nothing. Every sceptical treat-
ment of the story makes Moses to be the de-
liverer from Egypt, and shows us the Jewish
nation gradually finding out God. But the
nation itself believed nothing of the kind. It
confessed itself to have been from the beginning
vagrant and rebellious and unthankful: God had
always found out Israel, never Israel God. The
history is an expansion of the parable of the
good shepherd. And this pertect harmony of a
long record with itself and with abstract prin-
ciples is both instructive and reassuring.
As the history of Israel opens before us, a
third principle claims attention — one which the
apostle quietly assumes, but which is forced on
our consideration by the unhappy state of re-
ligious thought in these degenerate days.
" They are not to be heard." says the Seventli
Article rightly. " which feign that the old fathers
did look only for transitory promises." But
certainly they also would be unworthy of a hear-
ing who would feign that the early Scriptures do
not give a vast, a preponderating weight, to the
concerns of our life on earth. Only very slowly,
and as the result of long training, does the future
begin to reveal its supremacy over the present.
It would startle many a devout reader out of his
propriety to discover the small proportion of
Old Testament scriptures in which eternity and
its prospects are discussed, to reckon the pass-
ages, habitually applied to spiritual thraldom and
emancipation, which were spoken at first of
earthly tyranny and earthly deliverance, and to
observe, even in the pious aspirations of the
Psalms, how much of the gratitude and joy of
the righteous comes from the sense that he is
made wiser than the ancient, and need not fear
though a host rose up against him. and can
break a bow of steel, and has a table prepared for
him, and an overflowing cup. Especially is this
true of the historical books. God is here seen
ruling states, judging in the earth, remembering
Israel in bondage, and setting him free, provid-
ing supernatural food and water, guiding him by
the fiery cloud. There is not a word about re-
generation, conversion, hell, or heaven. And
yet there is a profound sense of God. He is real,
active, the most potent factor in the daily lives
of men. Now, this may teach us a lesson, highly
124
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
important to us all, and especially to those who
must teach others. The difference between
spirituality and secularity is not the difference be-
tween the future life and the present, but betweeu
a life that is aware of God and a godless one.
Perhaps, when we find our gospel a matter of in-
difference and weariness to men who are ab-
sorbed in the bitter, monotonous, and dreary
struggle for existence, we ourselves are most to
blame. Perhaps, if Moses had approached the
Hebrew drudges as we approach men equally
weary and oppressed, they would not have
bowed their heads and worshipped. And per-
haps we should have better success, if we took
care to speak of God in this world, making life
a noble struggle, charging with new significance
the dull and seemingly degraded lot of all who
remember Him, such a God as Jesus revealed
when He cleansed the leper, and gave sight to
the blind, using one and the same word for the
" healing " of diseases and the " saving " of
souls, and connecting faith equally with both.
Exodus will have little to teach us, unless we be-
lieve in that God who knoweth that we have
need of food and clothing. And the higher
spiritual truths which it expresses will only be
found there in dubious and questionable allegory,
unless we firmly grasp the great truth, that God
is not the Saviour of souls, or of bodies, but of
living men in their entirety, and treats their
higher and lower wants upon much the same
principle, because He is the same God, dealing
with the same men, through both.
Moreover, He treats us as the men of other
ages. Instead of dealing with Moses upon ex-
ceptional and strange lines, He made known His
ways unto Moses, His characteristic and habitual
ways. And it is on this account that whatsoever
things were written aforetime are true admoni-
tion for us also, being not violent interruptions
but impressive revelations of the steady, silent
methods of the judgment and the grace of God.
THE OPPRESSION.
Exodus i. 7-22.
At the beginning of the history of Israel we
find a prosperous race. It was indeed their
growing importance, and chiefly their vast nu-
merical increase, which excited the jealousy of
their rulers, at the very time when a change of
dynasty removed the sense of obligation. It is
a sound lesson in political as well as personal
godliness that prosperity itself is dangerous, and
needs special protection from on high.
Is it merely by chance again that we find in
this first of histories examples of the folly of re-
lying upon political connections? As the chief
butler remembered not Joseph, nor did he suc-
ceed in escaping from prison by securing influ-
ence at court, so is the influence of Joseph him-
self now become vain, although he was the
father of Pharaoh and lord of all his house. His
romantic history, his fidelity in temptation, and
the services by which he had at once cemented
the royal power and saved the people, could not
keep his memory alive. The hollow wraith of
dying fame died wholly. There arose a new
king over Egypt who knew not Joseph.
Such is the value of the hiehest and purest
earthly fame, and such the gratitude of the world
to its benefactors. The nation which Joseph
rescued from starvation is passive in Pharaoh's
hands, and persecutes Israel at his bidding.
And when the actual deliverer arose, his rank
and influence were only entanglements through
which he had to break.
Meanwhile, except among a few women,
obedient to the woman's heart, we find no trace
of independent action, no revolt of conscience
against the absolute behest of the sovereign,
until selfishness replaces virtue, and despair
wrings the cry from his servants, Knowest thou
not yet that Egypt is destroyed?
Now, in Genesis we saw the fate of families,
blessed in their father Abraham, or cursed for
the offence of Ham. For a family is a real
entity, and its members, like those of one body,
rejoice and suffer together. But the same is
true of nations, and here we have reached the
national stage in the education of the world.
Here is exhibited to us, therefore, a nation suf-
fering with its monarch to the uttermost, until
the cry of the maid-servant behind the mill is as
wild and bitter as the cry of Pharaoh upon his
throne. It is indeed the eternal curse of des-
potism that unlimited calamity may be drawn
down upon millions by the caprice of one most
unhappy man, himself blinded and half mad-
dened by adulation, by the absence of restraint,
by unlimited sensual indulgence if his tendencies
be low and animal, and by the pride of power if
h« be high-spirited and aspiring.
If we assume, what seems pretty well estab-
lished, that the Pharaoh from whom Moses fled
was Rameses the Great, his spirit was of the
nobler kind, and he exhibits a terrible example
of the unfitness even of conquering genius for
unbridled and irresponsible power. That lesson
has had to be repeated, even down to the days of
the Great Napoleon.
Now, if the justice of plaguing a nation for the
offence of its head be questioned, let us ask first
whether the nation accepts his despotism,
honours him, and is content to regard him as its
chief and captain. According to the principles
of the Sermon on the Mount, whoever thinks a
tyrant enviable, has already himself tyrannised
with him in his heart. Do we ourselves, then,
never sympathise with political audacity, bold
and unscrupulous " resource," success that is
bought at the price of strange compliances, and
compromises, and wrongs to other men?
The great national lesson is now to be taught
to Israel that the most splendid imperial forca
will be brought to an account for its treatment
of the humblest — that there is a God Who judges
in the earth. And they were bidden to apply in
their own land this experience of their own, deal-
in cr kindly with the stranger in the midst of them,
" for thou wast a stranger in the land of Egypt."
That lesson we have partly learned, who have
broken the chain of our slaves. But how much
have we left undone! The subject races were
never given into our hands to supplant them, as
we have supplanted the Red Indian and the New
Zealander, nor to debauch, as men say we are
corrupting the African and the Hindoo, but to
raise, instruct, and Christianise. And if the sub-
jects of a despotism are accountable for the
actions of rulers whom they tolerate, how much
more are we? What ought we to infer, from this
old-world history, of the profound responsibili-
ties of all free citizens?
We attain a principle which reaches far into
the spiritual world, when we reflect that if evil
Exodus i.
22.]
THE OPPRESSION.
I2S
deeds of a ruler can justly draw down vengeance
upon his people, the converse also must hold
good. Reverse the case before us. Let the
kingdom be that of the noblest and purest virtue.
Let no subject ever be coerced to enter it, nor
to remain one hour longer than while his ador-
ing loyalty consents. And shall not these sub-
jects be the better for the virtues of the Monarch
whom they love? Is it mere caprice to say that
in choosing such a King they do, in a very real
sense, appropriate the goodness they crown? If
it be natural that Egypt be scourged for the sins
of Pharaoh, is it palpably incredible that Christ
is made of God unto His people wisdom and
righteousness and sanctification and redemption?
The doctrine of imputation can easily be so
stated as to become absurd. But the imputation
of which St. Paul speaks much can only be de-
nied when we are prepared to assail the principle
on which all bodies of men are treated, families
and nations as well as the Church of God.
It was the jealous cruelty of Pharaoh which
drew down upon his country the very perils he
laboured to turn away. There was no ground
for his fear of any league with foreigners against
him. Prosperous and unambitious, the people
would have remained well content beside the
flesh-pots of Egypt, for which they sighed even
when emancipated from heavy bondage and eat-
ing the bread of heaven. Or else, if they had
gone forth in peace, from a land whose hospi-
tality had not failed, to their inheritance in Ca-
naan, they would have become an allied nation
upon the side where the heaviest blows were
afterwards struck by the Asiatic powers.
Cruelty and cunning could not retain them, but
it could decimate a population and lose an army
in the attempt. And this law prevails in the
modern world. England paid twenty millions to
set her bondmen free. Because America would
not follow her example, she ultimately paid the
more terrible ransom of civil war. For the same
God was in Jamaica and in Florida as in the field
of Zoan. Nor was there ever yet a crooked
policy which did not recoil either upon its
author, or upon his successors when he had
passed away. In this case it fulfilled the plans
and the prophecies of God, and the wrath of
man was made to praise Him.
There is independent reason for believing that
at this period one-third at least of the population
of Egypt was of alien blood (Brugsch, History,
ii. loo). A politician might fairly be alarmed,
especially if this were the time when the Hittites
were threatening the eastern frontier, and had
reduced Egypt to stand on the defensive, and
erect barrier fortresses. And the circumstances
of the country made it very easy to enslave the
Hebrews. If any stain of Oriental indifiference
to the rights of the masses had mingled with
the God-given insight of Joseph, when he made
his benefactor the owner of all the soil, the
Egyptian people were fully avenged upon him
now. For this arrangement laid his pastoral
race helpless at their oppressor's feet. Forced
labour quickly degenerates into slavery, and men
who find the story of their misery hard to credit
should consider the state of France before the
Revolution, and of the Russian serfs before their
emancipation. Their wretchedness was probably
as bitter as that of the Hebrews at any period
but the last climax of their oppression. And
they owed it to the same cause — the absolute
ownership of the land by others too remote from
9— Vol. I.
them to be sympathetic, to take due account of
their feelings, to remember that they were their
fellow-men. This was enough to slay compas-
sion, even without the aggravation of dealing
with an alien and suspected race.
Now, it is instructive to observe these reap-
pearances of wholesale crime. They warn us
that the utmost achievements of human wicked-
ness are human still; not wild and grotesque im-
portations by a fiend, originated in the abyss,
foreign to the world we live in. Satan finds the
material for his master-strokes in the estrange-
ment of class from class, in the drying up of the
fountains of reciprocal human feeling, in the fail-
ure of real, fresh, natural afifection in our bosom
for those who dififer widely from us in rank or
circumstances. All cruelties are possible when
a man does not seem to us really a man, nor his
woes really woeful. For when the man has sunk
into an animal it is only a step to his vivisection.
Nor does anything tend to deepen such peril-
ous estrangement, more than the very education,
culture, and refinement, in which men seek a sub-
stitute for religion and the sense of brotherhood
in Christ. It is quite conceivable that the tyrant
who drowned the Hebrew infants was an affec-
tionate father, and pitied his nobles when their
children died. But his sympathies could not
reach beyond the barriers of a caste. Do our
sympathies really overleap such barriers?
Would God that even His Church believed aright
in the reality of a human nature like our own,
soiled, sorrowful, shamed, desnairing, drugged
into that apathetical insensibility which lies even
below despair, yet aching still, in ten thousand
bosoms, in every great city of Christendom,
every day and every night! Would to God that
she understood what Jesus meant, when He
called one lost creature by the tender name
which she had not yet forfeited, saying, " Woman,
where are thine accusers?" and when He asked
Simon, who scorned such another, " Seest thou
this woman! " Would God that when she prays
for the Holy Spirit of Jesus she would really
seek a mind like His, not only in piety and
prayerfulness, but also in tender and heartfelt
brotherhood with all, even the vilest of the weary
and heavy- laden!
Many great works of ancient architecture, the
pyramids among the rest, were due to the desire
of crushing, by abject toil, the spirit of a subject
people. We cannot ascribe to Hebrew labour any
of the more splendid piles of Egyptian masonry,
but the store cities or arsenals which they built
can be identified. They are composed of such
crude brick as the narrative describes; and the
absence of straw in the later portion of them can
still be verified. Rameses was evidently named
after their oppressor, and this strengthens the
conviction that we are reading of events in the
nineteenth dynasty, when the shepherd kings had
recently been driven out, leaving the eastern
frontier so weak as to demand additional for-
tresses, and so far depopulated as to give colour
to the exaggerated assertion of Pharaoh, " the
people are more and mightier than we." It is
by such exaggerations and alarms that all the
worst crimes of statesmen have been justified to
consenting peoples. And we, when we carry
what seems to us a rightful object, by inflaming
the prejudice and misleading the judgment of
other men, are moving on the same treacherous
and slippery inclines. Probably no evil is com-
mitted without some amount of justification,
126
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
which the passions exaggerate, while they ignore
the prohibitions of the law.
How came it to pass that the fierce Hebrew
blood, which was yet to boil in the veins of the
Maccabees, and to give battle, not unworthily,
to the Roman conquerors of the world, failed to
resent the cruelties of Pharaoh?
Partly, of course, because the Jewish people
was only now becoming aware of its national
existence; but also because it had forsaken God.
Its religion, if not supplanted, was at least adul-
terated by the influence of the mystic panthe-
ism and the stately ritual which surrounded
them.
Joshua bade his victorious followers to " put
away the gods whom your fathers served beyond
the River and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord "
(Josh. xxiv. 14"). And in Ezekiel the Lord
Himself complains, " They rebelled against Me
and would not hearken unto Me; they did not
cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither
did they forsake the idols of Egypt" (Ezek.
XX. 8).
Now, there is nothing which enfeebles the
spirit and breaks the courage like religious de-
pendence. A strong priesthood always means
a feeble people, most of all when they are of dif-
ferent blood. And Israel was now dependent on
Egypt alike for the highest and lowest needs —
grass for the cattle and religion for the soul.
And when they had sunk so low, it is evident
that their emancipation had to be wrought for
them entirely without their help. From first to
last they were passive, not only for want of spirit
to help themselves, but because the glory of any
exploit of theirs might have illuminated some
false deity whom they adored.
Standing still, they saw the salvation of God,
and it was not possible to give His glory to
another.
For this cause also, judgment had, first of all,
to be wrought upon the gods of Egypt.
In the meantime, without spirit enough to re-
sist, they saw complete destruction drawing
nearer to them by successive strides. At first
Pharaoh " dealt wisely with them," and they
found themselves entrapped into a hard bondage
almost unawares. But a strange power upheld
them, and the more they were afflicted the more
they multiplied and spread abroad. In this they
ought to have discerned a divine support, and
remembered the promise to Abraham that God
would multiply his seed as the stars of heaven.
It may have helped them presently to " cry unto
the Lord." And the Egyptians were not merely
"grieved" because of them: they felt as the
Israelites afterwards felt towards that monoto-
nous diet of which they used the same word, and
said, " our soul loatheth this light bread." Here
it expresses that fierce and contemptuous atti-
tude which the Californian and Australian are
now assuming toward the swarms of Chinamen
whose labour is so indispensable, yet the infusion
of whose blood into the population is so hateful.
Then the Egyptians make their service rigorous,
and their lives bitter.
And at last that happens which is a part of
every downward course: the veil is dropped;
what men have done by stealth, and as if they
would deceive themselves, they soon do con-
sciously, avowing to their conscience what at
first they could not face. Thus Pharaoh began
by striving to check a dangerous population;
and ended by committing wholesale murder.
Thus rnen become drunkards through convivi-
ality, thieves through borrowing what they mean
to restore, and hypocrites through slightly over-
stating what they really feel. And, since there
are nice gradations in evil, down to the very last,
Pharaoh will not yet avow publicly the atrocity
which he commands a few humble women to
perpetrate; decency is with him, as it is often,
the last substitute for a conscience.
Among the agents of God for the shipwreck of
all full-grown wrongs, the chief is the revolt of
human nature, since, fallen though we know our-
selves to be, the image of God is not yet effaced
in us. The better instincts of humanity are irre-
pressible— most so perhaps among the poor. It
is by refusing to trust its intuitions that men
grow vile; and to the very last that refusal is
never absolute, so that no villainy can reckon
upon its agents, and its agents cannot always
reckon upon themselves. Above all, the heart
of every woman is in a plot against the wrong;
and as Pharaoh was afterwards defeated by the
ingenuity of a mother and the sympathy of his
own daughter, so his first scheme was spoiled by
the disobedience of the midwives, themselves
Hebrews, upon whom he reckoned.
Let us not fear to avow that these women,
whom God rewarded, lied to the king when he
reproached them, since their answer, even if it
were not unfounded, was palpably a misrepresen-
tation of the facts. The reward was not for their
falsehood, but for their humanity. They lived
when the notion of martyrdom for an avowal so
easy to evade was utterly imknown. Abraham
lied to Abimelech. Both Samuel and David
equivocated with Saul. We have learned better
things from the King of truth. Who was born
and came into the world to bear witness to the
truth. We know that the martyr's bold protest
against unrighteousness is the highest vocation
of the Church, and is rewarded in the better
country. But they knew nothing of this, and
their service was acceptable according as they
had, not according as they had not. As well
might we blame the patriarchs for having been
slave-owners, and David for having invoked mis-
chief upon his enemies, as these women for hav-
ing fallen short of the Christian ideal of veracity.
Let us beware lest we come short of it ourselves.
And let us remember that the way of the Church
through time is the path of the just, beset with
mist and vapour at the dawn, but shining more
and more unto the perfect day.
In the meantime, God acknowledges, and Holy
Scripture celebrates, the service of these obscure
and lowly heroines. Nothing done for Him
goes unrewarded. To slaves it was written that
" From the Lord ye shall receive the reward of
the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ " (Col.
iii. 24). And what these women saved for others
was what was recompensed to themselves, do-
mestic happiness, family life and its joys. God
made them houses.
The king is now driven to avow himself in a
public command to drown all the male infants of
the Hebrews; and the people become his accom-
plices by obeying him. For this they were yet
to experience a terrible retribution, when there
was not a house in Egypt that had not one
dead.
The features of the king to whom these atroc-
ities are pretty certainly brought home are still
to be seen in the museum at Boulak. Seti I. is
the most beautiful of all the Egyptian monarchs
Exodus ii. i-io.]
THE RESCUE OF MOSES.
127
whose faces lie bare to the eyes of modern sight-
seers; and his refined features, intelligent, high-
bred, and cheerful, resemble wonderfully, yet
surpass, those of Rameses II., his successor,
from whom Moses fled. This is the builder of
the vast and exquisite temple of Amon at Thebes,
the grandeur of which is amazing even in its
ruins; and his culture and artistic gifts are visi-
ble, after all these centuries, upon his face. It is
a strange comment upon the modern doctrine
that culture is to become a sufficient substitute
for religion. And his own record of his exploits
is enough to show that the sense of beauty is not
that ot pity: he is the jackal leaping through the
land of his enemies, the grim lion, the powerful
bull with sharpened horns, who has annihilated
the peoples.
There is no greater mistake than to suppose
that artistic refinement can either inspire
morality or replace it. Have we quite forgotten
Nero, and Lucretia Borgia, and Catherine de
Medici?
Many civilisations have thought little of infant
life. Ancient Rome would have regarded this
atrocity as lightly as modern China, as we may
see by the absolute silence of its literature con-
cerning the murder of the innocents — an event
strangely parallel with this in its nature and po-
litical motives, and in the escape of one mighty
Infant.
Is it conceivable that the same indiflference
should return, if the sanctions of religion lose
their power? Every one remembers the callous-
ness of Rousseau. Strange things are being
written by pessimistic unbelief about the bring-
ing of more sufferers into the world. And a liv-
ing writer in France has advocated the legalis-
ing of infanticide, and denounced St. Vincent
de Paul because, " thanks to his odious precau-
tions, this man deferred for years the death of
creatures without intelligence," etc.*
It is to the faith of Jesus, not only revealing
by the light of eternity the value of every soul,
but also replenishing the fountains of human
tenderness that had well-nigh become exhausted,
that we owe our modern love of children. In
the very helplessness which the ancient masters
of the world exposed to destruction without a
pang, we see the type of what we must ourselves
become, if we would enter heaven. But we can-
not afford to forget either the source or the sanc-
tions of the lesson.
CHAPTER II.
THE RESCUE OF MOSES.
Exodus ii. i-io.
We have said that the Old Testament history
teems with political wisdom, lessons of perma-
nent instruction for mankind, on the level of this
life, yet godly, as all true lessons must be in a
world of which Christ is King. These our re-
ligion must learn to recognise and proclaim, if
it is ever to win the respect of men of afifairs,
and " leaven the whole lump " of human life with
sacred influence.
Such a lesson is the importance of the indi-
vidual in the history of nations. History, as
read in Scripture, is indeed a long relation of
* J. K. Huysmans— quoted in Nineteenth Century^ May,
1888, p. 673.
heroic resistance or of base compliance in the
presence of influences which are at work to de-
base modern peoples as well as those of old.
The holiness of Samuel, the gallant faith of
David, the splendour and wisdom of Solomon,,
the fervid zeal of Elijah, the self-respecting
righteousness of Nehemiah, — ignore these, and
the whole course of affairs becomes vague and
unintelligible. Most of all this is true of Moses,
whose appearance is now related.
In profane history it is the same. Alexander,
Mahomet, Luther, William the Silent, Napoleon,
— will any one pretend that Europe uninfluenced
by these personalities would have become the
Europe that we know?
And this truth is not at all a speculative, un-
practical theory: it is vital. For now there is a
fashion of speaking about the tendency of the
age, the time-spirit, as an irresistible force which
moulds men like potters' clay, crowning those
who discern and help it, but grinding to powder
all who resist its course. In reality there are
always a hundred time-spirits and tendencies
competing for the mastery — some of them vio-
lent, selfish, atheistic, or luxurious (as we see
with our own eyes to-day) — and the shrewdest
judges are continually at fault as to which of
them is to be victorious, and recognised here-
after as the spirit of the age.
This modern pretence that men are nothing,
and streams of tendency are all, is plainly a gos-
pel of capitulations, of falsehood to one's private
convictions, and of servile obedience to the ma-
jority and the popular cry. For, if individual
men are nothing, \^hat am I? If we are all
bubbles floating down a stream, it is folly to
strive to breast the current. Much practical
baseness and servility is due to this base and
servile creed. And the cure for it is belief in
another spirit than that of the present age, trust
in an inspiring God, who rescued a herd of slaves
and their fading convictions from the greatest
nation upon earth by matching one man, shrink-
ing and reluctant yet obedient to his mission,
against Pharaoh and all the tendencies of the
age.
And it is always so. God turns the scale of
events by the vast weight of a man, faithful and
true, and sufiiciently aware of Him to refuse, to
universal clamour, the surrender of his liberty or
his religion. In small matters, as in great, there
is no man, faithful to a lonely duty or conviction,
understanding that to have discerned it is a gift
and a vocation, but makes the world better and
stronger, and works out part of the answer to
that great prayer " Thy will be done."
We have seen already that the religion of the
Hebrews in Egypt was corrupted and in danger
of being lost. To this process, however, there
must have been bright exceptions; and the
mother of Moses bore witness, by her very name,
to her fathers' God. The first syllable of Joche-
bed is proof that the name of God, which became
the keynote of the new revelation,' was not en-
tirely new.
As yet the parents of Moses are, not named;
nor is there any allusion to the close relationship
which would have forbidden their union at a
later period (chap. vi. 20). And throughout all
the story of his youth and early manhood there
is no mention whatever of God or of religion.
Elsewhere it is not so. The Epistle to the He-
brews declares that through faith the babe was
hidden, and through faith the man refused Egyp-
128
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
tian rank. Stephen tells us that he expected his
brethren to know that God by his hand was giv-
ing them deliverance. But the narrative in
Exodus is wholly untheological. If Moses were
the author, we can see why he avoided reflections
which directly tended to glorify himself. But if
the story were a subsequent invention, why is
the tone so cold, the light so colourless?
Now, it is well that we are invited to look at
all these things from their human side, observ-
ing the play of human affection, innocent
subtlety, and pity. God commonly works
through the heart and brain which He has given
us, and we do not glorify Him at all by ignoring
these. If in this case there were visible a desire
to suppress the human agents, in favour of the
Divine preserver, we might suppose that a dif-
ferent historian would have given a less wonder-
ful account of the plagues, the crossing of the
Sea, and the revelation from Sinai. But since
full weight is allowed to second causes in the
early life of Moses, the story is entitled to the
greater credit when it tells of the burning bush
and the flaming mountain.
Let us, however, put together the various nar-
ratives and their lessons. At the outset we read
of a marriage celebrated between kinsfolk, when
the storm of persecution was rising. And hence
we infer that courage or strong aff^ection made
the parents worthy of him through whom God
should show mercy unto thousands. The first
child was a girl, and therefore safe; but we may
suppose, although silence in Scripture proves
little, that Aaron, three years before the birth of
Moses, had not come into equal peril with him.
Moses was therefore born just when the last
atrocity was devised, when trouble was at its
height.
" At this time Moses was born," said Stephen.
Edifying inferences have been drawn from the
statement in Exodus that " the woman . . . hid
him." Perhaps the stronger man quailed, but
the maternal instinct was not at fault, and it was
rewarded abundantly. From which we only
learn, in reality, not to overstrain the words of
'Scripture; since the Epistle to the Hebrews dis-
tinctly says that he " was hid three months by his
parents " — both of them, while naturally the
mother is the active agent.
All the accounts agree that he was thus hid-
den, " because they saw that he was a goodly
child" (Heb. xi. 23). It is a pathetic phrase.
We see them, before the crisis, vaguely sub-
mitting in theory to an unrealised atrocity,
ignorant how imperiously their nature would
forbid the crime, not planning disobedience in
advance, nor led to it by any reasoning process.
All is changed when the little one gazes at them
with that marvellous appeal in its unconscious
eyes, which is known to every parent, and helps
him to be a better man. There is a great differ-
ence between one's thought about an infant, and
one's feeling towards the actual baby. He was
their child, their beautiful child; and this it was
that turned the scale. For him they would now
dare anything, " because they saw he was a
goodly child, and they were not afraid of the
king's commandment." Now, impulse is often
a great power for evil, as when appetite or fear,
suddenly taking visible shape, overwhelms the
judgment and plunges men into guilt. But good
impulses may be the very voice of God, stirring
whatever is noble and generous within us. Nor
are they accidental: loving and brave emotions
belong to warm and courageous hearts; they
come of themselves, like song birds, but they
come surely where sunshine and still groves in-
vite them, not into clamour and foul air. Thus
arose in their bosoms the sublime thought of
God as an active power to be reckoned upon.
For as certainly as every bad passion that we
harbour preaches atheism, so does all goodness
tend to sustain itself by the consciousness of a
supreme Goodness in reserve. God had sent
them their beautiful child, and who was Pharaoh
to forbid the gift? And so religion and natural
pity joined hands, their supreme convictions and
their yearning for their infant. " By faith Moses
was hid . . . because they saw he was a goodly
child, and they were not afraid of the king's
commandment."
Such, if we desire a real and actual salvation,
is always the faith which saves. Postpone salva-
tion to an indefinite future; make it no more than
the escape from vaguely realised penalties for
sins which do not seem very hateful; and you
may suppose that faith in theories can obtain this
indulgence; an opinion may weigh against a mis-
giving. But feel that sin is not only likely to
entail damnation, but is really and in itself dam-
nable meanwhile, and then there will be no de-
liverance possible, but from the hand of a divine
Friend, strong to sustain and willing to guide
the life. We read that Amram lived a hundred
and thirty and seven years, and of all that period
we only know that he helped to save the de-
liverer of his race, by practical faith which made
him not afraid, and did not paralyse but stimu-
late his energies.
When the mother could no longer hide the
child, she devised the plan which has made her
for ever famous. She placed him in a covered
ark, or casket,* plaited (after what we know to
have been the Egyptian fashion) of the papyrus
reed, and rendered watertight with bitumen, and
this she laid among the rushes — a lower vegeta-
tion, which would not, like the tall papyrus, hide
her treasure — in the well-known and secluded
place where the daughter of Pharaoh used to
bathe. Something in the known character of
the princess may have inspired this ingenious de-
vice to move her pity; but it is more likely that
the woman's heart, in her extremity, prompted
a simple appeal to the woman who could help
her if she would. For an Egyptian princess was
an important personage, with an establishment
of her own, and often possessed of much politi-
cal influence. The most sanguinary agent of a
tyrant would be likely to respect the client of
such a patron.
The heart of every woman was in a plot against
the cruelty of Pharaoh. Once already the mid-
wives had defeated him; and now, when his own
daughter t unexpectedly found, in the water at
her very feet, a beautiful child sobbing silently
(for she knew not what was there until the ark
was opened), her indignation is audible enough
in the words, " This is one of the Hebrews'
children." She means to say, " This is only
one specimen of the outrages that are going
on."
This was the chance for his sister, who had
been set in ambush, not prepared with the exqui-
* The same word is used for Noah's ark, but not else-
where ; not, for example, of the ark in the Temple, the
name of which occurs elsewhere in Scripture only of the
"coffin "of Joseph, and the "chest" for the Temple
revenues (Gen. 1. 26 ; 2 Chron. xxiv. 8, 10, 11).
t Or his sister, the daughter of a former Pharaoh.
Exodus ii. 11-15.]
THE CHOICE OF MOSES.
129
site device which follows, but simply " to know
what would be done to him." Clearly the
mother had reckoned upon his being found, and
neglected nothing, although unable herself to
endure the agony of watching, or less easily hid-
den in that guarded spot. And her prudence
had a rich reward. Hitherto Miriam's duty had
been to remain passive — that hard task so often
imposed upon the affection, especially of women,
by sickbeds, and also in many a more stirring
hazard, and many a spiritual crisis, where none
can fight his brother's battle. It is a trying time,
when love can only hold its breath, and pray.
But let not love suppose that to watch is to do
nothing. Often there comes a moment when its
word, made wise by the teaching of the heart, is
the all-important consideration in deciding
mighty issues.
This girl sees the princess at once pitiful and
embarrassed, for how can she dispose of her
strange charge? Let the moment pass, and the
movement of her heart subside, and all may be
lost; but Miriam is prompt and bold, and asks
" Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the He-
brew women, that she may nurse the child for
thee? " It is a daring stroke, for the princess
must have understood the position thoroughly,
the moment the eager Hebrew girl stepped for-
ward. The disguise was very thin. And at least
the heart which pitied the infant must have
known the mother when she saw her face, pale
with longing. It is therefore only as a form,
exacted by circumstances, but well enough
though tacitly understood upon both sides, that
she bids her nurse the child for her, and promises
wages. What reward could equal that of clasp-
ing her child to her own agitated bosom in
safety, while the destroyers were around?
This incident teaches us that good is never to
be despaired of, since this kindly woman grew up
in the family of the persecutor.
And the promptitude and success of Miriam
suggest a reflection. Men do pity, when it is
brought home to them, the privation, sufifering,
and wrong, which lie around. Magnificent sums
are contributed yearly for their relief by the
generous instincts of the world. The misfortune
is that sentiment is evoked only by visible and
pathetic griefs, and that it will not labour as
readily as it will subscribe. It is a harder task
to investigate, to devise appeals, to invent and
work the machinery by which misery may be re-
lieved. Mere compassion will accomplish little,
unless painstaking affection supplement it. Who
supplies that? Who enables common humanity
to relieve itself by simply paying " wages," and
confiding the wretched to a painstaking, labori-
ous, loving guardian? The streets would never
have known Hospital Saturday, but for Hospital
Sunday in the churches. The orphanage is
wholly a Christian institution. And so is the
lady nurse. The old-fashioned phrase has al-
most sunk into a party cry, but in a large and
noble sense it will continue to be true to nature
as long as bereavement, pain, or penitence re-
quires a tender bosom and soothing touch, which
speaks of Mother Church.
Thus did God fulfil His mysterious plans.
And according to a sad but noble law, which
operates widely, what was best in Egypt worked
with Him for the punishment of its own evil
race. The daughter of Pharaoh adopted the
perilous foundling, and educated him in the wis-
dom of Egypt.
THE CHOICE OF MOSES.
Exodus ii. 11-15.
God works even His miracles by means. As
He fed the multitude with barley-loaves, so He
would emancipate Israel by human agency. It
was therefore necessary to educate one of the
trampled race " in all the learning of Egypt,"
and Moses was planted in the court of Pharaoh,
like the German Arminius in Rome. Wonderful
legends may be read in Josephus of his heroism,
his wisdom, and his victories; and these have
some foundation in reality, for Stephen tells us
that he was mighty in his words and works.
Might in words need not mean the fluent utter-
ance which he so earnestly disclaimed (iv. 10),
even if forty years' disuse of the language were
not enough to explain his later diffidence. It
may have meant such power of composition as
appears in the hymn by the Red Sea, and in the
magnificent valediction to his people.
The point is that among a nation originally
pastoral, and now sinking fast into the degraded
animalism of slaves, which afterwards betrayed
itself in their complaining greed, their sighs for
the generous Egyptian dietary, and their impure
carouse under the mountain, one man should
possess the culture and mental grasp needed by
a leader and lawgiver. " Could not the grace of
God have supplied the place of endowment and
attainment?" Yes, truly; and it was quite as
likely to do this for one who came down from
His immediate presence with his face intolerably
bright, as for the last impudent enthusiast who
declaims against the need of education in sen-
tences which at least prove that for him the want
has by no substitute been completely met. But
the grace of God chose to give the qualification,
rather than replace it, alike to Moses and St.
Paul. Nor is there any conspicuous example
among the saints of a man being thrust into a
rank for which he was not previously made fit.
The painful contrast between his own refined
tastes and habits, and the coarser manners of his
nation, was no doubt one difficulty of the choice
of Moses, and a lifelong trial to him afterwards.
He is an example not only to those whom wealth
and power would entangle, but to any who are
too fastidious and sensitive for the humble com-
pany of the people of God.
While the intellect of Moses was developing,
it is plain that his connection with his family
was not entirely broken. Such a tie as often
binds a foster-child to its nurse may have been
permitted to associate him with his real parents.
Some means were evidently found to instruct
him in the history and messianic hopes of Israel,
for he knew that their reproach was that of " the
Christ," greater riches than all the treasure of
Egypt, and fraught with a reward for which he
looked in faith (Heb. xi. 26). But what is
meant by naming as part of his burden their
" reproach," as distinguished from their suffer-
ings?
We shall understand, if we reflect, that his
open rupture with Egypt was unlikely to be the
work of a moment. Like all the best workers,
he was led forward gradually, at first uncon-
scious of his vocation. Many a protest he must
have made against the cruel and unjust policy
that steeped the land in innocent blood. Many
a jealous councillor must have known how to
130
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
weaken his dangerous influence by some cau-
tious taunt, some insinuated "' reproach " of his
own Hebrew origin. The warnings put by Jo-
sephus into the lips of the priests in his child-
hood, were likely enough to have been spoken
by some one before he was forty years old. At
last, when driven to make his choice, he " re-
fused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daugh-
ter," a phrase, especially in its reference to the
rejected title as distinguished from " the pleas-
ures of sin," which seems to imply a more formal
rupture than Exodus records.
We saw that the piety of his parents was not
unhelped by their emotions: they hid him by
faith when they saw that he was a goodly child.
Such was also the faith by which Moses broke
with rank and fortune. He went out unto his
brethren, and looked on their burdens, and he
saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his
brethren. Twice the word of kinship is re-
peated; and Stephen tells us that Moses himself
used it in rebuking the dissensions of his fellow-
countrymen. Filled with yearning and pity for
his trampled brethren, and with the shame of
generous natures who are at ease while others
suffer, he saw an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew.
With that blended caution and vehemence which
belong to his nation still, he looked and saw that
there was no man, and slew the Egyptian. Like
most acts of passion, this was at once an impulse
of the moment, and an outcome of long gather-
ing forces — just as the lightning flash, sudden
though it seem, has been prepared by the ac-
cumulated electricity of weeks.
And this is the reason why God allows the
issues of a lifetime, perhaps of an eternity, to be
decided by a sudden word, a hasty blow. Men
plead that if time had been given, they would
have stifled the impulse which ruined them.
But what gave the impulse such violent and
dreadful force that it overwhelmed them before
they could reflect? The explosion in the coal-
mine is not caused by the sudden spark, without
the accumulation of dangerous gases, and the ab-
sence of such wholesome ventilation as would
carry them away. It is so in the breast where
evil desires or tempers are harboured, unsub-
dued by grace, until any accident puts them be-
yond control. Thank God that such sudden
movements do not belong to evil only! A high
soul is surprised into heroism, as often perhaps
as a mean one into theft or falsehood. In the
case of Moses there was nothing unworthy, but
much that was unwarranted and presumptuous.
The decision it involved was on the right side,
but the act was self-willed and unwarranted, and
it carried heavy penalties. " The trespass origi-
nated not in irtveterate cruelty." says St. Augus-
tine, " but in a hasty zeal which admitted of cor-
rection . . . resentment against injury was ac-
companied by love for a brother. . . Here was
evil to be rooted out. but the heart with such
capabilities, like good soil, needed only cultiva-
tion to make it fruitful in virtue."
Stephen tells us, what is very natural, that
Moses expected the people to accept him as their
heaven-born deliverer. From which it appears
that he cherished high expectations for himself,
from Israel if not from Egypt. When he inter-
fered next day between two Hebrews, his ques-
tion as given in Exodus is somewhat magisterial:
"Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?" In
Stephen's version it dictates less, but it lectures a
good deal: "Sirs, ye are brethren, why do ye
wrong one to another?" And it was natural
enough that they should dispute his pretensions,
for God had not yet given him the rank he
claimed. He still needed a discipline almost as
sharp as that of Joseph, who, by talking too
boastfully of his dreams, postponed their fulfil-
ment until he was chastened by slavery and a
dungeon. Even Saul of Tarsus, when converted,
needed three years of close seclusion for the
transformation of his fiery ardour into divine
zeal, as iron to be tempered must be chilled as
well as heated. The precipitate and violent zeal
of Moses entailed upon him forty years of exile.
And yet his was a noble patriotism. There is
a false love of country, born of pride, which
blinds one to her faults; and there is a loftier
passion which will brave estrangement and de-
nunciation to correct them. Such was the pa-
triotism of Moses, and of all whom God has ever
truly called to lead their fellows. Nevertheless
he had to suffer for his error.
His first act had been a kind of manifesto, a
claim to lead, which he supposed that they would
have understood; and yet, when he found his
deed was known, he feared and fled. His false
step told against him. One cannot but infer also
that he was conscious of having already forfeited
court favour — that he had before this not only
made his choice, but announced it, and knew
that the blow was ready to fall on him at any
provocation. We read that he dwelt in the land
of Midian, a name which was applied to various
tracts accordmg to the nomadic wanderings of
the tribe, but which plainly included, at this time,
some part of the peninsula formed by the
tongues of the Red Sea. For, as he fed hi.>
flocks, he came to the Mount of God.
MOSES IN MIDIAN.
Exodus ii. 16-22.
The interference of Moses on behalf of the
daughters of the priest of Midian is a pleasant
trait, courteous, and expressive of a refined
nature. With this remark, and reflecting that,
like many courtesies, it brought its reward, we
are often content to pass it by. And yet it de-
serves a closer examination.
I. For it e.xpresses great energy of character.
He might well have been in a state of collapse.
He had smitten the Egyptian for Israel's sake:
he had appealed to his own people to make com-
mon cause, like brethren, against the common
foe; and he had offered himself to them as their
destined leader in the struggle. But they had
refused him the command, and he was rudely
awakened to the consciousness that his life v.'as
in danger through the garrulous ingratitude of
the man he rescued. Now he was a ruined man
and an exile, marked for destruction by the
greatest of earthly monarchs, with the habits and
tastes of a great noble, but homeless among wild
races.
It was no common nature which was alert and
energetic at such a time. The greatest men have
known a period of prostration in calamity: it
was enough for honour that they should rally
and re-collect their forces. Thinking of Fred-
erick, after Kunersdorf. resigning the command
(" I have no resources more, and will not sur-
vive the destruction of my country "), and of his
subsequent despatch, " I am now recovered from
1-J\«dus ii. 23.-iii J
THE BURNING BUSH.
<;?i
my illness"; and of Napoleon, trembling and
weeping on the road to Elba, one turns with
fresh admiration to the fallen prince, the baffled
liberator, sitting exhausted by the well, but as
keen on behalf of liberty as when Pharaoh
trampled Israel, though now the oppressors are
a group of rude herdsmen, and the oppressed are
Midianite women, driven from the troughs which
they have toiled to fill. One remembers An-
other, sitting also exhausted by the well, defy-
ing social usage on behalf of a despised woman,
and thereby inspired and invigorated as with
meat to eat which His followers knew not of.
2. Moreover there is disinterested bravery in
the act, since he hazards the opposition of the
men of the land, among whom he seeks refuge,
on behalf of a group from which he can have ex-
pected nothing. And here it is worth while to
notice the characteristic variations in three
stories which have certain points of contact.
The servant of Abraham, servant-like, was well
content that Rebekah should draw for all his
camels, while he stood still. The prudent Jacob,
anxious to introduce himself to his cousin, rolled
away the stone and watered her camels. Moses
sat by the well, but did not interfere while the
troughs were being filled: it was only the overt
wrong which kindled him. But as in great
things, so it is in small: our actions never stand
alone; having once befriended them, he will do
it thoroughly, " and moreover he drew water for
us, and watered the flock." Such details could
hardly have been thought out by a fabricator; a
legend would not have allowed Moses to be
slower in courtesy than Jacob;* but the story fits
the case exactly: his eyes were with his heart,
and that was far away, until the injustice of the
shepherds roused him.
And why was Moses thus energetic, fearless,
and chivalrous? Because he was sustained by
the presence of the Unseen: he endured as see-
ing Him who is invisible: and having, despite of
panic, by faith forsaken Egypt, he was free from
the absorbing anxieties which prevent men from
caring for their fellows, free also from the cynical
misgivings which suspect that violence is more
than justice, that to be righteous overmuch is to
destroy one's self, and that perhaps, after all, one
may see a good deal of wrong without being
called upon to interfere. It would be a dififerent
world to-day, if all who claim to be " the salt of
the earth " were as eager to repress injustice in
its smaller and meaner forms as to make money
or influential friends. If all petty and cowardly
oppression were sternly trodden down, we should
soon have a state of public opinion in which
gross and large tyranny would be almost im-
possible. And it is very doubtful whether the
flagrant wrongs, which must be comparatively
rare, cause as much real mental suffering as the
frequent small ones. Does mankind suffer more
from wild beasts than from insects? But how
few that aspire to emancipate oppressed nations
would be content, in the hour of their overthrow,
to assert the rights of a handful of women against
a trifling fraud, to which indeed they were so
well accustomed that its omission surprised their
father!
Is it only because we are reading a history,
and not a biography, that we find no touch of
* Nor would it have made the women call their de-
liverer ■' an Egyptian," for the Hebrew cast of features is
very dissimilar. But Moses wore Egyptian dress, and
the Egyptians worked mines in the peninsula, so thnt he
was naturally taken for one of them.
tenderness, like the love of Jacob for Rachel, in
the domestic relations of Moses?
Joseph also married in a strange land, yet he
called the name of his first son Manasseh, be-
cause God had made him to forget his sorrows:
but Moses remembered his. Neither wife nor
child could charm away his home sickness; he
called his firstborn Gershom, because he was a
sojourner in a strange land. In truth, his whole
life seems to have been a lonely one. Miriam is
called " the sister of Aaron " even when joining
in the song of Moses (xv. 20), and with Aaron
she made common cause against their greater
brother (Num. xii. 1-2). Zipporah endangered
his life rather than obey the covenant of cir-
cumcision; she complied at last with a taunt (iv.
24-6), and did not again join him until his vic-
tory over Amalek raised his position to the ut-
most height (xviii. 2).
His children are of no account, and his grand-
son is the founder of a dangerous and enduring
schism (Judges xviii. 30, R. V.).
There is much reason to see here the earliest
example of the sad rule that a prophet is not
without honour save in his own house; that the
law of compensations reaches farther into life
than men suppose; and high position and great
powers are too often counterbalanced by the
isolation of the heart.
CHAPTER III.
THE BURNING BUSH.
Exodus
n. 2,3 — in.
" In process of time the king of Egypt died,"
probably the great Raamses, no other of whose
dynasty had a reign which extended over the in-
dicated period of time. I. so, he had while liv-
ing every reason to expect an immortal fame, as
the greatest among Egyptian kings, a hero, a
conqueror on three continents, a builder of mag-
nificent works. But he has only Avon an im-
mortal notoriety. " Every stone in his buildings
was cemented in human blood." The cause he
persecuted has made deathless the banished
refugee, and has gibbeted the great monarch as
a tyrant, whose misplanned severities wrought
the ruin of his successor and his army. Such are
the reversals of popular judgment: and such the
vanity of fame. For all the contemporary fame
was his.
" The children of Israel sighed by reason of
the bondage, and they cried." Another monarch
had come at last, a chanee after sixty-seven
years, and yet no change for them! It filled up
the measure of their patience, and also of the
iniquity of Egypt. We are not told that their
crj' was addressed to the Lord; what we read is
that it reached Him, Who still overhears and
pities many a sob, many a lament, which ought
to have been addressed to Him, and is not. In-
deed, if His compassion were not to reach men
until they had remembered and prayed to Him,
who among us would ever have learned to pray
to Him at all? Moreover He remembered His
covenant with their forefathers, for the fulfil-
ment of which the time had now arrived. " And
God saw the children of Israel, and Gqd took
knowledge of them."
These were not the cries of religious indi-
viduals, but of oppressed masses. It is therefore
132
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
a solemn question to ask How many such ap-
peals ascend from Christian England? Behold,
the hire of labourers . . . held back by fraud
crieth out. The half-paid slaves of our haste to
be rich, and the victims of our drinking institu-
tions, and of hideous vices which entangle and
destroy the innocent and unconscious, what cries
to heaven are theirs! As surely as those which
St. James records, these have entered into the
ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Of these sufferers
every one is His own by purchase, most of them
by a covenant and sacrament more solemn than
bound Him to His ancient Israel. Surely He
hears their groaning. And all whose hearts are
touched with compassion, yet who hesitate
whether to bestir themselves or to remain inert
while evil is masterful and cruel, should remem~
ber the anger of God when Moses said, " Send,
I pray Thee, by whom Thou wilt send." The
Lord is not indifferent. Much less than other
sufferers should those who know God be terrified
by their afflictions. Cyprian encouraged the
Church of his time to endure even unto martyr-
dom, by the words recorded of ancient Israel,
that the more they afflicted them, so much the
more they became greater and waxed stronger.
And he was rierht. For all these things hap-
pened to them for ensamples, and were written
for our admonition.
It is further to be observed that the people
were quite unconscious, until Moses announced
it afterwards, that they were heard by God. Yet
their deliverer had now been prepared by a long
process for his work. We are not to despair be-
cause relief does not immediately appear: though
He tarry, we are to wait for Him.
While this anguish was being endured in
Egypt, Moses was maturing for his destiny.
Self-reliance, pride of place, hot and impulsive
aggressiveness, were dying in his bosom. To
the education of the courtier and scholar was
now added that of the shepherd in the wilds,
amid the most solemn and awful scenes of
nature, in solitude, humiliation, disappointment,
and, as we learn from the Epistle to the He-
brews, in enduring faith. Wordsworth has a re-
markable description of the effect of a similar
discipline upon the good Lord Clifford. He
tells:
" How he, long forced in humble paths to go.
Was softened into feeling, soothed and tamed.
"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky.
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
" In him the savage virtues of the race,
Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts, were dead;
Nor did he change, but kept in lofty place
The wisdom which adversity had bred."
There was also the education of advancing age,
which teaches many lessons, and among them
two which are essential to leadership, — the folly
of a hasty blow, and of impulsive reliance upon
the support of mobs. Moses the man-slayer
became exceeding meek; and he ceased to rely
upon the perception of his people that God by
him would deliver them. His distrust, indeed,
became as excessive as his temerity had been,
but it was an error upon the safer side. " Be-
hold, they will not believe me," he says, " nor
hearken unto my voice."
It is an important truth that in very few lives
the decisive moment comes just when it is ex-
pected. Men allow themselves to be self-indul-
gent, extravagant, and even wicked, often upon
the calculation that their present attitude matters
little, and they will do very differently when the
crisis arrives, the turning-point in their career
to nerve them. And they waken up with a start
to find their career already decided, their char-
acter moulded. As a snare shall the day of the
Lord come upon all flesh; and as a snare come
all His great visitations meanwhile. When
Herod was drinking among bad companions,
admiring a shameless dancer, and boasting
loudly of his generosity, he was sobered and sad-
dened to discover that he had laughed away the
life of his only honest adviser. Moses, like
David, was " following the ewes great with
young," when summoned by God to rule His
people Israel. Neither did the call arrive when
he was plunged in moody reverie and abstrac-
tion, sighing over his lost fortunes and his de-
feated aspirations, rebelling against his lowly
duties. The humblest labour is a preparation
for the brightest revelations, whereas discontent,
however lofty, is a preparation for nothing.
Thus, too, the birth of Jesus was first announced
to shepherds keeping watch over their flock.
Yet hundreds of third-rate young persons in
every city in this land to-day neglect their work,
and unfit themselves for any insight, or any
leadership whatever, by chafing against the ob-
scurity of their vocation.
Who does not perceive that the career of
Moses hitherto was divinely directed? The fart
that we feel this, although, until now, God has
not once been mentioned in his personal story,
is surely a fine lesson for those who have only
one notion of what edifies — the dragging of the
most sacred names and phrases into even the
most unsuitable connections. In truth, such a
phraseology is much less attractive than a cer-
tain tone, a recognition of the unseen, which
may at times be more consistent with reverential
silence than with obtrusive utterance. It is
enough to be ready and fearless when the fitting
time comes, which is sure to arrive, for the re-
ligious heart as for this narrative — the time for
the natural utterance of the great word, God.
We read that the angel of the Lord appeared
to him — a remarkable phrase, which was already
used in connection with the sacrifice of Isaac
(Gen. xxii. ii). How much it implies will bet-
ter be discussed in the twenty-third chapter,
where a fuller statement is made. For the
present it is enough to note, that this is one pre-
eminent angel, indicated by the definite article;
that he is clearly the medium of a true divine ap-
pearance, because neither the voice nor form of
any lesser being is supposed to be employed,
the appearance being that of fire, and the words
being said to be the direct utterance of the Lord,
not of any one who says, Thus saith the Lord.
We shall see hereafter that the story of the
Exodus is unique in this respect, that in train-
ing a people tainted with Egyptian superstitions,
no " similitude " is seen, as when there wrestled
a man with Jacob, or when Ezekiel saw a human
form upon the sapphire pavement.
Man is the true image of God, and His perfect
revelation was in flesh. But now that expres-
sion of Himself was perilous, and perhaps un-
suitable besides; for He was to be known as the
Avenger, and presently as the Giver of Law,
with its inflexible conditions and its menaces.
Therefore He appeared as fire, which is intense
Exodus ii. 23.-iii.]
THE BURNING BUSH.
133
and terrible, even when " the flame of the grace
of God does not consume, but illuminates."
There is a notion that religion is languid, re-
pressive, and unmanly. But such is not the
scriptural idea. In His presence is the fulness
of joy. Christ has come that we might have life,
and might have it more abundantly. They who
are shut out from His blessedness are said to be
asleep and dead. And so Origen quotes this
passage among others, with the comment that
" As God is a fire, and His angels a flame of fire,
and all the saints fervent in spirit, so they who
have fallen away from God are said to have
cooled, or to have become cold " (De Princip.,
ii. 8). A revelation by fire involves intensity.
There is indeed another explanation of the
burning bush, which makes the flame express
only the afflictions that did not consume the
people. But this would be a strange adjunct to
a divine appearance for their deliverance, speak-
ing rather of the continuance of suffering than
of its termination, for which the extinction of
such fire would be a more appropriate symbol.
Yet there is an element of truth even in this
view, since fire is connected with affliction. In
His holiness God is light (with which, in the
Hebrew, the very word for holiness seems to be
connected"); in His judgments He is fire. "The
Light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy
One for a flame, and it shall burn and devour his
thorns and his briers in one day " (Isa. x. 17).
But God reveals Himself in this thorn bush as a
fire which does not consume; and such a revela-
tion tells at once Who has brought the people
into afifliction, and also that they are not aban-
doned to it.
To Moses at first there was visible only an
extraordinary phenomenon; He turned to see a
great sight. It is therefore out of the question
to find here the truth, so easy to discover else-
where, that God rewards the religious inquirer
— that they who seek after Him shall find Him.
Rather we learn the folly of deeming that the in-
tellect and its inquiries are at war with religion
and its mysteries, that revelation is at strife with
mental insight, that he who most stupidly re-
fuses to " see the great sights " of nature is best
entitled to interpret the voice of God. When the
man of science gives ear to voices not of earth,
and the man of God has eyes and interest for the
divine wonders which surround us, many a dis-
cord will be harmonised. With the revival of
classical learning came the Reformation.
But it often happens that the curiosity of the
intellect is in danger of becoming irreverent, and
obtrusive into mysteries not of the brain, and
thus the voice of God must speak in solemn
warning: " Moses, Moses, . . . Draw not nigh
hither: put ofif thy shoes from oflf thy feet, for
the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
After as prolonged a silence as from the time
of Malachi to the Baptist, it is God Who reveals
Himself once more — not Moses who by search-
ing finds Him out. And this is the established
rule. Tidings of the Incarnation came from
heaven, or man would not have discovered the
Divine Babe. Jesus asked His two first disciples
"What seek ye?" and told Simon "Thou shalt
be called Cephas," and pronounced the listening
Nathaniel " an Israelite indeed," and bade Zac-
cheus " make haste and come down," in each
case before He was addressed by them.
The first words of Jehovah teach something
more than ceremonial reverence. If the dust of
common earth on the shoe of Moses may not
mingle with that sacred soil, how dare we carry
into the presence of our God mean passions and
selfish cravings? Observe, too, that while Jacob,
when he awoke from his vision, said, " How
dreadful is this place! " (Gen. xxviii. 17), God
Himself taught Moses to think rather of the
holiness than the dread of His abode. Never-
theless Moses also was afraid to look upon God,
and hid the face which was thereafter to be
veiled, for a nobler reason, when it was itself
illumined with the divine glory. Humility be-
fore God is thus the path to the highest honour,
and reverence, to the closest intercourse.
Meantime the Divine Person has announced
Himself: "I am the God of thy father" (father
is apparently singular with a collective force),
" the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob." It is a blessing which every
Christian parent should bequeath to his child, to
be strengthened and invigorated by thinking of
God as his father's God.
It was with this memorable announcement that
Jesus refuted the Sadducees and established His
doctrine of the resurrection. So, then, the by-
gone ages are not forgotten: Moses may be sure
that a kindly relation exists between God and
himself, Hecause the kindly relation still exists in
all its vital force which once bound Him to those
who long since appeared to die. It was impos-
sible, therefore, our Lord inferred, that they had
really died at all. The argument is a forerunner
of that by which St. Paul concludes, from the
resurrection of Christ, that none who are " in
Christ " have perished. Nay, since our Lord
was not disputing about immortality only, but
the resurrection of the body, His argument im-
plied that a vital relationship with God involved
the imperishability of the whole man, since all
was His, and in truth the very seal of the cove-
nant was imprinted upon the flesh. How much
stronger is the assurance for us, who know that
our very bodies are His temple! Now, if any
suspicion should arise that the argument, which
is really subtle, is over-refined and untrustworthy,
let it be observed that no sooner was this an-
nouncement made, than God added the procla-
mation of His own immutability, so that it can-
not be said He was, but from age to age His title
is I AM. The inference from the divine perma-
nence to the living and permanent vitality of all
His relationships is not a verbal quibble, it is
drawn from the very central truth of this great
scripture.
And now for the first time God calls Israel My
people, adopting a phrase already twice em-
ployed by earthly rulers (Gen. xxiii. 11, xli. 40),
and thus making Himself their king and the
champion of their cause. Often afterwards it
was used in pathetic appeal: — "Thou hast
showed Thy people hard things," — " Thou sellest
Thy people for naught," — " Behold, look, we be-
seech Thee; we are all Thy people" (Ps. Ix. 3,
xliv. 12; Isa. Ixiv. 9). And often it expressed
the returning favour of their king: " Hear, O
My people, and I will speak"; "Comfort ye,
comfort ye My people" (Ps. 1. 7; Isa. xl. i).
It is used of the nation at large, all of whom
were brought into the covenant, although with
many of them God was not well pleased. And
since it does not belong only to saints, but
speaks of a grace which might be received in
vain, it is a strong appeal to all Christian people,
all who are within the New Covenant. Them
134
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
also the Lord claims and pities, and would
gladly emancipate: their sorrows also He knows.
'■ I have surely seen the affliction of My people
which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by
reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sor-
rows; and I am come down to deliver them out
of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them
up out of that land unto a good land and a large,
unto a land flowing with milk and honey." Thus
the ways of God exceed the desires of men.
Their subsequent complaints are evidence that
Egypt had become their country: gladly would
they have shaken off the iron yoke, but a suc-
cessful rebellion is a revolution, not an Exodus.
Their destined home was very diflferent: with the
widest variety of climate, scenery, and soil, a
land which demanded much more regular hus-
bandry, but rewarded labour with exuberant fer-
tility. Secluded from heathenism by deserts on
the south and east, by a sublime range of moun-
tains on the north, and by a sea with few havens
on the west, yet planted in the very bosom of all
the ancient civilisation which at the last it was
to leaven, it was a land where a faithful people
could have dwelt alone and not been reckoned
among the nations, yet where the scourge for
disobedience was never far away.
Next after the promise of this goodyland, the
commission of Moses is announced. He is to
act, because God is already active: "/ am come
down to deliver them . . . come now, therefore,
and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou
mayest bring forth My people." And let this
truth encourage all who are truly sent of God, to
the end of time, that He does not send us to de-
liver man, until He is Himself prepared to do so;
that when our fears ask, like Moses, Who am I,
that I should go? He does not answer. Thou
art capable, but Certainly I will go with thee.
So, wherever the ministry of the word is sent,
there is a true purpose of grace. There is also
the presence of One who claims the right to be-
stow upon us the same encouragement which
was given to Moses by Jehovah, saying, " Lo, I
am with you alway." In so saying, Jesus made
Himself equal with God.
And as this ancient revelation of God was to
give rest to a weary and heavy-laden people, so
Christ bound together the assertion of a more
perfect revelation, made in Him, with the
promise of a grander emancipation. No man
knoweth the Father save by revelation of the
Son is the doctrine which introduces the great
offer " Come unto Me. all ye that labour and are
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest " (Matt. xi.
27. 28). The claims of Christ in the New Testa-
ment will never be fully recognised until a care-
ful study is made of His treatment of the func-
tions which in the Old Testament are regarded
as Divine. A curious expression follows: " This
shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee:
When thou hast brought forth the people out of
Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain."
It seems but vague encouragement, to offer
Moses, hesitating at the moment, a token which
could take efifect only when his task was
wrought. And yet we know how much easier
it is to believe what is thrown into distinct shape
and particularised. Our trust in good inten-
tions is helped when their expression is detailed
and circumstantial, as a candidate for office will
reckon all general assurances of support much
cheaper than a pledge to canvass certain elec-
tors within a certain time. Such is the consti-
tution of human nature; and its Maker has often
deigned to sustain its weakness by going thus
into particulars. He does the same for us, con-
descending to embody the most profound of all
mysteries in sacramental emblems, clothing his
promises of our future blessedness in much de-
tail, and in concrete figures which at least sym-
bolise, if they do not literally describe, the
glories of the Jerusalem which is above.
A NEW NAME.
Exodus iii. 14 — vi. 2, 3.
"God said unto Moses, I AM that I am : and He said,
Thus Shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, 1 AM hath
sent me unto you."
We cannot certainly tell why Moses asked for
a new name by which to announce to his breth-
ren the appearance of God. He may have felt
that the memory of their fathers, and of the deal-
ings of God with them, had faded so far out of
mind that merely to indicate their ancestral God
would not sufficiently distinguish Him from the
idols of Egypt, whose worship had infected
them.
If so, he was fully answered by a name which
made this God the one reality, in a world where
all is a phantasm except what derives stability
from Him.
He may have desired to know, for himself,
whether there was any truth in the dreamy and
fascinating pantheism which inspired so much of
the Egyptian superstition.
In that case, the answer met his question by
declaring that God existed, not as the sum of
things or soul of the universe, but in Himself,
the only independent Being.
Or he may simply have desired some name to
express more of the mystery of deity, rernember-
ing how a change of name had accompanied new
discoveries of human character and achievement,
as of Abraham and Israel: and expecting a new
name likewise when God would make to His
people new revelations of Himself.
So natural an expectation was fulfilled not only
then, but afterwards. When Moses prayed
" Show me, I pray Thee, Thy Glory," the an-
swer was " I will make all My goodness pass be-
fore thee, and I will proclaim the name of the
Lord." The proclamation was again Jehovah,
but not this alone. It was "The Lord, the
Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious,
slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and
truth" (xxxiii. 18, 19, xxxiv. 6, R. V.). Thus
the life of Moses, like the agelong progress of
the Church, advanced towards an ever-deepening
knowledge that God is not only the Independent
but the Good. All sets toward the final knowl-
edge that His highest name is Love.
Meanwhile, in the development of events, the
exact period was come for epithets, which were
shared with gods many and lords many, to be
supplemented by the formal announcement and
authoritative adoption of His proper name Je-
hovah. The infant nation was to learn to think
of Him. not only as endowed with attributes of
terror and power, by which enemies would be
crushed, but as possessing a certain well-defined
personality, upon which the trust of man could
repose. Soon their experience would enable
them to receive the formal announcement that
Exodus iii. 14. -vi. 2, 3.]
A NEW NAME.
135
He was merciful and gracious. But first they
were required to trust His promise amid all dis-
couragements; and to this end, stability was the
attribute first to be insisted upon.
It is true that the derivation of the word Je-
hovah is still a problem for critical acumen. It
has been sought in more than one language, and
various shades of meaning have been assigned
to it, some untenable in the abstract, others
hardly, or not at all, to be reconciled with the
Scriptural narrative.
Nay, the corruption of the very sound is so
notorious, that it is only worth mention as illus-
trating a phase of superstition.
We smile at the Jews, removing the correct
vowels lest so holy a word should be irreverently
spoken, placing the sanctity in the cadence, hop-
ing that light and flippant allusions may ofifend
God less, so long as they spare at least the
vowels of His name, and thus preserve some ves-
tige undesecrated, while profaning at once the
conception of His majesty and the consonants ot
the mystic word.
A more abject superstition could scarcely have
made void the spirit, while grovelling before the
letter of the commandment.
But this very superstition is alive in other
forms to-day. Whenever one recoils from the
sin of coarse blasphemy, yet allows himself the
enjoyment of a polished literature which pro-
fanes holy conceptions, — whenever men feel
bound to behave with external propriety in the
house of God, yet bring thither wandering
thoughts, vile appetites, sensuous imaginations,
and all the chamber of imagery which is within
the unregenerate heart, — there is the same de-
spicable superstition which strove to escape
at least the extreme of blasphemy by pru-
dently veiling the Holy Name before profan-
ing it.
But our present concern is with the practical
message conveyed to Israel when Moses de-
clared that Jehovah, I am, the God of their
fathers, had appeared unto him. And if we find
in it a message suited for the time, and which is
the basis, not the superstructure, both of later
messages and also of the national character, then
we shall not fail to observe the bearing of
such facts upon an urgent controversy of this
time.
Some significance must have been in that
Name, not too abstract for a servile and degener-
ate race to apprehend. Nor was it soon to pass
away and be replaced; it was His memorial
throughout all generations; and therefore it has
a message for us to-day, to admonish and
humble, to invigorate and uphold.
That God would be the same to them as to
their fathers was much. But that it was of the
essence of His character to be evermore the
same, immutable in heart and mind and reality
of being, however their conduct might modify
His bearing towards them, this indeed would be
a steadying and reclaiming consciousness.
Accordingly Moses receives the answer for
himself, " I am that I am "; and he is bidden to
tell his people " I am hath sent me unto you,"
and yet again " Jehovah the God of your fathers
hath sent me unto you." The spirit and tenor
of these three names may be said to be virtually
comprehended in the first; and they all speak of
the essential and self-existent Being, unchang-
ing and unchangeable.
I am expresses an intense reality of being.
No image in the dark recesses of Egyptian or
Syrian temples, grotesque and motionless, can
win the adoration of him who has had com-
munion with such a veritable existence, or has
heard His authentic message. No dreamful pan-
theism, on its knees to the beneficent principle
expressed in one deity, to the destructive in an-
other, or to the reproductive in a third, but all of
them dependent upon nature, as the rainbow
upon the cataract which it spans, can ever again
satisfy the soul which is athirst for the liv-
ing God, the Lord, Who is not personified,
but is.
This profound sense of a living Person within
reach, to be offended, to pardon, and to bless,
was the one force which kept the Hebrew nation
itself alive, with a vitality unprecedented since
the world began. They could crave His pardon,
whatever natural retributions they had brought
down upon themselves, whatever tendencies of
nature they had provoked, because He was not
a dead law without ears or a heart, but their
merciful and gracious God.
Not the most exquisite subtleties of innuendo
and irony could make good for a day the mon-
strous paradox that the Hebrew religion, the
worship of I am, was really nothing but the
adoration of that stream of tendencies which
makes for righteousness.
Israel did not challenge Pharaoh through hav-
ing suddenly discovered that goodness ultimately
prevails over evil, nor is it any cold calculation
of the sort which ever inspires a nation or a
man with heroic fortitude. But they were
nerved by the announcement that they had been
remembered by a God Who is neither an ideal
nor a fancy, but the Reality of realities, beside
Whom Pharaoh and his host were but as
phantoms.
I AM THAT I am is the style not only of per-
manence, but of permanence self-contained, and
being a distinctive title, it denies such self-con-
tained permanence to others.
Man is as the past has moulded him, a com-
pound of attainments and failures, discoveries
and disillusions, his eyes dim with forgotten
tears, his hair gray with surmounted anxie-
ties, his brow furrowed with bygone studies, his
conscience troubled with old sin. Modern un-
belief is ignobly frank respecting him. He is the
sum of his parents and his wet-nurse. He >s
what he eats. If he drinks beer, he thinks beer.
And it is the element of truth in these hideous
paradoxes which makes them rankle, like an un-
kind construction put upon a questionable
action. As the foam is what wind and tide have
made of it, so are we the product of our circum-
stances, the resultant of a thousand forces, far
indeed from being self-poised or self-contained,
too often false to our best self, insomuch that
probably no man is actually what in the depth of
self-consciousness he feels himself to be, what
moreover he should prove to be, if only the
leaden weight of constraining circumstance were
lifted ofT the spring which it flattens down to
earth. Moses himself was at heart a very differ-
ent person from the keeper of the sheep of
Jethro. Therefore man says. Pity and make
allowance for me: this is not my true self, but
only what by compression, by starvation and
stripes and bribery and error, I have become.
Only God says. I am that I am.
Yet in another sense, and quite as deep a one
man is not the coarse tissue which past circum
136
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
stances have woven: he is the seed of the future,
as truly as the fruit of the past. Strange com-
pound that he is of memory and hope, while half
of the present depends on what is over, the other
half is projected into the future; and like a
bridge, sustained on these two banks, life throws
its quivering shadow on each moment that fleets
by. It is not attainment, but degradation to live
upon the level of one's mere attainment, no
longer uplifted by any aspiration, fired by any
emulation, goaded by any but carnal fears. If
we have been shaped by circumstances, yet we
are saved by hope. Do not judge me, we are all
entitled to plead, by anything that I am doing or
have done: He only can appraise a soul aright
Who knows what it yearns to become, what
within itself it hates and prays to be delivered
from, what is the earnestness of its self-loathing,
what the passion of its appeal to heaven. As the
bloom of next April is the true comment upon
the dry bulb of September, as you do not value
the fountain by the pint of water in its basin, but
by its inexhaustible capabilities of replenishment,
so the present and its joyless facts are not the
true man; his possibilities, the fears and hopes
that control his destiny and shall unfold it, these
are his real self.
I am not merely what I am: I am very truly
that which I long to be. And thus, man may
plead, I am what I move towards and strive
after, my aspiration is myself. But God says, I
AM WHAT I AM. The Stream hurries forward:
the rock abides. And this is the Rock of
Ages.
Now, such a conception is at first sight not
far removed from that apathetic and impassive
kind of deity which the practical atheism of an-
cient materialists could well afford to grant; —
" ever in itself enjoying immortality together
with supreme repose, far removed and withdrawn
from our concerns, since it, exempt from every
pain, exempt from all danger, strong in its own
resources and wanting naught from us, is neither
gained by favour nor moved by wrath."
Thus Lucretius conceived of the absolute
Being as by the necessity of its nature entirely
outside our system.
But Moses was taught to trust in Jehovah as
intervening, pitying sorrow and wrong, coming
down to assist His creatures in distress.
How could this be possible? Clearly the
movement towards them must be wholly disin-
terested, and wholly from within; unbought,
since no external influence can modify His con-
dition, no puny sacrifice can propitiate Him
Who sitteth upon the circle of the earth and the
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers: a move-
ment prompted by no irregular emotional im-
pulse, but an abiding law of His nature, incapa-
ble of change, the movement of a nature, per-
sonal indeed, yet as steady, as surely to be reck-
oned upon in like circumstances, as the opera-
tions of gravitation are.
There is no such motive, working in such
magnificent regularity for good, save one. The
ultimate doctrine of the New Testament, that
God is Love, is already involved in this early
assertion, that being wholly independent of us
and our concerns. He is yet not indifferent to
them, so that Moses could say unto the children
of Israel " I am hath sent me unto you."
It is this unchangeable consistency of Divine
action which gives the narrative its intense inter-
est to us. To Moses, and therefore to all who
receive any commission from the skies, this title
said, Frail creature, sport of circumstances and
of tyrants, He who commissions thee sits above
the waterfloods, and their rage can as little
modify or change His purpose, now committed
to thy charge, as the spray can quench the stars.
Perplexed creature, whose best self lives only in
aspiration and desire, now thou art an instru-
ment in the hand of Him with Whom desire and
attainment, will and fruition, are eternally the
same. None truly fails in fighting for Jehovah,
for who hath resisted His will?
To Israel, and to all the oppressed whose
minds are open to receive the tidings and their
faith strong to embrace it. He said, Your life is
blighted, and your future is in the hand of task-
masters, yet be. of good cheer, for now your de-
liverance is undertaken by Him Whose being
and purpose are one. Who is in perfection of
enjoyment all that He is in contemplation and
in will. The rescue of Israel by an immutable
and perfect God is the earnest of the breaking of
every yoke.
And to the proud and godless world which
knows Him not. He says. Resistance to My will
can only show forth all its power, which is not
at the mercy of opinion or interest or change: I
sit upon the throne, not only supreme but inde-
pendent, not only victorious but unassailable;
self-contained, self-poised, and self-sufficing, I
AM THAT I AM.
Have we now escaped the inert and self-
absorbed deity of Lucretius, only to fall into the
palsying grasp of the tyrannous deity of Calvin?
Does our own human will shrivel up and become
powerless under the compulsion of that immuta-
bility with which we are strangely brought into
contact?
Evidently this is not the teaching of the Book
of Exodus. For it is here, in this revelation of
the Supreme, that we first hear of a nation as
being His: " I have seen the affliction of My
people which is in Egypt . . . and I have come
down to bring them into a good land." They
were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in
the sea. Yet their carcases fell in the wilderness.
And these things were written for our learning.
The immutability, which suffers no shock when
we enter into the covenant, remains unshaken
also if we depart from the living God. The sun
shines alike when we raise the curtain and when
we drop it, when our chamber is illumined and
when it is dark. The immutability of God is
not in His operations, for sometimes He gave
His people into the hand of their enemies, and
again He turned and helped them. It is in His
nature, His mind, in the principles which guide
His actions. If He had not chastened David for
his sin, then, by acting as before. He would have
been other at heart than when He rejected
Saul for disobedience and chose the son of
Jesse to fulfil all His word. The wind has
veered, if it continues to propel the vessel in
the same direction, although helm and sails
are shifted.
Such is the Pauline doctrine of His immuta-
bility. " If we endure we shall also reign with
Him: if we shall deny Him, He also will deny
us," — and such is the necessity of His being, for
we cannot sway Him with our changes: "if we
are faithless. He abideth faithful, for He cannot
deny Himself." And therefore it is presently
added that " the firm foundation of the Lord
standeth sure, having " not only " this seal, that
Exudus iii. lu, 16-22.]
THE COMMISSION.
137
the Lord knoweth those that are His," — but also
this, " Let every one that nameth the name of
the Lord depart from unrighteousness " (2 Tim.
ii. 12, 13, 19, R. v.).
The Lord knew that Israel was His, yet for
their unrighteousness He sware in His wrath
that they should not enter into His rest.
It follows from all this that the new name of
God was no academic subtlety, no metaphysical
refinement of the schools, unfitly revealed to
slaves, but a most practical and inspiring truth,
a conviction to warm their blood, to rouse their
courage, to convert their despair into confidence
and their alarms into defiance.
They had the support of a God worthy of
tYust. And thenceforth every answer in right-
eousness, every new disclosure of fidelity, tender-
ness, love, was not an abnormal phenomenon,
the uncertain grace of a capricious despot; no,
its import was permanent as an observation of
the stars by an astronomer, ever more to be
remembered in calculating the movements of
the universe.
In future troubles they could appeal to Him
to awake as in the ancient days, as being He who
" cut Rahab and wounded the Dragon." " I am
the Lord, I ^change not, therefore ye sons of
Jacob are not consumed."
And as the sublime and beautiful conception of
a loving spiritual God was built up slowly, age
by age, tier upon tier, this was the foundation
which insured the stability of all, until the Head
Stone of the Corner gave completeness to the
vast design, until men saw and could believe in
the very Incarnation of all Love, unshaken amid
anguish and distress and seeming failure, im-
movable, victorious, while they heard from hu-
man lips the awful words, " Before Abraham was,
I AM." Then they learned to identify all this
ancient lesson of trustworthiness with new and
more pathetic revelations of affection: and the
martyr at the stake grew strong as he remem-
bered that the Man of Sorrows was the same
yesterday and to-day and for ever; and the great
apostle, prostrate before the glory of his Master,
was restored by the touch of a human hand, and
by the voice of Him upon Whose bosom he had
leaned, saying, Fear not, I am the First and the
Last and the Living One.
And if men are once more fain to rend from
humanity that great assurance, which for ages,
amid all shocks, has made the frail creature of
the dust to grow strong and firm and fearless,
partaker of the Divine Nature, what will they
give us in its stead? Or do they think us too
strong of will, too firm of purpose? Looking
around us, we see nations heaving with internal
agitations, armed to the teeth against each other,
and all things like a ship at sea reeling to and
fro, and staggering like a drunken man. There
is no stability for us in constitutions or old
formulae — none anywhere, if it be not in the soul
of man. Well for us, then, that the anchor of
the soul is sure and steadfast! well that unnum-
bered millions take courage from their Saviour's
v/ord, that the world's worst anguish is the be-
ginning, not of dissolution, but of the birth-
pangs of a new heaven and earth, — that when
the clouds are blackest because the light of sun
and moon is quenched, then, then we shall be-
hold the Immutable unveiled, the Son of Man,
•who is brought nigh unto the Ancient of Days,
now sitting in the clouds of heaven, and coming
ir, the glory of His Father!
THE COMMISSION.
Exodus iii. 10, 16-22.
We have already learned from the seventh
verse that God commissioned Moses, only when
He had Himself descended to deliver Israel. He
sends none, except with the implied or explicit
promise that certamly He will be with them.
But the converse is also true. If God sends no
man but when He comes Himself, He never
comes without demanding the agertcy of man.
The overruled reluctance of Moses, and the in-
flexible urgency of his commission, may teach
us the honour set by God upon humanity. He
has knit men together in the mutual dependence
of nations and of families, that each may be His
minister to all; and in every great crisis of his-
tory He has respected His own principle, and
has visited the race by means of the providential
man. The gospel was not preached by angels.
Its first agents found themselves like sheep
among wolves: they were an exhibition to the
world and to angels and men, yet necessity was
laid upon them, and a woe if they preached it
not.
All the best gifts of heaven come to us by the
agency of inventor and sage, hero and explorer,
organiser and philanthropist, patriot, reformer,
and saint. And the hope which inspires their
grandest effort is never that of selfish gain, nor
even of fame, though fame is a keen spur, which
perhaps God set before Moses in the noble hope
that " thou shalt bring forth the people " (ver.
12). But the truly impelling force is always the
great deed itself, the haunting thought, the im-
portunate inspiration, the inward fire; and so
God promises Moses neither a sceptre, nor share
in the good land: He simply proposes to him the
work, the rescue of the people; and Moses, for
his part, simply objects that he is unable, not
that he is solicitous about his reward. What-
ever is done for payment can be valued by its
cost: all the priceless services done for us by our
greatest were, in very deed, unpriced.
Moses, with the new name of God to reveal,
and with the assurance that He is about to
rescue Israel, is bidden to go to work advisedly
and wisely. He is not to appeal to the mob, nor
yet to confront Pharaoh without authority from
his people to speak for them, nor is he to make
the great demand for emancipation abruptly and
at once. The mistake of forty years ago must
not be repeated now. He is to appeal to the
elders of Israel; and with them, and therefore
clearly representing the nation, he is respectfully
to crave permission for a three days' journey, to
sacrifice to Jehovah in the wilderness. The
blustering assurance with which certain fanatics
of our own time first assume that they possess a
direct commission from the skies, and thereupon
that they are freed from all order, from all recog-
nition of any human authority, and then that no
considerations of prudence or of decency should
restrain the violence and bad taste which they
mistake for zeal, is curiously unlike anything in
the Old Testament or the New. Was ever a
commission more direct than those of Moses and
of St. Paul? Yet Moses was to obtain the recog-
nition of the elders of his people; and St. Paul
received formal ordination by the explicit com-
mand of God (Acts xiii. 3).
Strangely enough, it is often assumed that this
138
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
demand for a furlough of three days was insin-
cere. But it would only have been so, if consent
were expected, and if the intention were there-
upon to abuse the respite and refuse to return.
There is not the slightest hint of any duplicity
of the kind. The real motives for the demand
are very plain. The excursion which they pro-
posed would have taught the people to move and
act together, reviving their national spirit, and
filling them with a desire for the liberty which
they tasted. In the very words which they
should speak, '" The Lord, the God of the He-
brews, hath met with us," there is a distinct
proclamation of nationality, and of its surest and
strongest bulwark, a national religion. From
such an excursion, therefore, the people would
have returned, already well-nigh emancipated,
and with recognised leaders. Certainly Pharaoh
could not listen to any such proposal, unless he
were prepared to reverse the whole policy of his
dynasty toward Israel.
But the refusal answered two good ends. In
the first place it joined issue on the best con-
ceivable ground, for Israel was exhibited mak-
ing the least possible demand with the greatest
possible courtesy — " Let us go, we pray thee,
three days' journey into the wilderness." Not
even so much would be granted. The tyrant was
palpably in the wrong, and thenceforth it was
perfectly reasonable to increase the severity of
the terms after each of his defeats, which pro-
ceeding in its turn made concession more and
more galling to his pride. In the second place,
the quarrel was from the first avowedly and un-
deniably religious: the gods of Egypt were
matched against Jehovah; and in the successive
plagues which desolated his land Pharaoh
gradually learnt Who Jehovah was.
In the message which Moses should convey to
the elders there are two significant phrases. He
was to announce in the name of God, " I have
surely visited you, and seen that which is done
unto you in Egypt." The silent observation of
God before He interposes is very solemn and
instructive. So in the Revelation, He walks
among the golden candlesticks, and knows the
work, the patience, or the unfaithfulness of each.
So He is not far from any one of us. When a
heavy blow falls we speak of it as " a visitation
of Providence." but in reality the visitation has
been long before. Neither Israel nor Egypt was
conscious of the solemn presence. Who knows
what soul of man, or what nation, is thus visited
to-day, for future deliverance or rebuke?
Again it is said, " I will bring you up out of
the affliction of Egypt into ... a land flowing
with milk and honey." Their affliction was the
divine method of uprooting them. And so is
our affliction the method by which our hearts
are released from love of earth and life, that in
due time He may " surely bring us in " to a
better and an enduring country. Now, we won-
der that the Israelites clung so fondly to the
place of their captivity. But what of our own
hearts? Have they a desire to depart? or do
they groan in bondage, and yet recoil from their
emancipation?
The hesitating nation is not plainly told that
their affliction will be intensified and their lives
made burdensome with labour. That is perhaps
implied in the certainty that Pharaoh " will not
let you go, no, not by a mighty hand." But it
is with Israel as with us: a general knowledge
that in the world we shall have tribulation is
enough; the catalogue of our trials is not spread
out before us in advance. They were assured for
their encouragement that all their long captivity
should at last receive its wages, for they should
not borrow * but ask of the Egyptians jewels of
silver, and gold, and raiment, and they should
spoil the Egyptians. So are we taught to have
" respect unto the recompense of the reward."
CHAPTER IV.
MOSES HESITATES.
Exodus iv. i-i
/•
Holy Scripture is impartial, even towards its
heroes. The sin of David is recorded, and the
failure of Peter. And so is the reluctance of
Moses to accept his commission, even after a
miracle had been vouchsafed to him for en-
couragement. The absolute sinlessness of Jesus
is the more significant because it is found in the
records of a creed which knows of no idealised
humanity.
In Josephus, the refusal of Moses is softened
down. Even the modest words, " Lord, I am
still in doubt how I, a private man and of no
abilities, should persuade my countrymen or
Pharaoh," are not spoken after the sign is given.
Nor is there any mention of the transfer to
Aaron of a part of his commission, nor of their
joint offence at Meribah, nor of its penalty,
which in Scripture is bewailed so often. And
Josephus is equally tender about the misdeeds of
the nation. We hear nothing of their murmurs
against Moses and Aaron when their burden5
are increased, or of their making the golden calf.
Whereas it is remarkable and natural that the
fear of Moses is less anxious about his reception
by the tyrant than bv his own people: " Behold,
they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my
voice; for they will say. The Lord hath not ap-
peared unto thee." This is very unlike the in-
vention of a later period, glorifying the begin-
nings of the nation- but it is absolutely true to
life. Great men do not fear the wrath of ene-
mies if they can be secured against the indiffer-
ence and contempt of friends; and Moses in par-
ticular was at last persuaded to undertake his
mission by the promise of the support of Aaron.
His hesitation is therefore the earliest example of
what has been so often since observed — the dis-
couragement of heroes, reformers, and messen-
gers from God, less by fear of the attacks of the
world than of the contemptuous scepticism of the
people of God. We often sigh for the appear-
ing, in our degenerate days, of
" A man with heart, head, hand,
Like some of the simple great ones gone."
Yet who shall say that the want of them is not
our own fault? The critical apathy and incre-
dulity, not of the world but of the Church, is
what freezes the fountains of Christian daring
and the warmth of Christian zeal.
* So much ignorant capital has been made by sceptics
out of this unfortunate mistranslation, that it is worth
while to inquire whether the word " borrow " would suit
the context in other passages. " He f>orro7i'ee^ water arid
she gave him milk" (Judges v. 25). " The Lord said unto
Solomon, Because thou hast bor 7-oioed ihis thing, and hast
i\o\ lio7-rov}ed\on^\\ie for thyself, neither hast borrozved
riches for thyself, nor hast borrowed the life of thine
enemies " (i Kings iii. n). " And Elijah said unto Elisha,
Thou hast borroived a hard thing" (2 Kings ii. 10). The
absurdity of the cavil is self-evident.
Exodus iv. I-I7.] MOSES HESITATES. 139
For the help of the faith of his people, Moses and of a slow tongue, when Stephen distinctly
is commissioned to work two miracles; and he is declares that he was mighty in word as well as
caused to rehearse them, for his own. deed? (Acts vn. 22). Perhaps it is enough to
Strange tales were told among the later Jews answer that many years of solitude in a strange
about his wonder-working rod. It was cut by land had robbed him of his fluency. Perhaps
Adam before leaving Paradise, was brought by Stephen had in mind the words of the Book of
Noah into the ark, passed into Egypt with Jo- Wisdom, that " Wisdom entered into the soul of
seph, and was recovered by Moses while he en- the servant of the Lord, and withstood dreadful
joyed the favour of the court. These legends kmgs in wonders and signs. . . For Wisdom
. arose from downright moral inability to receive opened the mouth of the dumb, and made the
the true lesson of the incident, which is the con- tongues of them that cannot speak eloquent "
fronting of the sceptre of Egypt with the simple (Wisdom x. 16, 21).
stafif of the shepherd, the choosing of the weak To his scruple the answer was returned, " Who
things of earth to confound the strong, the hath made man's mouth? . . . Have not I the
power of God to work His miracles by the most Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with
puny and inadequate means. Anything was thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say."
more credible than that He who led His people The same encouragement belongs to every one
like sheep did indeed guide them with a common who truly executes a mandate from above: " Lo,
shepherd's crook. And yet this was precisely I am with you alway." For surely this en-
the lesson meant for us to learn — the glorifica- couragement is the same. Surely Jesus did not
tion of poor resources in the grasp of faith. _ mean to ofifer His own presence as a substitute
Both miracles were of a menacing kind. First for that of God, but as being m very truth Di-
the rod became a serpent, to declare that at God's vine, when He bade His disciples, in reliance
bidding enemies would rise up against the op- upon Him, to go forth and convert the world,
pressor, even where all seemed innocuous, as in And this is the true test which divides faith
truth the waters of the river and the dust of the from presumption, and unbelief from prudence:
furnace and the winds of heaven conspired do we go because God is with us in Christ, or
against him. Then, in the grasp of Moses, the because we ourselves are strong and wise? Do
serpent from which he f^ed became a rod again, we hold back because we are not sure of His
to intimate that these avenging forces were sub- commission, or only because we distrust our-
ject to the servant of Jehovah. selves? " Humility without faith is too timor-
Again, his hand became leprous in his bosom, ous; faith without humility is too hasty." The
and was presently restored to health again — a phrase explains the conduct of Moses both now
declaration that he carried with him the power and forty years before.
of death, in its most dreadful form; and perhaps Moses, however, still entreats that any one
a still more solemn admonition to those who re- may be chosen rather than himself: " Send, I
member what leprosy betokens, and how every pray Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt
approach of God to man brings first the knowl- send."
edge of sin, to be followed by the assurance that And thereupon the anger of the Lord was
He has cleansed it.* kindled against him, although at the moment his
If the people would not hearken to the voice only visible punishment was the partial granting
of the first sign, they should believe the second; of his prayer the association with him in his
but at the worst, and if they were still uncon- commission of Aaron, who could speak well, the
vinced, they would believe when they saw the forfeiting of a certain part of his vocation, and
water of the Nile, the pride and glory of their with it of a certain part of its reward. The
oppressors, turned into blood before their eyes, words, " Is not Aaron thy brother the Levite?"
That was an omen which needs no interpreta- have been used to insinuate that the tribal ar-
tion. What follows is curious. Moses objects rangement was not pt..-fected when they were
that he has not hitherto been eloquent, nor does written, and so to discredit the narrative. But
he experience any improvement " since Thou when so interpreted they yield no adequate sense,
hast spoken unto Thy servant" (a graphic they do not reinforce the argument; while they
touch!), and he seems to suppose that the popu- are perfectly intelligible as implying that Aaron
lar choice between liberty and slavery would de- is already the leader of his tribe, and therefore
pend less upon the evidence of a Divine power sure to obtain the hearing of which Moses de-
than upon sleight of tongue, as if he were in spaired. But the arrangement involved grave
modern England. consequences sure to be developed in due time:
But let it be observed that the self-conscious- among others, the reliance of Israel upon a
j ness which wears the mask of humility while re- feebler will, which could be forced by their
' fusing to submit its judgment to that of God. is clamour to make them a calf of gold. Moses
a form of selfishness — ^^self-absorption blinding was yet to learn that lesson which our century
one to other considerations beyond himself — as knows nothing of, — that a speaker and a leader
real, though not as hateful, as greed and avarice of nations are not the same. When he cried to
and lust. Aaron, in the bitterness of his soul, " What did
How can Moses call himself slow of speech this people to thee, that thou hast brought so
♦Tertullian appealed to the second of these miracles to great a sin upon them?" did he remember by
illustrate the possibility of the resurrection. "The hand whose unfaithfulness Aaron had been thrust into
of Mosesischanjred and becomes like that of the dead, ^i,„ „fFirP thp rp<;nr.nc:ihilitip<; nf whirh hp had
bloodless, colourless, and .stiff with cold. But on the re- [ne omce. tne responsiDuuies oi wmcn ne nan
covery of heat and restoration of its natural colour, it is betrayed?
the same flesh and blood. . . So will chanj^es. conver- Now, it is the duty of every man, tO whom a
sions and reformation be needed to brmg about the resur- __„-;„] vrirafion nrpspntc itcplf tr, <;pt- onormite
rection, yet the substance will be preserved safe." (Df special vocation presents Itselt, tO set opposite
J?es.,lv.) It is far wiser to be content with the declaration each Other two Considerations. Dare 1 under-
ofSt. Paul that the identity of the body does not depend on take this task? is a solemn question, but SO is
that of its corporeal atoms. " Thou sowest not that body xl- . t\„^^ t i^* 4-u;^ +^<-i- rr^ ^ocf mo? Am T
that shall be. but a naked grain. . . . But God giveth this: Dare I let this task go past me.;; Am 1
- . . to every seed his own body " (i Cor. xv. 37-8). prepared for the responsibility or allowing It to
140
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
drift into weaker hands? These are days when
the Church of Christ is calling for the help of
every one capable of aiding her, and we ought
to hear it said more often that one is afraid not to
teach in Sunday School, and another dares not
refuse a proffered district, and a third fears to
leave charitable tasks undone. To him that
knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it
is sin; and we hear too much about the terrible
responsibility of working for God, but too little
about the still graver responsibility of refusing to
work for Him when called.
Moses indeed attained so much that we are
scarcely conscious that he might have been
greater still. He had once presumed to go un-
sent, and brought upon himself the exile of half
a lifetime. Again he presumed almost to say, I
go not, and well-nigh to incur the guilt of Jonah
when sent to Nineveh, and in so doing he for-
feited the fulness of his vocation. But who
reaches the level of his possibilities? Who is
not haunted by faces, " each one a murdered
self," a nobler self, that might have been, and is
now impossible for ever? Only Jesus could say
" I have finished the work which Thou gavest
Me to do." And it is notable that while Jesus
deals, in the parable of the labourers, with the
problem of equal faithfulness during longer and
shorter periods of employment; and in the para-
ble of the pounds with that of equal endowment
variously improved; and yet again, in the para-
ble of the talents, with the problem of various
endowments all doubled alike. He always draws
a veil over the treatment of five talents which
earn but two or three besides.
A more cheerful reflection suggested by this
narrative is the strange power of human fellow-
ship. Moses knew and was persuaded that God,
Whose presence was even then miraculously ap-
parent in the bush, and Who had invested him
with superhuman powers, would go with him.
There is no trace of incredulity in his behaviour,
but only of failure to rely, to cast his shrinking
and reluctant will upon the truth he recognised
and the God Whose presence he confessed. He
held back, as many a one does, who is honest
when he repeats the Creed in church, yet fails to
submit his life to the easy yoke of Jesus. Nor
is it from physical peril that he recoils: at the
bidding of God he has just grasped the serpent
from which he fled: and in confronting a tyrant
with armies at his back, he could hope for small
assistance from his brother. But highly strung
spirits, in every great crisis, are aware of vague
indefinite apprehensions that are not cowardly
but imaginative. Thus Caesar, when defying the
hosts of Pompey, is said to have been disturbed
by an apparition. It is vain to put these appre-
hensions into logical form, and argue them
down: the slowness of speech of Moses was
surely refuted by the presence of God, Who
makes the mouth and inspires the utterance; but
such fears lie deeper than the reasons they assign,
and when argument fails, will yet stubbornly re-
peat their cry: " Send, I pray Thee, by the hand
of him whom Thou wilt send." Now this
shrinking, which is not craven, is dispelled by
nothing so effectually as by the touch of a hu-
man hand. It is like the voice of a friend to
one beset by ghostly terrors: he does not ex-
pect his comrade to exorcise a spirit, and yet his
apprehensions are dispelled. Thus Moses can-
not summon up courage from the protection of
God, but when assured of the companionship of
his brother he will not only venture to return
to Egypt, but will bring with him his wife and
children. Thus, also. He Who knew what was
in men's hearts sent forth His missionaries, both
the Twelve and the Seventy (as we have yet to
learn the true economy of sending ours), " by
two and two" (Mark vi. 7; Luke x. i)?
This is the principle which underlies the insti-
tution of the Church of Christ, and the concep-
tion that Christians are brothers, among whom
the strong must help the weak. Such help from
their fellow-mortals would perhaps decide the
choice of many hesitating souls, upon the verge
of the divine life, recoiling from its unknown and
dread experiences, but longing for a sympathis-
ing comrade. Alas for the unkindly and unsym-
pathetic religion of men whose faith has never
warmed a human heart, and of congregations in
which emotion is a misdemeanour!
There is no stronger force, among all that
make for the abuses of priestcraft, than this same
yearning for human help becomes when robbed
of its proper nourishment, which is the com-
munion of saints and the pastoral care of souls.
Has it no further nourishment than these?
This instinctive craving for a Brother to help as
well as a Father to direct and govern, — this social
instinct, which Jbanished the fears of Moses and
made him set out for Egypt long before Aaron
came in sight, content when assured of Aaron's
co-operation, — is there nothing in God Himself
to respond to it? He Who is not ashamed to
call us brethren has profoundly modified the
Church's conception of Jehovah, the Eternal,
Absolute, and Unconditioned. It is because He
can be touched with the feeling of our infirmi-
ties, that we are bidden to draw near with bold-
ness unto the Throne of Grace. There is no
heart so lonely that it cannot commune with the
lofty and kind humanity of Jesus.
There is a homelier lesson to be learned.
Moses was not only solaced by human fellow-
ship, but nerved and animated by the thought of
his brother, and the mention of his tribe. " Is
not Aaron thy brother the Levite? '* They had
not met for forty years. Vague rumours of
deadly persecution were doubtless all that had
reached the fugitive, whose heart had burned, in
solitary communion with Nature in her sternest
forms, as he brooded over the wrongs of his
family, of Aaron, and perhaps of Miriam.
And now his brother lived. The call which
Moses would have put from him was for the
emancipation of his own flesh and blood, and for
their greatness. In that great hour, domestic
affection did much to turn the scale wherein the
destinies of humanity were trembling. And his
was affection well returned. It might easily
have been otherwise, for Aaron had seen his
younger brother called to a dazzling elevation,
living in enviable magnificence, and earning
fame by "word and deed"; and then, after a
momentary fusion of sympathy and of condition,
forty years had poured between them a torrent
of cares and joys estranging because unshared.
But it was promised that Aaron, when he saw
him, should be glad at heart; and the words
tlirow a beam of exquisite light into the depths
of the mighty soul which God inspired to eman-
cipate Israel and to found His Church, by
thoughts of his brother's joy on meeting him.
Let no man dream of attaining real greatness
bv stifling his affections. The heart is more
important than the intellect; and the brief story
Exodus iv. 18-31.]
MOSES OBEYS.
141
of the Exodus has room for the yearning of
Jochebed over her infant " when she* saw him
that he was a goodly child," for the bold in-
spiration of the young poetess, who " stood afar
off to know what should be done to him," and
now for the love of Aaron. So the Virgin, in
the dread hour of her reproach, went in haste to
her cousin Elizabeth. So Andrew " findeth first
his own brother Simon." And so the Divine
Sufferer, forsaken of God, did not forsake His
Mother.
The Bible is full of domestic life. It is the
theme of the greater part of Genesis, which
makes the family the seed-plot of the Church. It
is wisely recognised again at the moment when
the larger pulse of the nation begins to beat.
For the life-blood in the heart of a nation must
be the blood in the hearts of men.
MOSES OBEYS.
Exodus iv. 18-31.
Moses is now commissioned: he is to go to
Egypt, and Aaron is coming thence to meet him.
Yet he first returns to Midian, to Jethro, who is
both his employer and the head of the family,
and prays him to sanction his visit to his own
people.
There are duties which no family resistance
can possibly cancel, and the direct command of
God made it plain that this was one of them.
But there are two ways of performing even the
most imperative obligation, and religious people
have done irreparable mischief before now, by
rudeness, disregard to natural feeling and the
rights of their fellow-men, under the impression
that they showed their allegiance to God by out-
raging other ties. It is a theory for which no
sanction can be found either in Holy Scripture
or in common sense.
When he asks permission to visit " his breth-
ren " we cannot say whether he ever had
brothers besides Aaron, or uses the word in the
same larger national sense as when we read that,
forty years before, he went out unto his breth-
ren and saw their burdens. What is to be ob-
served is that he is reticent with respect to his
vast expectations and designs.
He does not argue that, because a Divine
promise must needs be fulfilled, he need not be
discreet, wary, and taciturn, any more than St.
Paul supposed, because the lives of his shipmates
were promised to him, that it mattered nothing
whether the sailors remained on board.
The decrees of God have sometimes been used
to justify the recklessness of man, but never by
His chosen followers. They have worked out
their own salvation the more earnestly because
God worked in them. And every good cause
calls aloud for human energy and wisdom, all
the more because its consummation is the will
of God. and sooner or later is assured. Moses
has unlearned his rashness.
When the Lord said unto Moses in Midian,
" Go, return unto Egypt, for all the men are dead
which sought thy life," there is an almost ver-
bal resemblance to the words in which the infant
Jesus is recalled from exile. We shall have to
consider the typical aspect of the whole narra-
tive, when a convenient stage is reached for
pausing to survey it in its completeness. But
resemblances like this have been treated with so
lO-Vol. I.
much scorn, they have been so freely perverted
into evidence of the mythical nature of the later
story, that some passing allusion appears desir-
able. We must beware equally of both extremes.
The Old Testament is tortured, and genuine
prophecies are made no better than coincidences,
when coincidences are exalted to all the dignity
of express predictions. One can scarcely ven-
ture to speak of the death of Herod when Jesus
was to return from Egypt, as being deliberately
typified in the death of those who sought the life
of Moses. But it is quite clear that the words in
St. Matthew do intentionally point the reader
back to this narrative. For, indeed, under both,
there are to be recognised the same principles:
that God does not thrust His servants into need-
less or excessive peril; and that when the life of
a tyrant has really become not only a trial but a
barrier, it will be removed by the King of kings.
God is prudent for His heroes.
Moreover, we must recognise the lofty fitness
of what is very visible in the Gospels — the com-
ing to a head in Christ of the various experiences
of the people of God; and at the recurrence, in
His story, of events already known elsewhere,
we need not be disquieted, as if the suspicion of
a myth were now become difficult to refute;
rather should we recognise the fulness of the
supreme life, and its points of contact with all
lives, which are but portions of its vast complete-
ness. Who does not feel that in the world's
greatest events a certain harmony and corre-
spondence are as charming as they are in music?
There is a sort of counterpoint in history. And
to this answering of deep unto deep, this respon-
siveness of the story of Jesus to all history, our
attention is silently beckoned by St. Matthew,
when, without asserting any closer link between
the incidents, he borrows this phrase so aptly.
A much deeper meaning underlies the pro-
found expression which God now commands
Moses to employ, and although it must await
consideration at a future time, the progressive
education of Moses himself is meantime to be
observed. At first he is taught that the Lord is
the God of their fathers, in whose descendants
He is therefore interested. Then the present
Israel is His people, and valued for its own sake.
Now he hears, and is bidden to repeat to Pha-
raoh, the amazing phrase, " Israel is My son,
even My firstborn: let My son go that he may
serve Me; and if thou refuse to let him go, be-
hold I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn."
Thus it is that infant faith is led from height to
height. And assuredly there never was an utter-
ance better fitted than this to prepare human
minds, in the fulness of time, for a still clearer
revelation of the nearness of God to man, and for
the possibility of an absolute union between the
Creator and His creature.
It was on his way into Egypt, with his wife
and children, that a mysterious interposition
forced Zipporah reluctantly and tardily to cir-
cumcise her son.
The meaning of this strange episode lies per-
haps below the surface, but very near it. Dan-
ger in some form, probably that of sickness,
pressed Moses hard, and he recognised in it the
displeasure of his God. The form of the narra-
tive leads us to suppose that he had no previous
consciousness of guilt, and had now to infer the
nature of his offence without any explicit an-
nouncement, just as we infer it from what
follows.
142
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
If so, he discerned his transgression when
trouble awoke his conscience; and so did his
wife Zipporah. Yet her resistance to the cir-
cumcision oi their younger son was so tenacious,
with such difficulty was it overcome by her hus-
band's peril or by his command, that her tardy
performance of the rite was accompanied by an
insulting action and a bitter taunt. As she sub-
mitted, the Lord " let him go "; but we may per-
haps conclude that the grievance continued to
rankle, from the repetition of her gibe, " So she
said, A bridegroom of blood art thou because of
the circumcision." The words mean, " We are
betrothed again in blood." and might of them-
selves admit a gentler, and even a tender signifi-
cance; as if, in the sacrifice of a strong prejudice
for her husband's sake, she felt a revival of " the
kindness of her youth, the love of her espousals."
For nothing removes the film from the surface
of a true afifection, and makes the heart aware
how bright it is, so well as a great sacrifice,
frankly offered for the sake of love.
But such a rendering is excluded by the action
which went with her words, and they must be ex-
plained as meaning. This is the kind of husband
I have wedded: these are our espousals. With
such an utterance she fades almost entirely out
of the story: it does not even tell how she drew
back to her father; and thenceforth all we know
of her is that she rejoined Moses only when the
fame of his victory over Amalek had gone
abroad.
Their union seems to have been an ill-assorted
or at least an unprosperous one. In the tender
hour when their firstborn was to be named, the
bitter sense of loneliness had continued to be
nearer to the heart of Moses than the glad new
consciousness of paternity, and he said, " I am
a stranger in a strange land." Different indeed
had been the experience of Joseph, who called
his " firstborn Manasseh, for God, said he, hath
made me forget all my toil, and all my father's
house" (Gen. xli. 51). The home-life of Moses
had not made him forget that he was an exile.
Even the removal of imminent death from her
husband could not hush these selfish complaints
of Zipporah, not because he was a father of
blf^f^d to her little one, but because he was a
bridegroom of blood to her own shrinking sensi-
bilities. It is r.Iiriam the sister, not Zipporah
the wife, who gives lyrical and passionate voice
to his triumph, and is mourned by the nation
when she dies. Both what we read of her and
what we do not read goes far to explain the in-
significance of their children in history and the
more startling fact that the grandson of Moses
became the venal instrument of the Danites
in their schismatic worship (Judges xviii. 30,
R. v.).
Domestic unhappiness is a palliation, but not
a justification for an unserviceable life. It is a
great advantage to come into action with the
dew and freshness of affection upon the soul.
Yet it is not once nor twice that men have
carried the message of God back from the barren
desert and the lonely ways of their unhappiness
to the not too haoDy race of man.
Now, who can fail to discern real history in all
this? Is it in such a way that myth or legend
would have dealt with the wife of the great de-
liverer? Still less conceivable is it that these
should have treated Moses himself as the narra-
tive hitherto has consistently done. At every
step he is made to stumble. His first attempt
was homicidal, and brought upon him forty years
of exile. 'When the Divine commission came he
drew back wilfully, as he had formerly pressed
forward unsent. There is not even any sugges-
tion offered us of Stephen's apology for his
violent deed — namely, that he supposed his
brethren understood how that God by his hand
was giving them deliverance (Acts vii. 25).
There is nothing that resembles the eulogium of
the Epistle to the Hebrews upon the faith which
glorified his precipitancy, like the rainbow in a
torrent, because that rash blow committed him
to share the affliction of the people of God, and
renounced the rank of a grandson of the Pharaoh
(Heb. xi. 24-5). All this is very natural, if
Moses himself be in any degree responsible for
the narrative. It is incredible, if the narrative
were put together after the Captivity, to claim
the sanction of so great a name for a newly
forged hierarchical system. Such a theory could
scarcely be refuted more completely, if the nar-
rative before us were invented w^ith the deliberate
aim to overthrow it.
But m truth the failures of the good and great
are written for our admonition, teaching us how
inconsistent are even the best of mortals, and
how weak the most resolute. Rather than for-
feit his own place among the chosen people,
Moses had forsaken a palace and become a pro-
scribed fugitive; yet he had neglected to claim
for his child its rightful share in the covenant,
its recognition among the sons of Abraham.
Perhaps procrastination, perhaps domestic oppo-
sition more potent than a king's wrath to shake
his purpose, perhaps the insidious notion that
one who had sacrificed so much might be at ease
about slight negligences, — some such influence
had left the commandment unobserved. And
now, when the dream of his life was being real-
ised at last, and he found himself the chosen in-
strument of God for the rebuke of one nation
and the making of another, how pardonable it
must have seemed to leave an unpleasant small
domestic duty over until a more convenient sea-
son! How natural it still seems to merge the
petty task in the high vocation, to excuse small
lapses in pursuit of lofty aims! But this was the
very time when God. hitherto forbearing, took
him sternly to task for his neglect, because men
who are especially honoured should be more
obedient and reverential than their fellows. Let
•young men who dream of a vast career, and
meanwhile indulge themselves in small obliqui-
ties, let all who cast out demons in the name of
Christ, and yet work iniquity, reflect upon this
chosen and long-trained, self-sacrificing and
ardent servant of the Lord, whom Jehovah seeks
to kill because he wilfully disobeys even a purely
ceremonial precept.
Moses was not only religious, but " a man of
destiny," one upon whom vast interests de-
pended. Now. such men have often reckoned
themselves exempt from the ordinary laws of
conduct.*
It is not a light thing, therefore, to find God's
indignant protest against the faintest shadow of
a doctrine so insidious and so deadly, set in the
forefront of sacred history, at the very point
where national concerns and those of religion
begin to touch. If our politics are to be kept
pure and clean, we must learn to exact a higher
*"Iam not an ordinary man," Napoleon used to sav.
"and the laws of mora's and of custom were never made
for va&:'—Memoi)s of Madame de Reviusat, i. 91.
Exodus V. 1-23.]
PHARAOH REFUSES.
143
fidelity, and not a relaxed morality, from those
who propose to sway the destinies of nations.
And now the brothers meet, embrace, and ex-
change confidences. As Andrew, the first dis-
ciple who brought another to Jesus, found first
his own brother Simon, so was Aaron the ear-
liest convert to the mission of Moses. And that
happened which so often puts our faithlessness to
shame. It had seemed very hard to break his
strange tidings to the people: it was in fact very
easy to address one whose love had not grown
cold during their severance, who probably re-
tained faith in the Divine purpose for which the
beautiful child of the family had been so
strangely preserved, and who had passed through
trial and discipline unknown to us in the stern
intervening years.
And when they told their marvellous story to
the elders of the people, and displayed the signs,
they believed; and when they heard that God
had visited them in their affliction, then they
bowed their heads and worshipped.
This was their preparation for the wonders
that should follow: it resembled Christ's appeal,
" Believest thou that I am able to do this? " or
Peter's word to the impotent man, " Look on
us."
For the moment the announcement had the
desired effect, although too soon the early
promise was succeeded by faithlessness and dis-
content. In this, again, the teaching of the
earliest political movement on record is as fresh
as if it were a tale of yesterday. The offer of
emancipation stirs all hearts: the romance of
liberty is beautiful beside the Nile as in the
streets of Paris; but the cost has to be gradually
learned; the losses displace the gains in the
popular attention; the labour, the self-denial, and
the self-control grow wearisome, and Israel mur-
murs for the flesh-pots of Egypt, much as the
modern revolution reverts to a despotism. It is
one thing to admire abstract freedom, but a very
different thing to accept the austere conditions
of the life of genuine freemen. And surely the
same is true of the soul. The gospel gladdens
the young convert: he bows his head and wor-
ships; but he little dreams of his long discipline,
as in the forty desert years, of the solitary places
through which his soul must wander, the
drought, the Amalekite, the absent leader, and
the temptations of the flesh. In mercy, the long
future is concealed; it is enough that, like the
apostles, we should consent to follow; gradually
we shall obtain the courage to which the task
may be revealed.
CHAPTER V.
PHARAOH REFUSES.
Exodus t. 1-23.
After forty years of obscurity and silence,
Moses re-enters the magnificent halls where he
had formerly turned his back upon so great a
place. The rod of a shepherd is in his hand, and
a lowly Hebrew by his side. Men who recognise
liim shake their heads, and pity or despise the
f.inatic who had thrown away the most dazzling
prospects for a dream. But he has long since
made his choice, and whatever misgivings now
beset him have regard to his success with Pha-
raoh or with his brethren, not to the wisdom of
his decision.
Nor had he reason to repent of it. The pomp
of an obsequious court was a poor thing in the
eyes of an ambassador of God, who entered the
palace to speak such lofty words as never passed
the lips of any son of Pharaoh's daughter. He
was presently to become a god unto Pharaoh,
with Aaron for his prophet.
In itself, his presence there was formidable.
The Hebrews had been feared when he was an
infant. Now their cause was espoused by a man
of culture, who had allied himself with their
natural leaders, and was returned with the deep
and steady fire of a zeal which forty years of
silence could not quench, to assert the rights of
Israel as an independent people.
There is a terrible power in strong convic-
tions, especially when supported by the sanctions
of religion. Luther on one side, Loyola on the
other, were mightier than kings when armed
with this tremendous weapon. Yet there are
forces upon which patriotism and fanaticism
together break in vain. Tyranny and pride of
race have also strong impelling ardours, and
carry men far. Pharaoh is in earnest as well as
Moses, and can act with perilous energy. And
this great narrative begins the story of a nation's
emancipation with a human demand, boldly
made, but defeated by the pride and vigour of a
startled tyrant and the tameness of a downtrod-
den people. The limitations of human energy
are clearly exhibited before the direct interfer-
ence of God begins. All that a brave man can
do, when nerved by lifelong aspiration and by a
sudden conviction that the hour of destiny has
struck, all therefore upon which rationalism can
draw, to explain the uprising of Israel, is ex-
hibited in this preliminary attempt, this first de-
mand of Moses.
Menephtah was no doubt the new Pharaoh
whom the brothers accosted so boldly. What
we glean of him elsewhere is highly suggestive
of some grave event left unrecorded, exhibiting
to us a man of uncontrollable temper yet of
broken courage, a ruthless, godless, daunted
man. There is a legend that he once hurled his
spear at the Nile when its floods rose too high,
and was punished with ten years of blindness.
In the Libyan war, after fixing a time when he
should join his vanguard, with the main army,
a celestial vision forbade him to keep his word
in person, and the victory was gained by his
lieutenants. In another war, he boasts of hav-
ing slaughtered the people and set fire to them,
and netted the entire country as men net birds.
Forty years then elapse without war and without
any great buildings; there are seditions and in-
ternal troubles, and the dynasty closes with his
son.* All this is exactly what we should expect,
if a series of tremendous blows had depopulated
a country, abolished an army, and removed two
millions of the working classes in one mass.
But it will be understood that this identifica-
tion, concerning which there is now a very gen-
eral consent of competent authorities, implies
that the Pharaoh was not himself engulfed with
his army. Nothing is on the other side except
a poetic assertion in Psalm cxxxvi. m, which is
not that God destroyed, but that He " shook
off " Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, be-
cause His mercy endureth for ever.
To this king, then, whose audacious family
* Robinson, "The Pharaohs of the Bondage."
144
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
had usurped the symbols of deity for its head-
dress, and whose father boasted that in battle
" he became like the god Mentu " and " was as
Baal," the brothers came as yet without miracle,
with no credentials except from slaves, and said,
" Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let My
people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me
in the wilderness." The issue was distinctly
raised: did Israel belong to Jehovah or to the
king? And Pharaoh answered, with equal deci-
sion, " Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken
unto His voice? I know not Jehovah, and what
is more, I will not let Israel go."
Now, the ignorance of the king concerning
Jehovah was almost or quite blameless: the fault
was in his practical refusal to inquire. Jehovah
was no concern of his: without waiting for in-
formation, he at once decided that his grasp on
his captives should not relax. And his second
fault, which led to this, was the same grinding
oppression of the helpless which for eighty years
already had brought upon his nation the guilt of
blood. Crowned and national cupidity, the reso-
lution to wring from their slaves the last effort
consistent with existence, such greed as took
offence at even the momentary pause of hope
while Moses pleaded, because " the people of the
land are many, and ye make them rest from their
burdens," — these shut their hearts against rea-
son and religion, and therefore God presently
hardened those same hearts against natural mis-
giving and dread and awe-stricken submission to
His judgments.
For it was against religion also that he was
unyielding. In his ample Pantheon there was
room at least for the possibility of the entrance
of the Hebrew God, and in refusing to the sub-
ject people, without investigation, leisure for
any worship, the king outraged not only hu-
manity, but Heaven.
The brothers proceed to declare that they have
themselves met with the deity, and there must
have been many in the court who could attest at
least the sincerity of Moses; they ask for liberty
to spend a day in journeying outward and an-
other in returning, with a day between for their
worship, and warn the king of the much greater
loss to himself which mav be involved in ven-
geance upon refusal, either by war or pestilence.
But the contemptuous answer utterly ignores re-
ligion: "Wherefore do ye. Moses and Aaron,
loose the people from their work? Get ye unto
your burdens."
And his counter-measures are taken without
loss of time: " that same day " the order goes out
to exact the regular quantity of brick, but supply
no straw for binding it together. It is a pitiless
mandate, and illustrates the fact, very natural
though often forgotten, that men as a rule can-
not lose sight of the religious value of their fel-
low-men. and continue to respect or pity them as
before. We do not deny that men who pro-
fessed religion have perpetrated nameless cruel-
ties, nor that unbelievers have been humane,
sometimes with a pathetic energy, a tenacious
grasp on the virtue still possible to those who
have no Heaven to serve. But it is plain that
the average man will despise his brother, a^d his
brother's rights, just in proportion as the Divine
sanctions of those rights fade away, and nothing
remains to be respected but the culture, power,
and affluence which the victim lacks. " I know
not Israel's God " is a sure prelude to the refusal
to let Israel go, and even to the cruelty which
beats the slave who fails to render impossible
obedience.
" They be idle, therefore they cry, saying. Let
us go and sacrifice to our God." And still there
are men who hold the same opinion, that time
spent in devotion is wasted, as regards the duties
of real life. In truth, religion means freshness,
elasticity, and hope: a man will be not slothful in
business, but fervent in spirit, if he serves the
Lord. But perhaps immortal hope, and the
knowledge that there is One Who shall break all
prison bars and let the oppressed go free, are
not the best narcotics to drug down the soul of
a man into the monotonous tameness of a slave.
In the tenth verse we read that the Egyptian
taskmasters and the officers combined to urge
the people to their aggravated labours. And by
the fourteenth verse we find that the latter offi-
cials were Hebrew officers whom Pharaoh's task-
masters had set over them.
So that we have here one of the surest and
worst effects of slavery — namely, the demoralisa-
tion of the oppressed, the readiness of average
men, who can obtain for themselves a little re-
lief, to do so at their brethren's cost. These offi-
cials were scribes, " writers "; their business was
to register the amount of labour due, and
actually rendered. These were doubtless the
more comfortable class, of whom we read after-
wards that they possessed property, for their
cattle escaped the murrain and their trees the
hail. And they had the means of acquiring quite
sufficient skill to justify whatever is recorded of
the works done in the construction of the taber-
nacle. The time is long past when scepticism
found support for its incredulity in these details.
One advantage of the last sharp agony of per-
secution was that it finally detached this official
class from the Egyptian interest, and welde<l
Israel into a homogeneous people, with officers
already provided. For, when the supply of
bricks came short, these officials were beaten,
and, as if no cause of the failure were palpable,
they were asked, with a malicious chuckle,
" Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task both
yesterday and to-day, as heretofore? " And
when they explain to Pharaoh, in words already
expressive of their alienation, that the fault is
with " thine own people." they are repulsed with
insult, and made to feel themselves in evil case.
For indeed they needed to be chastised for their
forgetfulness of God. How soon would their
hearts have turned back, how much more bitter
yet would have been their complaints in the
desert, if it were not for this last experience!
But if judgment began with them, what should
presently be the fate of their oppressors?
Their broken spirit shows itself by murmur-
ing, not against Pharaoh, but against Moses and
Aaron, who at least had striven to help them.
Here, as in the whole story, there is not a trace
of either the lofty spirit which could have
evolved the Mosaic law, or the hero-worship of
a later age.
It is written that Moses, hearing their re-
proaches, " returned unto the Lord." although
no visible shrine, no consecrated place of wor-
shin, can be thought of.
What is involved is the consecration which the
heart bestows upon any place of privacy and
prayer, where, in shutting out the world, the soul
is aware of the soecial nearness of its King. In
one sense we never leave Him. never return to
Him. In another sense, by direct address of the
Exodus vi. 1-30.]
THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES.
145
attention and the will, we enter into His pres-
ence ; we find Him in the midst of us, Who is
everywhere. And all ceremonial consecrations
do their office by helping us to realise and act
upon the presence of Him in Whom, even when
He is forgotten, we live and move and have our
being. Therefore in the deepest sense each man
consecrates or desecrates for himself his own
place of prayer. There is a city where the Di-
vine presence saturates every consciousness with
rapture. And the seer beheld no temple therein,
for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb,
are the temple of it.
Startling to our notions of reverence are the
words in which Moses addresses God. " Lord,
why hast Thou evil entreated this people ? Why
is it that Thou hast sent me ? for since I came to
Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, he hath evil en-
treated this people ; neither hast Thou delivered
Thy people at all." It is almost as if his faith
had utterly given way, like that of the Psalmist
when he saw the wicked in great prosperity,
while waters of a full cup were wrung out by the
people of God (Ps. Ixxiii. 3, 10). And there is
always a dangerous moment when the first glow
of enthusiasm burns down, and we realise how
long the process, how bitter the disappointments,
by which even a scanty measure of success must
be obtained. Yet God had expressly warned
Moses that Pharaoh would not release them until
Egypt had been smitten with all His plagues.
But the warning passed unapprehended, as we
let many a truth pass, intellectually accepted it is
true, but only as a theorem, a vague and abstract
formula. As we know that we must die, that
worldly pleasures are brief and unreal, and that
sin draws evil in its train, yet wonder when these
phrases become solid and practical in our experi-
ence, so, in the first flush and wonder of the
promised emancipation, Moses had forgotten the
predicted interval of trial.
His words would have been profane and ir-
reverent indeed but for one redeeming quality.
They were addressed to God Himself. When-
ever the people murmured, Moses turned for
help to Him Who reckons the most unconven-
tional and daring appeal to Him far better than
the most ceremonious phrases in which men
cover their unbelief: "Lord, wherefore hast
Thou evil entreated this people?" is in reality a
much more pious utterance than " I will not ask,
neither will I tempt the Lord." Wherefore
Moses receives large encouragement, although
no formal answer is vouchsafed to his daring
question.
Even so, in our dangers, our torturing ill-
nesses and many a crisis which breaks through
all the crust of forms and conventionalities, God
may perhaps recognise a true appeal to Him, in
words which only scandalise the orthodoxy of
the formal and precise. In the bold rejoinder of
the Syro-Phoenician woman He recognised great
faith. His disciples would simply have sent her
away as clamorous.
Moses had again failed, even though Divinely
commissioned, in the work of emancipating
Israel, and thereupon he had cried to the Lord
Himself to undertake the work. This abortive
attempt, however, was far from useless : it taught
humility and patience to the leader, and it
pressed the nation together, as in a vise, by the
weight of a common burden, nDw become in-
tolerable. At the same moment, the iniquity of
the tjnrant was filled up.
But the Lord did not explain this, in answer to
the remonstrance of Moses. Many things hap-
pen, for which no distinct verbal explanation is
possible, many things of which the deep spiritual
fitness cannot be expressed in words. Experi-
ence is the true commentator upon Providence,
if only because the slow building of character is
more to God than either the hasting forward of
deliverance or the clearing away of intellectual
mists. And it is only as we take His yoke upon
us that we truly learn of Him. Yet much is im-
pHed, if not spoken out, in the words, "Now
(because the time is ripe) shalt thou see what I
will do to Pharaoh (I, because others have
failed); for by a strong hand shall he let them
go, and by a strong hand shall he drive them out
of the land." It is under the weight of the
"strong hand" of God Himself that the tyrant
must either bend or break.
Similar to this is the explanation of many de-
lays in answering our prayer, of the strange rais-
ing up of tyrants and demagogues, and of much
else that perplexes Christians in history and in
their own experience. These events develop
human character, for good or evil. And they
give scope for the revealing of the fulness of the
power which rescues. We have no means of
measuring the supernatural force which over-
comes but by the amount of the resistance
offered. And if all good things came to us
easily and at once, we should not become aware
of the horrible pit, our rescue from which de-
mands gratitude. The Israelites would not have
sung a hymn of such fervent gratitude when the
sea was crossed, if they had not known the
weight of slavery and the anguish of suspense.
And in heaven the redeemed who have come out
of great tribulation sing the song of Moses and
of the Lamb.
Fresh air, a balmy wind, a bright blue sky —
which of us feels a thrill of conscious exultation
for these cheap delights ? The released prisoner,
the restored invalid, feels it :
"The common earth, the air, the skies,
To him are opening: paradise."
Even so should Israel be taught to value de-
liverance. And now the process could begin.
CHAPTER VI.
n/JS ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES.
Exodus vi. 1-30.
We have seen that the name Jehovah ex-
presses not a philosophic meditation, but the
most bracing and reassuring truth — viz. , that an
immutable and independent Being sustains His
people ; and this great title is therefore reaffirmed
with emphasis in the hour of mortal discourage-
ment. It is added that their fathers knew God
by the name of God Almighty, but by His name
Jehovah was He not known, or made known,
unto them. Now, it is quite clear that they were
not utterly ignorant of this title, for no such
theory as that it was hitherto mentioned by
anticipation only, can explain the first syllable
in the name of the mother of Moses himself, nor
the assertion that in the time of Seth men began
to call upon the name of Jehovah (Gen. iv. 26),
nor the name of the hill of Abraham's sacrifice,
Jehovah-jireh (Gen. xxii. 14). Yet the state-
ment cannot be made available for the purpose
146
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
of any reasonable and moderate scepticism, since
the sceptical theory demands a belief in suc-
cessive redactions of the work in which an error
so gross could not have escaped detection.
And the true explanation is that this Name
was now, for the first time, to be realised as a
sustaining power. The patriarchs had known
the name; how its fitness should be realised:
God should be known by it. They had drawn
support and comiort from that simpler view of
the Divine protection which said, " I am the
Almighty God: walk before Me and be thou per-
fect " (Gen. xvii. i). But thenceforth all the ex-
perience of the past was to reinforce the energies
of the present, and men were to remember that
their promises came from One who cannot
change. Others, like Abraham, had been
stronger in faith than Moses. But faith is not
the same as insight, and Moses was the greatest
of the prophets (Deut. xxxiv. 10). To him,
therefore, it was given to confirm the courage of
his nation by this exalting thought of God. And
the Lord proceeds to state what His promises to
the patriarchs were, and joins together (as we
should do) the assurance of His compassionate
heart and of His inviolable pledges: " I have
heard the groaning of the children of Israel, . . .
and I have remembered My covenant."
It has been the same, in turn, with every new
revelation of the Divine. The new was implicit
in the old, but when enforced, unfolded, re-
applied, men found it charged with unsuspected
meaning and power, and as full of vitality and
development as a handful of dry seeds when
thrown into congenial soil. So it was pre-
eminently with the doctrine of the Messiah. It
will be the same hereafter with the doctrine of
the kingdom of peace and the reign of the saints
on earth. Some day men will smile at our crude
theories and ignorant controversies about the
Millennium. We, meantime, possess the saving
knowledge of Christ amid many perplexities and
obscurities. And so the patriarchs, who knew
God Almighty, but not by His name Jehovah,
were not lost for want of the knowledge of His
name, but saved by faith in Him, in the living
Being to Whom all these names belong, and
Who shall yet write upon the brows of His
people some new name, hitherto undreamed by
the ripest of the saints and the purest of the
Churches. Meantime, let us learn the lessons of
tolerance for other men's ignorance, remember-
ing the ignorance of the father of the faithful,
tolerance for difference of views, remembering
how the unusual and rare name of God was
really the precursor of a brighter revelation, and
yet again, when our hearts are faint with long-
ing for new light, and weary to death of the bab-
bling of old words, let us learn a sober and cau-
tious reconsideration, lest perhaps the very truth
needed for altered circumstance and changing
problem may lie, unheeded and dormant, among
the dusty old phrases from which we turn away
despairingly. Moreover, since the fathers knew
the name Jehovah, yet gained from it no special
knowledge of God, such as they had from His
Almightiness, we are taught that discernment is
often more at fault than revelation. To the
quick perception and plastic imagination of the
artist, our world reveals what the boor will never
see. And the saint finds, in the homely and
familiar words of Scripture, revelations for His
soul that are unknown to common men. Recep-
tivity is what we need far more than revelation.
Again is Moses bidden to appeal to the faith
of his countrymen, by a solemn repetition of the
Divine promise. If the tyranny is great, they
shall be redeemed with a stretched out arm, that
is to say, with a palpable interposition of the
power of God, " and with great judgments." It
is the first appearance in Scripture of this phrase,
afterwards so common. Not mere vengeance
upon enemies or vindication of subjects is in
question: the thought is that of a deliberate
weighing of merits, and rendering out of meas-
ured penalties. Now, the Egyptian mythology
had a very clear and solemn view of judgment
after death. If king and people had grown cruel,
it was because they failed to realise remote pun-
ishments, and did not believe in present judg-
ments, here, in this life. But there is a God that
judgeth in the earth. Not always, for mercy re-
joiceth over judgment. We may still pray,
" Enter not into judgment with Thy servants, O
Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living be
justified." But when men resist warnings, then
retribution begins even here. Sometimes it
comes in plague and overthrow, sometimes in
the worse form of a heart made fat, the decay of
sensibilities abused, the dying out of spiritual
faculty. Pharaoh was to experience both, the
hardening of his heart and the ruin of his
fortunes.
It is added, " I will take you to Me for a
people, and I will be to you for a God." This is
the language, not of a mere purpose, a will that
has resolved to vindicate the right, but of affec-
tion. God is about to adopt Israel to Himself,
and the same favour which belonged to rare in-
dividuals in the old time is now offered to a
whole nation. Just as the heart of each man is
gradually educated, learning first to love a parent
and a family, and so led on to national pa-
triotism, and at last to a world-wide philanthropy,
so was the religious conscience of mankind
awakened to believe that Abraham might be the
friend of God, and then that His oath might be
confirmed unto the children, and then that He
could take Israel to Himself for a people, and
at last that God loved the world.
It is not religion to think that God con-
descends merely to save us. He cares for us.
He takes us to Himself. He gives Himself
away to us, in return, to be our God.
Such a revelation ought to have been more to
Israel than any pledge of certain specified advan-
tages. It was meant to be a silken tie. a golden
clasp, to draw together the almighty Heart and
the hearts of these downtrodden slaves. Some-
thing within Him desires their little human love;
they shall be to Him for a people. So He said
again, " My son, give Me thine heart." And so,
when He carried to the uttermost these un-
sought, unhoped for, and, alas! unwelcomed
overtures of condescension, and came among us.
He would have gathered, as a hen gathers her
chickens under her wings, those who would not.
It is not man who conceives, from definite serv-
ices received, the wild hope of some spark of real
affection in the bosom of the Eternal and Mys
terious One. It is not man, amid the lavish joys
and splendours of creation, who conceives the
notion of a supreme Heart, as the explanation of
the universe. It is God Himself Who says, " I
will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to
you a God."
Nor is it human conversion that begins the
process, but a Divine covenant and pledge, by
Exodus vi. 1-30.]
THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES.
147
which God would fain convert us to Himself;
even as the first disciples did not accost Jesus,
but He turned and spoke to them the first ques-
tion and the first invitation: " What seek ye? . . .
Come, and ye shall see."
To-day, the choice of the civilised world has to
be made between a mechanical universe and
a revealed love, for no third possibility sur-
vives.
This promise establishes a relationship, which
God never afterwards cancelled. Human unbe-
lief rejected its benefits, and chilled the mutual
sympathies which it involved: but the fact al-
ways remained, and in their darkest hour they
could appeal to God to remember His covenant
and the oath which He sware.
And this same assurance belongs to us. We
are not to become good, or desirous of goodness,
in order that God may requite with afYection our
virtues or our wistfulness. Rather we are to
arise and come to our Father, and to call Him
Father, although we are not worthy to be called
His sons. We are to remember how Jesus said,
" If ye being evil know how to give good gifts
unto your children, how much more shall your
heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them
that ask Him!" and to learn that He is the
Father of those who are evil, and even of those
who are still unpardoned, as He said again. " If
ye forgive not . . . neither will your heavenly
Father forgive you."
Much controversy about the universal Father-
hood of God would be assuaged if men reflected
upon the significant distinction which our
Saviour drew between His Fatherhood and our
sonship, the one always a reality of the Divine
affection, the other only a possibility, for human
enjoyment or rejection: "Love your enemies,
and pray for them that persecute you, that ye
may be sons of your Father Which is in heaven "
(Matt. V. 45). There is no encouragement to
presumption in the assertion of the Divine
Fatherhood upon such terms. For it speaks of
a love which is real and deep without being
feeble and indiscriminate. It appeals to faith be-
cause there is an absolute fact to lean upon, and
to energy because privilege is conditional. It
reminds us that our relationship is like that of
the ancient Israel, — that we are in a covenant, as
they were, but that the carcases of many of them
fell in the wilderness; although God had taken
them for a people, and was to them a God, and
said, " Israel is My son, even My firstborn."
It is added that faith shall develop into knowl-
edge. Moses is to assure them now that they
" shall know " hereafter that the Lord is Jehovah
their God. And this, too, is a universal law.
that we shall know if we follow on to know: that
the trial of our faith worketh patience, and pa-
tience experience, and we have so dim and vague
an apprehension of Divine realities, chiefly be-
cause we have made but little trial, and have not
tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious.
In this respect, as in so many more, religion is
analogous with nature. The squalor of the
savage could be civilised, and the distorted and
absurd conceptions of mediaeval science could be
corrected, only by experiment, persistently and
wisely carried out.
And it is so in religion: its true evidence is un-
known to those who never bore its yoke; it is
open to just such raillery and rejection as they
who will not love can pour upon domestic affec-
tion and the sacred ties of family life; but, like
these, it vindicates itself, in the rest of their souls,
to those who will take the yoke and learn. And
its best wisdom is not of the cunning brain but
of the open heart, that wisdom from above,
which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and
easy to be entreated.
And thus, while God leads Israel, they shall
know that He is Jehovah, and true to Hi?
highest revelations of Himself.
All this they heard, and also, to define their
hope and brighten it, the promise of Palestine
was repeated; but they hearkened not unto
Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bond-
age. Thus the body often holds the spirit down,
and kindly allowance is made by Him Who
knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are
dust, and Who, in the hour of His own agony,
found the excuse for His unsympathising fol-
lowers that the spirit was willing although the
flesh was weak. So when Elijah made request
for himself that he might die, in the utter reac-
tion which followed his triumph on Carmel and
his wild race to Jezreel, the good Physician did
not dazzle him with new splendours of revelation
until after he had slept, and eaten miraculous
food, and a second time slept and eaten.
But if the anguish of the body excuses much
weakness of the spirit, it follows, on the other
hand, that men are responsible to God for that
heavy weight which is laid upon the spirit by
pampered and luxurious bodies, incapable of
self-sacrifice, rebellious against the lightest of
His demands. It is suggestive, that Moses,
when sent again to Pharaoh, objected, as at first:
" Behold, the children of Israel have not heark-
ened unto me; how '' en shall Pharaoh hear me,
who am of uncircumcised lips? "
Every new hope, every great inspiration which
calls the heroes of God to a fresh attack upon
the powers of Satan, is checked and hindered
more by the coldness of the Church than by the
hostility of the world. That hostility is ex-
pected, and can be defied. But the infidelity of
the faithful is appalling indeed.
We read with wonder the great things which
Christ has promised to believing prayer, and, at
the same time, although we know painfully that
we have never claimed and dare not claim these
promises, we wonder equally at the foreboding
question, " When the Son of Man cometh, shall
He find the faith (faith in its fulness) on the
earth?" (Luke xviii. 8). But we ought to re-
member that our own low standard helps to
form the standard of attainment for the Church
at large — that when one member suffers, all the
members suffer with it — that many a large sacri-
fice would be readily made for Christ, at this
hour, if only ease and pleasure were at stake,
which is refused because it is too hard to be
called well-meaning enthusiasts by those who
ought to glorify God in such attainment, as the
first brethren did in the zeal and the gifts of
Paul.
The vast mountains raise their heads above
mountain ranges which encompass them; and it
is not when the level of the whole Church is low,
that giants of faith and of attainment may be
hoped for. Nay, Christ stipulates for the agree-
ment of two or three, to kindle and make
effectual the prayers which shall avail.
For the purification of our cities, for the sham-
ing of our legislation until it fears God as much
as a vested interest, for the reunion of those who
worship the same Lord, for the conversion of
148
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
the world, and first of all for the conversion of
the Church, heroic forces are demanded. But
all the tendency of our half-hearted, abject, semi-
Christianity is to repress everything that is un-
conventional, abnormal, likely to embroil us with
our natural enemy, the world; and who can
doubt that, when the secrets of all hearts shall be
revealed, we shall know of many an aspiring
soul, in which the sacred fire had begun to burn,
which sank back into lethargy and the common-
place, murmuring in its despair, " Behold, the
children of Israel have not hearkened unto me;
how then shall Pharaoh hear me? "
It was the last fear which ever shook the great
heart of the emancipator Moses.
At the beginning of the grand historical work,
of which all this has been the prelude, there is
set the pedigree of Moses and Aaron, according
to " the heads of their fathers' houses," — an
epithet which indicates a subdivision of the
" family." as the family is a subdivision of the
tribe. Of the sons of Jacob. Reuben and Simeon
are mentioned, to put Levi in his natural third
place. And from Levi to Moses only four gene-
rations are mentioned, favouring somewhat the
briefer scheme of chronology which makes four
centuries cover all the time from Abraham, and
not the captivity alone. But it is certain that
this is a mere recapitulation of the more impor-
tant links in the, genealogy. In Num. xxvi. 58,
59, six generations are reckoned instead of four;
in I Chron. ii. 3 there are seven generations; and
elsewhere in the same book (vi. 22) there are
ten. It is well known that similar omissions of
obscure or unworthy links occur in St. Mat-
thew's pedigree of our Lord, although some
stress is there laid upon the recurrent division
into fourteens. And it is absurd to found any
argument against the trustworthiness of the nar-
rative upon a phenomenon so frequent, and so
sure to be avoided by a forger, or to be cor-
rected by an unscrupulous editor. In point of
fact, nothing is less likely to have occurred, if
the narrative were a late invention.
Neither, in that case, would the birth of the
great emancipator be ascribed to the union of
Amram with his father's sister, for such mar-
riages were f^istinctly forbidden by the law (Lev.
xviii. 14).
Nor would the names of the children of the
founder of the nation be omitted, while those of
Aaron are recorded, unless we were dealing with
genuine history, which knows that the sons of
Aaron inherited the lawful priesthood, while the
descendants of Moses were the jealous founders
of a mischievous schism (Judges xviii. 30, R. V.).
Nor again, if this were a religious romance,
designed to animate the nation in its later
struggles, should we read of the hesitation and
the fears of a leader " of uncircumcised lips," in-
stead of the trumpet-like calls to action of a
noble champion.
Nor does the broken-spirited m.eanness of
Israel at all resemble the conception, popular in
every nation, of a virtuous and heroic antiquity,
a golden age. It is indeed impossible to recon-
cile the motives and the date to which this nar-
rative is ascribed by some, with the plain phe-
nomena, with the narrative itself.
Nor is it easy to understand why the Lord,
Who speaks of bringing out " My hosts. My
people, the children of Israel" (vii. 4. etc.),
should never in the Pentateuch be called the
Lord of Hosts, if that title were in common use
when it was written; for no epithet would better
suit the song of Miriam or the poetry of the
Fifth Book.
When Moses complained that he was of un-
circumcised lips, the Lord announced that He
had already made His servant as a god unto
Pharaoh, having armed him, even then, with
the terrors which are soon to shake the tyrant's
soul.
It is suggestive and natural that his very edu-
cation in a court should render him fastidious,
less willing than a rougher man might have
been to appear before the king after forty years
of retirement, and feeling almost physically in-
capable of speaking what he felt so deeply, in
words that would satisfy his own judgment. Yet
God had endowed him, even then, with a super-
natural power far greater than any facility of
expression. In his weakness he would thus be
made strong; and the less fit he was to assert for
himself any ascendency over Pharaoh, the more
signal would be the victory of his Lord, when he
became " very great in the land of Egypt, in the
sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of
the people " (xi. 3).
As a proof of this mastery he was from the
first to speak to the haughty king through his
brother, as a god through some prophet, being
too great to reveal himself directly. It is a
memorable phrase; and so lofty an assertion
could never, in the myth of a later period, have
been ascribed to an origin so lowly as the re-
luctance of Moses to expose his deficiency in
elocution.
Therefore he should henceforth be emboldened
by the assurance of qualification bestowed al-
ready: not only by the hope of help and achieve-
ment yet to come, but by the certainty of
present endowment. And so should each of us,
in his degree, be bold, who have gifts differing
according to the grace given unto us.
It is certain that every living soul has at least
one talent, and is bound to improve it. But
how many of us remember that this loan implies
a commission from God, as real as that of
prophet and deliverer, and that nothing but our
own default can prevent it from being, at the
last, received again with usury?
The same bravery, the same confidence when
standing where his Captain has planted him,
should inspire the prophet, and him that giveth
alms, and him that showeth mercy; for all are
members in one body, and therefore animated
by one invincible Spirit from above (Rom. xii.
4-9).
The endowment thus given to Moses made
him " as a god " to Pharaoh.
We must not take this to mean only that he
had a prophet or spokesman, or that he was
made formidable, but that the peculiar nature of
his prowess would be felt. It was not his own
strength. The supernatural would become visi-
ble in him. He who boasted " I know not Je-
hovah " would come to crouch before Him in
His agent, and humble himself to the man whom
once he contemptuously ordered back to his
burdens, with the abject prayer, " Forgive, I
pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat Je-
hovah your God that He may take away from
me this death only."
Now, every consecrated power may bear wit-
ness to the Lord: it is possible to do all to the
glory of God. Not that every separate action
will be ascribed to a preternatural source, but
Exodus vii. 3-13] THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART.
*4Q
the sum total of the effect produced by a holy
life will be sacred. He who said, " I have made
thee a god unto Pharaoh," says of all believers,
" I in them, and Thou, Father, in Me, that the
world may know that Thou hast sent Me."
CHAPTER Vn.
THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S
HEART.
Exodus vii. 3-13.
When Moses received his commission, at the
bus-h, words were spoken which are now repeated
with more emphasis, and which have to be con-
sidered carefully. For probably no statement of
Scripture has excited fiercer criticism, more exul-
tation of enemies and perplexity Of friends, than
that the Lord said, " I will harden Pharaoh's
heart, and he shall not let the people go," and
that in consequence of this Divine act Pharaoh
sinned and suffered. Just because the words are
startling, it is unjust to quote them without care-
ful examination of the context, both in the pre-
diction and the fulfilment. When all is weighed,
compared, and harmonised, it will at last be pos-
sible to draw a just conclusion. And although
it may happen long before then, that the ob-
jector will charge us with special pleading, yet
he will be the special pleader himself, if he seeks
to hurry us, by prejudice or passion, to give a
verdict which is based upon less than all the evi-
dence, patiently weighed.
Let us in the first place find out how soon this
dreadful process began; when was it that God
fulfilled His threat, and hardened, in any sense
whatever, the heart of Pharaoh? Did He step
in at the beginning, and render the unhappy king
incapable of weighing the remonstrances which
He then performed the cruel mockery of address-
ing to him? Were these as insincere and futile
as if one bade the avalanche to pause which his
own act had started down the icy slopes? Was
Pharaoh as little responsible for his pursuit of
Israel as his horses were— being, like them, the
blind agents of a superior force? We do not
find it so. In the fifth chapter, when a demand
is made, without any sustaining miracle, simply
appealing to the conscience of the ruler, there is
no mention of any such process, despite the in-
sults with which Pharaoh then assails both the
messengers and Jehovah Himself, Whom he
knows not. In the seventh chapter there is clear
evidence that the process is yet unaccomplished;
for, speaking of an act still future, it declares, " I
will harden Pharaohs heart, and multiply My
signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt "
(vii. 3). And this terrible act is not connected
with the remonstrances and warnings of God,
but entirely with the increasing pressure of the
miracles.
The exact period is marked when the hand of
doom closed upon the tyrant. It is not where
the Authorised Version places it. When the
magicians imitated the earlier signs of Moses,
" his heart was strong," but the original does
not bear out the assertion that at this time the
Lord made it so by any judicial act of His
(vii. 13). That only comes with the sixth
plague; and the course of events may be traced,
fairly well, by the help of the margin of the Re-
vised Version.
After the plague of blood " Pharaoh's heart
was strong" ("hardened"), and this is dis-
tinctly ascribed to his own action, because " he
set his heart even to this " (vii. 22, 23).
After the second plague, it was still he him-
self who " made his heart heavy " (viii. 15).
After the third plague the magicians warned
him that the very finger of some god was upon
him indeed: their rivalry, which hitherto might
have been somewhat of a palliation for his ob-
stinacy, was now ended; but yet "his heart was
strong" (viii. 19).
Again, after the fourth plague he " made his
heart heavy"; and it "was heavy" after the
fifth plague (viii. 2i~^ ix. 7).
Only thenceforward comes the judicial infatua-
tion upon him who has resolutely infatuated him-
self hitherto.
But when five warnings and penalties have
spent their force in vain, when personal agony is
inflicted in the plague of boils, and the magi-
cians in particular cannot stand before him
through their pain, would it have been proof of
virtuous contrition if he had yielded then? If
he had needed evidence, it was given to him long
before. Submission now would have meant
prudence, not penitence; and it was against pru-
dence, not penitence, that he was hardened. Be-
cause he had resisted evidence, experience, and
even the testimony of his own magicians, he was
therefore stiffened against the grudging and un-
worthy concessions which must otherwise have
been wrested from him, as a wild beast will turn
and fly from fire. He was henceforth himself to
become an evidence and a portent; and so " The
Lord made strong the heart of Pharaoh, and he
hearkened not unto them " (ix. 12). It was an
awful doom, but it is not open to the attacks so
often made upon it. It only means that for him
the last five plagues were not disciplinary, but
wholly penal.
Nay, it stops short of asserting even this: they
might still have appealed to his reason: they
were only not allowed to crush him by the
agency of terror. Not once is it asserted that
God hardened his heart against any nobler im-
pulse than alarm, and desire to evade danger and
death. We see clearly this meaning in the
phrase, when it is applied to his army entering
the Red Sea: " I will make strong the hearts of
the Egyptians, and they shall go in " (xiv. 17).
It needed no greater moral turpitude to pursue
the Hebrews over the sands than on the shore,
but it certainly required more hardihood. But
the unpursued departure which the good-will of
Egypt refused, their common sense was not al-
lowed to grant. Callousness was followed by
infatuation, as even the pagans felt that whom
God wills to ruin He first drives mad.
This explanation implies that to harden Pha-
raoh's heart was to inspire him, not with wicked-
ness, but with nerve.
And as far as the original language helps us at
all, it decidedly supports this view. Three dif-
ferent expressions have been unhappily rendered
by the same English word, to harden; but they
may be discriminated throughout the narrative
in Exodus, by the margin of the Revised
Version.
One word, which commonly appears without
any marginal explanation, is the same which is
employed elsewhere about " the cause which is
too hard for " minor judges (Deut. i. I7, cf. xv.
18, etc.). Now, this word is found (vii. 13) in
15°
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
the second threat that " I will harden Pharaoh's
heart," and in the account which was to be given
to posterity of how " Pharaoh hardened himself
to let us go " (xiii. 15). And it is said likewise
of Sihon, king of Heshbon, that he " would not
let us pass by him, for the Lord thy God hard-
ened his spirit and made his heart strong "
(Deut. ii. 30). But since it does not occur
anywhere in all the narrative of what God
actually did with Pharaoh, it is only just to
interpret this phrase in the prediction by what
we read elsewhere of the manner of its fulfil-
ment.
The second word is explained in the margin
as meaning to make strong. Already God had
employed it when He said " I will make strong
his heart" (iv. 21), and this is the term used of
the first fulfilment of the menace, after the sixth
plague (ix. 12). God is not said to interfere
again after the seventh, which had few special
terrors for Pharaoh himself; but from hence-
forth the expression " to make strong " alternates
with the phrase " to make heavy." " Go in unto
Pharaoh, for I have made heavy his heart and
the heart of his servants, that I might show these
My signs in the midst of them " (x. i).
It may be safely assumed that these two ex-
pressions cover between them all that is asserted
of the judicial action of God in preventing a re-
coil of Pharaoh from his calamities. Now, the
strengthening of a heart, however punitive and
disastrous when a man's will is evil (just as the
strengthening of his arm is disastrous then), has
in itself no immorality inherent. It is a thing
as often good as bad, — as when Israel and
Joshua are exhorted to " Be strong and of a good
courage " (Deut. xxxi. 6, 7, 23), and when the
angel laid his hand upon Daniel and said, " Be
strong, yea, be strong" (Dan. x. 19). In these
passages the phrase is identical with that which
describes the process by which Pharaoh was pre-
vented from cowering under the tremendous
blows he had provoked.
The other expression is to make heavy or dull.
Thus " the eyes of Israel were heavy with age "
(Gen. xlviii. 10), and as we speak of a zveight of
honour, equally with the heaviness of a dull man,
so we are twice commanded, " Make heavy
(honour) thy father and thy mother"; and the
Lord declares, " I will make Myself heavy (get
Me honour) upon Pharaoh " (Deut. v. 16, Exod.
XX. 12. xiv. 4, 17, 18). In these latter references
it will be observed that the making " strong "
the heart of Pharaoh, and the making " Myself
heavy " are so connected as almost to show a
design of indicating how far is either expression
from conveying the notion of immorality, in-
fused into a human heart by God. For one of
/he two phrases which have been thus interpreted
is still applied to Pharaoh; but the other (and
the more sinister, as we should think, when thus
applied) is appropriated by God to Himself: He
makes Himself heavy.
It is also a curious and significant coincidence
that the same word was used of the burdens that
were made heavy when first they claimed their
freedom, which is now used of the treatment of
the heart of their oppressor (v. 9).
It appears, then, that the Lord is never said to
debauch Pharaoh's heart, but only to strengthen
it against prudence and to make it dull; that the
words used do not express the infusion of evil
passion, but the animation of a resolute courage,
and the overclouding of a natural discernment:
and, above all, that every one of the three words,
to make hard, to make strong, and to make
heavy, is employed to express Pharaoh's own
treatment of himself, before it is applied
to any work of God, as actually taking place
already.
Nevertheless, there is a solemn warning for all
time, in the assertion that what he at first chose,
the vengeance of God afterward chose for him.
For indeed the same process, working more
slowly but on identical lines, is constantly seen in
the hardening efYect of vicious habit. The
gambler did not mean to stake all his fortune
upon one chance, when first he timidly laid down
a paltry stake; nor has he changed his mind
since then as to the imprudence of such a hazard.
The drunkard, the murderer himself, is a man
who at first did evil as far as he dared, and after-
wards dared to do evil which he would once have
shuddered at.
Let no man assume that prudence will always
save him from ruinous excess, if respect for
righteousness cannot withhold him from those
first compliances which sap the will, destroy the
restraint of self-respect, wear away the horror of
great wickedness by familiarity with the same
guilt in its lesser phases, and, above all, forfeit
the enlightenment and calmness of judgment
which come from the Holy Spirit of God. Who
is the Spirit of wisdom and of counsel, and
makes men to be of quick understanding in the
fear of the Lord.
Let no man think that the fear of damnatioti
will bring him to the mercy-seat at last, if the
burden and gloom of being " condemned al-
ready " cannot now bend his will. " Even as
they refused to have God in their knowledge,
God gave them up unto a reprobate mind "
(Rom. I. 28). " I gave them My statutes and
showed them My judgments, which if a man do,
he shall even live in them. . . I gave them
statutes that were not good, and judg-
ments wherein they should not live " (Ezek. xx.
II, 25)._
This is the inevitable law. the law of a con-
fused and darkened judgment, a heart made
heavy and ears shut, a conscience seared, an in-
fatuated will kicking against the pricks, and
heaping to itself wrath against the day of wrath.
Wilful sin is always a challenge to God, and it
is avenged by the obscuring of the lamp of God
in the soul. Now. a part of His guiding light is
prudence; and it is possible that men who will
not be warned by the fear of injury to their con-
science, such as they suppose that Pharaoh suf-
fered, may be sobered by the danger of such de-
rangement of their intellectual efificiency as really
befel him.
In this sense men are, at last, impelled blindly
to their fate (and this is a judicial act of God,
although it comes in the course of nature), but
first they launch themselves upon the slope which
grows steeper at every downward step, until ar-
rest is impossible.
On the other hand, every act of obedience
helps to release the will from its entanglement,
and to clear the judgment which has grown dull,
anointing the eyes with eye-salve that they may
see. Not in vain is the assertion of the bondage
of the sinner and the glorious liberty of the chil-
dren of God.
A second time, then, Moses presented himself
before Pharaoh with his demands: and, as he
had been forewarned, he was now challenged to
Exodus vii. 14.]
THE PLAGUES.
i5«
give a sign in proof of his commission from a
god.
And the demand was treated as reasonable; a
sign was given, and a menacing one. The peace-
able rod of the shepherd, a fit symbol of the
meek man who bore it, became a serpent * be-
fore the king, as Moses was to become de-
structive to his realm. But when the wise men
of Egypt and the enchanters were called, they
did likewise; and although a marvel was added
which incontestably declared the superior power
of the Deity Whom Aaron represented, yet their
rivalry sufficed to make strong the heart of Pha-
raoh, and he would not let the people go. The
issue was now knit: the result would be more
signal than if the quarrel were decided at one
blow, and upon all the gods of Egypt the Lord
would exercise vengeance.
What are we to think of the authentification of
a religion by a sign? Beyond doubt, Jesus
recognised this aspect of His own miracles, when
He said, " If I had not done among them the
works that none other man did, they had not
had sin " (John xv. 24). And yet there is
reason in the objection that no amount of
marvel ought to deflect by one hair's breadth
our judgment of right and wrong, and the
true appeal of a religion must be to our moral
sense.
No miracle can prove that immoral teaching
is sacred. But it can prove that it is super-
natural. And this is precisely what Scripture
always proclaims. In the New Testament, we
are bidden to take heed, because a day will come
when false prophets shall work great signs and
wonders, to deceive, if possible, even the elect
(Mark xiii. 22). In the Old Testament, a
prophet may seduce the people to worship other
gods, by giving them a sign or a wonder which
shall come to pass, but they must surely stone
him: they must believe that his sign is only a
temptation: and above whatever power enabled
him to work it. they must recognise Jehovah
proving them, and know that the supernatural
has come to them in judgment, not in revelation
(Deut. xiii. 1-5).
Now, this is the true function of the miracu-
lous. At the most, it cannot coerce the con-
science, but only challenge it to consider and to
judge.
A teacher of the purest morality may be only
a human teacher still; nor is the Christian bound
to follow into the desert every clamorous inno-
vator, or to seek in the secret chamber every
one who whispers a private doctrine to a few.
We are entitled to expect that one who is com-
missioned directly from above will bear special
credentials with him; but when these are ex-
hibited, we must still judge whether the docu-
ment they attest is forged. And this may ex-
plain to us why the magicians were allowed for
awhile to perplex the judgment of Pharaoh —
whether by fraud, as we may well suppose, or by
infernal help. It was enough that Moses should
set his claims upon a level with those which Pha-
raoh reverenced: the king was then bound to
weigh their relative merits in other and wholly
diflferent scales.
* It is true that the word means any larj^e reptile, as
•when " God created great 'vliales " • bin doubtless our
Enijlish version is correct. It was certainly a serpent
which he had recently fled from, and then taken by the
tail (iv. 4). And unless we suppose the magicians to'have
■wrousrht a genuine miracle, no other creature can be sug-
gested, equallj' convenient for their sleight of hand.
THE PLAGUES.
Exodus vii. 14.
There are many aspects in which the plague-s
of Egypt may be contemplated.
We may think of them as ranging through all
nature, and asserting the mastery of the Lord
alike over the river "on which depended the
prosperity of the realm, over the minute pests
which can make life more wretched than larger
and more conspicuous ills (the frogs of the
water, the reptiles that disgrace humanity, and
the insects that infest the air), over the bodies of
animals stricken with murrain, and those of mart
tortured with boils, over hail in the cloud and
blight in the crop, over the breeze that bears the
locust and the sun that grows dark at noon, and
at last over the secret springs of human life
itself.
No pantheistic creed (and the Egyptian re-
ligion struck its roots deep into pantheistic
speculation) could thus completely exalt God
above nature, as a superior and controlling
Power, not one with the mighty wheels of the
universe, of which the height is terrible, but, as
Ezekiel saw Him, enthroned above them in the
likeness of fire, and yet in the likeness of hu-
manity.
No idolatrous creed, however powerful be its
conception of one god of the hills and another
of the valleys, could thus represent a single deity
as wielding all the arrows of adverse fortune,
able to assail us from earth and sky and water,
formidable alike in the least things and in the
greatest. And presently the demonstration is
completed, when at His bidding the tempest
heaps up the sea, and at His frown the waters re-
turn to their strength again.
And no philosophic theory condescends to
bring the Ideal, the Absolute, and the Uncondi-
tioned, into such close and intimate connection
with the frog-spawn of the ditch and the blain
upon the tortured skin.
We may, with ample warrant from Scripture,
make the controversial application still more
simple and direct, and think of the plagues as
wreaking vengeance, for the worship they had
usurped and the cruelties they had sanctioned,
upon all the gods of Egypt, which are conceived
of for the moment as realities, and as humbled,
if not in fact, yet in the sympathies of priest and
worshipper (xii. 12).
Then we shall see the domain of each impostor
invaded, and every vaunted power to inflict evil
or to remove it triumphantly wielded by Him
Who proves His equal mastery over all. and
thus we shall find here the justification of that
still bolder personification which says. " Wor-
ship Him, all ye gods" (Psalm xcvii. 7).
The Nile had a sacred name, and was adored
as " Hapee, or Hapee Mu, the Abyss, or the
Abyss of Waters, or the Hidden," and the kin;;!
was frequently portrayed standing between twa
images of this god, his throne wreathed with
water-lilies. The second plague struck at the
goddess Hekt, whose head was that of a frog.
The uncleanness of the third plague deranged
the whole system of Egyptian worship, with its
punctilious and elaborate purifications. In every
one there is either a presiding divinity attacked,
or a. blow dealt upon the priesthood or the sacri-
fice, or a sphere invaded which some deity should
feavQ pi'Otected, until the sun himself is darkened,
152
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
the great god Ra, to whom their sacred city was
dedicated, and whose name is incorporated in the
title of his earthly representative, the Pharaoh or
Ph-ra. Then at last, after all these premoni-
tions, the deadly blow struck home.
Or we may think of the plagues as retributive,
and then we shall discover a wonderful suitability
in them all. If was a direful omen that the first
should afflict the nation -through the river, into
which, eighty years before, the Hebrew babes
had been cast to die, which now rolled bloody,
and seemed to disclose its dead. It was fit that
the luxurious homes of the oppressors should be-
come squalid as the huts of the slaves they
trampled; that their flesh should suffer torture
worse than that of the whips they used so un-
mercifully; that the loss of crops and cattle
should bring home to them the hardships of the
poor who toiled for their magnificence; that
physical darkness should appal them with vague
terrors and undefined apprehensions, such as
ever haunt the bosom of the oppressed, whose
life is the sport of a caprice; and at last that the
aged should learn by the deathbed of the prop
and pride of their declining feebleness, and the
younger feel beside the cradle of the first blos-
som and fruit of love, all the agony of such be-
reavement as they had wantonly inflicted on the
innocent.
And since the fear of disadvantage in war had
prompted the murder of the Hebrew children, it
was right that the retributive blow should de-
stroy first their children and then their men of
war.
When we come to examine the plagues in de-
tail, we discover that it is no arbitrary fancy
which divides them into three triplets, leading
up to the appalling tenth. Thus the first, fourth,
and seventh, each of which begins a triplet, are
introduced by a command to Moses to warn
Pharaoh "in the morning" (vii. 15), or "early
in the morning" (viii. 20, ix. 13). The third,
sixth and ninth, on the contrary, are inflicted
without any warning whatever. The story of
the third plague closes with the defeat of the
magicians, the sixth with their inability to stand
before the king, and the ninth with the final
rupture, when Moses declares, " Thou shalt see
my face no more" (viii. 19, ix. 11, x. 29).
The first three are plagues of loathsomeness —
blood-stained waters, frogs, and lice; the next
three bring actual pain and loss with them —
stinging flies, murrain which afflicts the beasts,
and boils upon all the Egyptians; and the third
triplet are " nature-plagues " — hail, locusts, and
darkness. It is only after the first three plagues
that the immunity of Israel is mentioned; and
after the next three, when the hail is threatened,
instructions are first given by which those Egyp-
tians who fear Jehovah may also obtain protec-
tion. Thus, in orderly and solemn procession,
marched the avengers of God upon the guilty
land.
It has been observed, concerning the miracles
of Jesus, that not one of them was creative, and
that, whenever it was possible, He wrought by
the use of material naturally provided. The
waterpots should be filled; the five barley-loaves
should be sought out; the nets should be let
down for a draught; and the blind man should
have his eyes anointed and go wash in the Pool
of Siloam.
And it is easily seen that such miracles were a
more natural expression of His errand, which
was to repair and purify the existing system of
things, and to remove our moral disease and
death, than any exercise of creative power
would have been, however it might have dazzled
the spectators.
Now, the same remark applies to the miracles
of Moses, to the coming of God in judgment, as
to His revelation of Himself in grace; and there-
fore we need not be surprised to hear that natural
phenomena are not unknown which offer a sort
of dim hint or foreshadowing of the terrible ten
plagues. Either cryptogamic vegetation or the
earth borne down from upper Africa is still seen
to redden the river, usually dark, but not so as
to destroy the fish. Frogs and vermin and sting-
ing insects are the pest of modern travellers.
Cattle plagues make ravage there, and hideous
diseases of the skin are still as common as when
the Lord promised to reward the obedience of
Israel to sanitary law by putting upon them none
of "the evil diseases of Egypt " which they
knew (Deut. vii. 15).* The locust is still
dreaded. But some of the other visitations were
more direful because not only their intensity but
even their existence was almost unprecedented:
hail in Egypt was only not quite unknown; and
such veiling of the sun as occurs for a few
minutes during the storms of sand in the desert
ought scarcely to be quoted as even a sugges-
tion of the prolonged horror of the ninth
plague.
Now, this accords exactly with the moral effect
which was to be produced. The rescued people
were not to think of God as one who strikes
down into nature from outside, with strange and
unwonted powers, superseding utterly its familiar
forces. They were to think of Him as the Au-
thor of all; and of the common troubles of mor-
tality as being indeed the effects of sin, yet ever
controlled and governed by Him. let loose at
His will, and capable of mounting to unimagined
heights if His restraints be removed from them.
By the east wind He brought the locusts, and
removed them by the south-west wind. By a
storm He divided the sea. The common things
of life are in His hands, often for tremendous
results. And this is one of the chief lessons of
the narrative for us. Let the mind range over
the list of the nine which stop short of absolute
destruction, and reflect upon the vital impor-
tance of immunities for which we are scarcely
grateful.
The purity of water is now felt to be among
the foremost necessities of life. It is one which
asks nothing from us except to refrain from pol-
luting what comes from heaven so limpid. And
yet we are half satisfied to go on habitually in-
flicting on ourselves a plague more foul and
noxious than any occasional turning of our
rivers into blood. The two plagues which dealt
with minute forms of life may well remind us of
the vast part which we are now aware that the
smallest organisms play in the economy of life,
as the agents of the Creator. Who gives
thanks aright for the cheap blessing of the un-
stained light of heaven?
But we are insensible to the every-day teach-
ing of this narrative: we turn our rivers into
fluid poison: we spread all around us deleterious
influences, which breed by minute forms of para-
*To this day, amid squalid surroundin.^s for which
nominal Christians are responsible, the immunity of the
Jewish race from such suffering is conspicuous, and at
least a remarkable coincidence.
Exodus vii. 14-25.]
THE FIRST PLAGUE.
153
sitical life the germs of cruel disease; we load the
atmosphere with fumes which slay our cattle
with periodical distempers, and are deadlier to
vegetation than the hailstorm or the locust; we
charge it with carbon so dense that multitudes
have forgotten that the sky is blue, and on our
Metropolis comes down at frequent intervals the
darkness of the ninth plague, and all the time
we fail to see that God, Who enacts and enforces
every law of nature, does really plague us when-
ever these outraged laws avenge themselves.
The miraculous use of nature in special emer-
gencies is such as to show the Hand which regu-
larly wields its powers.
At the same time there is no more excuse for
the rationalism which would reduce the calami-
ties of Egypt to a coincidence, than for explain-
ing away the manna which fed a nation during
its wanderings by the drug which is gathered, in
scanty morsels, upon the acacia tree. The
awful severity of the judgments, the series which
they formed,- their advent and removal at the
menace and the prayer of Moses, are considera-
tions which make such a theory absurd. The
older scepticism, which supposed Moses to have
taken advantage of some epidemic, to have
learned in the wilderness the fords of the Red
Sea,* to have discovered water, when the cara-
van was perishing of thirst, by his knowledge of
the habits of wild beasts, and finally to have
dazzled the nation at Horeb with some kind of
fireworks, is itself almost a miracle in its viola-
tion of the laws of mind. The concurrence of
countless favourable accidents and strange re-
sources of leadership is like the chance arrange-
ment of a printer's type to make a poem.
There is a common notion that the ten plagues
followed each other with breathless speed, and
were completed within a few weeks. But noth-
ing in the narrative asserts or even hints this,
and what we do know is in the opposite direc-
tion. The seventh plague was wrought in Feb-
ruary, for the barley was in the ear and the flax
in blossom (ix. 31); and the feast of passover
was kept on the fouiteenth day of the month
Abib, so that the destruction of the firstborn was
in the middle of April, and there was an interval
of about two months between the last four
plagues. Now, the same interval throughout
woyld bring back the first plague to September
or October. But the natural discoloration of the
river, mentioned above, is in the middle of the
year, when the river begins to rise; and this, it
may possibly be inferred, is the natural period
at which to fix the first plague. They would
then range over a period of about nine months.
During the interval between them, the promises
and treacheries of the king excited alternate hope
and rage in Israel; the scribes of their own race
(once the vassals of their tyrants, but already
estranged by their own oppression) began to
take rank as officers among the Jews, and to ex-
hibit the rudimentary promise of national order
and government; and the growing fears of their
enemies fostered that triumphant sense of mas-
tery, out of which national hope and pride are
born. When the time came for their departure,
it was possible to transmit orders throughout
all their tribes, and they came out of Egypt by
their armies, which would have been utterly im-
* Rut indeed this notion i.s not yet dead. " A hiijh wind
left the shallow sea so low that it became possible to ford
it Moses eaererly ace pted the snsfsrestion, and made the
venture with success," etc.— We/l/iausen, "Israel," in
Zi tcyc Brit.
possible a few months before. It was with them,
as it is with every man that breathes: the delay
of God's grace was itself a grace; and the slowly
ripening fruit grew mellower than if it had been
forced into a speedier maturity.
THE FIRST PLAGUE.
Exodus vii. 14-25.
It was perhaps when the Nile was rising, and
Pharaoh was coming to the bank, in pomp of
state, to make official observation of its progress,
on which the welfare of the kingdom depended,
and to do homage before its divinity, that the
messenger of another Deity confronted him, with
a formal declaration of war. It was a strange con-
trast. The wicked was in great prosperity, neither
was he plagued like another man. Upon his
head, if this were Menephtah, was the golden
symbol of his own divinity. Around him was an
obsequious court. And yet there was moving in
his heart some unconfessed sense of awe, when
confronted once more by the aged shepherd and
his brother, who had claimed a commission from
above, and had certainly met his challenge, and
made a short end of the rival snakes of his own
seers. Once he had asked "Who is Jehovah?"
and had sent His ambassadors to their tasks
again with insult. But now he needs to harden
his heart, in order not to yield to their strange
and persistent demands. He remembers how
they had spoken to him already, " Thus saith
the Lord, Israel is My son, My firstborn, and I
have said unto thee. Let My son go that he may
serve Me; and thou hast refused to let him go:
behold, I will slay thy son, thy firstborn " (iv. 22,
R. v.). Did this awful warning come back to
him, when the worn, solemn, and inflexible face
of Moses again met him? Did he divine the
connection between this ultimate penalty and
what is now announced — the turning of the
pride and refreshment of Egypt into blood? Or
was it partly because each plague, however dire,
seemed to fall short of the tremendous threat,
that he hoped to find the power of Moses more
limited than his warnings? " Because sentence
against an evil work is not executed speedily,
therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully
set in them to do evil."
And might he, at the last, be hardened to pur-
sue the people because, by their own showing,
the keenest arrow in their quiver was now sped?
Whatever his feelings were, it is certain that the
brothers come and go, and inflict their plagues
unrestrained; that no insult or violence is at-
tempted, and we can see the truth of the words
" I have made thee as a god unto Pharaoh."
It is in clear allusion to his vaunt, " I know
not Jehovah," that Moses and Aaron now repeat
the demand for release, and say, " Hitherto thou
hast not hearkened: behold, in this thou shalt
know that I am Jehovah." What follows, when
attentively read, makes it plain that the blow
falls upon " the waters that are in the river," and
those that have been drawn from it into canals
for artificial irrigation, into reservoirs like the
lakes Moeris and Mareotis, and even into vessels
for immediate use.
But we are expressly told that it was possible
to obtain water by digging wells. Therefore
there is no point whatever in the cavil that if
154
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
Moses turned all the water into blood, none was
left for the operations of the magicians. But no
comparison whatever existed between their petty-
performances and the immense and direful work
of vengeance which rolled down a putrid mass of
corrupt waters through the land, spoilingthe great
stores of water by which later drought should
be relieved, destroying the fish, that important
part of the food of the nation, for which Israel
afterwards lusted, and sowing the seeds of other
plagues, by the pollution of that balmy air in
which so many of our own suffering countrymen
still find relief, but which was now infected and
loathsome. Even Pharaoh must have felt that
his gods might do better for him than this, and
that it would be much more to the point just
then to undo his plague than to increase it — to
turn back the blood to water than contribute a
few drops more. If this was their best effort, he
was already helpless in the hand of his assailant.
who, by the uplifting of his rod, and the bold
avowal in advance of responsibilit}' for so great
a calamity, had formally defied him. But Pha-
raoh dared not accept the challenge: it was effort
enough for him to " set his heart " against sur-
render to the portent, and he sullenly turned
l^ack into the palace from the spot where Moses
met him.
Two details remain to be observed. The seven
days which were fulfilled do not measure the in-
terval between this plague and the next, but the
period of its infliction. And this information is
not given us concerning any other, until we
come to the three days of darkness.* It is im-
portant here, because the natural discoloration
lasts for three weeks, and mythical tendencies
would rather exaggerate than shorten the
term.
Again, it is contended that only with the fourth
plague did Israel begin to enjoy exemption, be-
cause then only is their immunity recorded.")"
But it is strange indeed to suppose that they
were involved in punishments the design of
which was their relief; and in fact their exemp-
tion is implied in the statement that the Egyp-
tians (only) had to dig wells. It is to be under-
stood that large stores of water would every-
where be laid up, because the Nile water, how-
ever delicious, carries much sediment which must
be allowed to settle down. They would not be
forced, therefore, to fall back upon the polluted
common sources for a supply.
And now let us contrast this miracle with the
first of the New Testament. One spoiled the
happiness of the guilty; the other rescued the
overclouded joy of the friends of Jesus, not
turning water into blood but into wine; declar-
ing at one stroke all the difference between the
law which worketh wrath, and the gospel of the
grace of God. The first was impressive and
public, as the revelation upon Sinai; the other
appealed far more to the heart than to the
imagination, and befitted well the kingdom that
was not with observation, the King who grew
up like a tender plant, and did not strive nor cry,
the redeeming influence which was at first unob-
trusive as the least of all seeds, but became a
tree, and the shelter of the fowls of heaven.
*x. 22. The accurate Kalisch is therefore wrong: in
speakin.er of " The duration of the fir.st plaerue, a .state-
ment not made with regrard to any of the subsequent in-
flictions."— Commentary ?" loco.
+ Speaker's Comment dry, i., p. 242; Kalisch on viii. 18 ;
Kiel, i. 484.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SECOND PLAGUE.
Exodus viii. 1-15.
Although Pharaoh had warning of the first
plague, no appeal was made to him to avert it
by submission. But before the olague of frogs
he was distinctly commanded, " Let IMy people
go." It is an advancing lesson. He has felt
the power of Jehovah: now he is to connect,
even more closely, his suffering with his dis-
obedience; and when this is accomplished, the
third plague will break upon him unannounced —
a loud challenge to his conscience to become
itself his judge.
The plague of frogs was far greater than our
experience helps us to imagine. At least two
cases are on record of a people being driven to
abandon their settlements because, they had be-
come intolerable; "as even the vessels were full
of them, the water infested and the food un-
eatable, as they could scarcely set their feet on
the ground without treading on heaps of them,
and as they were vexed by the smell of the great
multitude that died, they fled from that region."
The Egyptian species known to science as the
Rana Mosaica, and still called by the uncom-
mon epithet here employed, is peculiarly repul-
sive, and peculiarly noisy too. The superstition
which adored a frog as the " Queen of the two
Worlds," and placed it upon the sacred lotus-
leaf, would make it impossible for an Egyptian
to adopt even such forlorn measures of self-
defence as might suggest themselves. It was an
unclean pest against which he was entirely help-
less, and it extended the power of his enemy
from the river to the land. The range of the
grievance is dwelt upon in the warning: " they
shall come up and enter into thine house, and
into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed . . .
and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading-
troughs " (viii. 3). The most sequestered and
the dryest spots alike would swarm with them,
thrust forward into the most unsuitable places by
the multitude behind.
Thus Pharaoh himself had to share, far more
than in the first plague, the misery of his
humblest subjects; and, although again his ma-
gicians imitated Aaron upon some small pre-
pared plot, and amid circumstances which made
it easier to exhibit frogs than to exclude them,
yet there was no comfort in such puerile emula-
tion, and they offered no hope of relieving him.
From the gods that were only vanities, he
turned to Jehovah, and abased himself to ask
the intercession of Moses: " Intreat Jehovah
that He take away the frogs from me and froiri
my people; and I will let the people go."
The assurance would have been a hopeful one.
if only the sense of inconvenience were the same
as the sense of sin. But when we wonder at the
relapses of men who were penitent upon sick-
beds or in adversity, as soon as their trouble is
at an end, we are blind to this distinction. Pain
is sometimes obviously due to ourselves, and it
is natural to blame the conduct which led to it.
But if we blame it only for being disastrous, we
cannot hope that the fruits of the Spirit will re-
sult from a sensation of the flesh. It was so with
Pharaoh, as doubtless Moses expected, since
God had not yet exhausted His predicted works
Exodus viii. 20-32.]
THE FOURTH PLAGUE.
155
of retribution. This anticipated fraud is much
the simplest explanation of the difficult phrase,
" Have thou this glory over me."
It is sometimes explained as an expression of
courtesy — "I obey thee as a superior"; which
does not occur elsewhere, because it is not He-
brew but Egyptian. But this suavity is quite
alien to the spirit of the narrative, in which
Moses, however courteous, represents an of-
fended God. It is more natural to take it as an
open declaration that he was being imposed
upon, yet would grant to the king whatever ad-
vantage the fraud implied. And to make the
coming relief more clearly the action of the
Lord, to shut out every possibility that magician
or priest should claim the honour, he bade the
king name an hour at which the plague should
cease.
If the frogs passed away at once, the relief
might chance to be a natural one; and Pharaoh
doubtless conceived that elaborate and long pro-
tracted intercessions were necessary for his de-
liverance. Accordingly he fixed a future period,
yet as near as he perhaps thought possible; and
Moses, without any express authority, promised
him that it should be so. Therefore he " cried
unto the Lord," and the frogs did not retreat
into the river, but suddenly died where they
were, and filled the unhappy land with a new
horror in their decay.
But " when Pharaoh saw that there was res-
pite, he made his heart heavy and hearkened
not unto them." It is a graphic sentence: it im-
plies rather than affirms their indignant remon-
strances, and the sullen, dull, spiritless obstinacy
with which he held his base and unkingly
purpose.
THE THIRD PLAGUE.
Exodus viii. 16-19.
There is no sufficient reason for discarding the
ordinary opinion of this plague. Gnats have
been suggested (with beetles instead of flies for
the fourth, since gnats and flies would scarcely
make two several judgments), but these, which
spring from marshy ground, would unfitly be
connected with the dust whence Aaron was to
evoke the pest. Sir Samuel Baker, on the other
hand, has said of modern Egypt that " it seemed
as if the very dust were turned into lice "
(quoted in Speaker's Commentary in loco).
Two features in this plague deserve attention.
It came without any warning whatever. The
faithless king who gave his word and broke it
found himself involved in fresh miseries with-
out an opportunity of humbling himself again.
He was flung back into deep waters, because he
refused to fulfil the terms upon which he had
been extricated.
It must be understood that the act of Aaron
was a public one, performed in the sight of Pha-
raoh, and instantly followed by the plague.
There was no doubt about the origin of the pest,
and the new and alarming prospect was opened
up of calamities yet to come, without a chance
to avert them by submission.
Again, it will he observed that the magicians
are utterly bafHed just when there is no warning
given, and therefore no opportunity for pre-
arranged sleight of hand. And, this surely
favours the opinion that they had not hitherto
succeeded by supernatural assistance, for there
is no such evident reason why infernal aid should
cease at this exact point.
It is a mistake to suppose that thereupon they
confessed the mission of the brothers. In their
agitation they admitted that, on their part at
least, no divinity had been at work before. But
they rather ascribed what they saw to the action
of some vaguely indicated deity, than confessed
it to be the work of Jehovah. Again it has to be
asked whether this resembles more the vain-
glorious structure of a myth, or the course of a
truthful history.
Nevertheless, their grudging and insufficient
avowal was meant to induce a surrender. But
" Pharaoh's heart was strong, and he hearkened
not unto them." To this statement it is not
added, " because the Lord had hardened him,"
for this had not even yet taken place; but only,
" as the Lord had spoken."
THE FOURTH PLAGUE.
Exodus viii. 20-32.
When the third plague had died away, when
the sense of reaction and exhaustion had re-
placed agitation and distress, and when perhaps
the fear grew strong that at any moment a new
calamity might befal the land as abruptly as the
last, God orders a solemn and urgent appeal to
be made to the oppressor. And the same occurs
three times: after each plague which arrives un-
expectedly the next is introduced by a special
warning. On each of these occasions, moreover,
the appeal is made in the morning, at the hour
when reason ought to be clearest and the pas-
sions least agitating; and this circumstance is
perhaps alluded to in the favourite phrase _ of
Jeremiah when he would speak of condescending
earnestness — " I sent my prophets, rising^ up
early and sending them " (Jer. xxv. 4, xxvi. 5,
xxix. IQ, and many more; cf. also vii. 13, and 2
Chron. xxxvi. 15). So far is the Scripture from
regarding Pharaoh as propelled by destiny, as
by a machine, down iron grooves to ruin.
We have now come to the group of plagues
which inflict actual bodily damage, and not in-
convenience and humiliation only: the dogfly
(or beetle) ; the murrain among beasts, which
was a precursor of the crowning evil that struck
at human life; and the boils. Of the fourth
plague the precise nature is uncertain. There is
a beetle which gnaws both man and beast, de-
stroys clothes, furniture, and plants, and even
now they " are often seen in millions " (Munk.
Palestine, p. 120). " In a lew minutes they filled
the whole honse. . . Only after the most labori-
ous exertions, and covering the floor of the
house with hot coals, they succeeded in master-
ing them. If they make such attacks during the
night, the inmates are compelled to give up the
houses, and little children or sick persons, who
are unable to rise alone, are then exposed to the
greatest danger of life " (Pratte, Abyssinia, p I43-
in Kalisch).
Now, this explanation has one advantage over
that of rlogflies — that special mention is made of
their afflicting "the ground whereon they are '
(ver. 21), which is less suitable to a plague of
flies. But it may be that no one creature i=^
meant. The Hebrew word means " a mixture."
Jewish interpreters have gone so far as to make
vs^
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
it mean " all kinds of noxious animals and ser-
pents and scorpions mixed together," and al-
though it is palpably absurd to believe that Pha-
raoh should have survived if these had been upon
him and upon his servants, yet the expression
" a mixture," following after one kind of ver-
min had tormented the land, need not be nar-
rovi^ed too exactly. With deliberate particularity
the king was warned that they should come
" upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon
thy people, and into thine houses, and the houses
of the Egyptians shall be full of [them*], and
also the ground whereon they are."
It has been supposed, from the special men-
tion of the exemption of the land of Goshen,
that this was a new thing. We have seen reason,
however, to think otherwise, and the emphatic
assertion now made is easy to understand. The
plague was especially to be expected in low flat
ground: the king may not even have been aware
of the previoUiS freedom of Israel; and in any
case its importance as an evidence had not been
pressed upon him. The spirit of the seventy-
eighth Psalm, though not perhaps any one spe-
cific phrase, contrasts the earlier as well as the
later plagues with the protection of His own
people, whom He led like sheep (vers. 42-52).
After the appointed interval (the same which
Pharaoh had indicated for the removal of the
frogs) the plague came. We are told that the
land was corrupted, but it is significant that more
stress is laid upon the suffering of Pharaoh and
his court in the event than in the menace. It
came home to himself more cruelly than any for-
mer plague, and he at once attempted to make
terms: " Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the
land." It is a natural speech, at first not asking
to be trusted as before by getting relief before
the Hebrews actually enjoy their liberty; and
yet conceding as little as possible, and in hot
haste to have that little done and the relief ob-
tained. They may even serve their God on the
sacred soil, so completely has He already de-
feated all His rivals. But this was not what was
demanded; and Moses repeated the claim of a
three days' journey, basing it upon the ground,
still more insulting to the national religion, that
" We will sacrifice to Jehovah our God the
abomination of the Egyptians," that is to say,
sacred animals, which it is horror in their eyes
to sacrifice. Any faith in his own creed which
Pharaoh ever had is surrendered when this argu-
ment, instead of making their cause hopeless,
forces him to yield — adding, however, like a
thoroughly weak man who wishes to refuse but
dares not, " only ye shall not go very far away:
intreat for me." And again Moses concedes the
point, with only the courteous remonstrance.
" But let not Pharaoh deal deceitfully any more."
It is necessary to repeat that we have not a
shred of evidence that Moses would have vio
lated his compact and failed to return: it would
have sufficed as a first step to have asserted the
nationality of his people and their right to wor-
ship their own God: all the rest would speedily
have followed. But the terms which were re-
jected again and again did not continue for ever
to bind the victorious party: the story of their
actual departure makes it plain that both sides
understood it to be a final exodus; and thence
* The Revised Version has " swarms of flies," which ''s
clearly an attempt to meet the case. But it is worth
notice that in the Psalms the expression was twice ren-
dered " divers kinds of flies" (Ixviii. c r. 31 A. V.). The
■word occurs only of this plajrue.
came the murderous pursuit of Pharaoh (of. xv.
9), which in itself would have cancelled any com-
pact which had existed until then.
CHAPTER IX.
THE FIFTH PLAGUE.
Exodus ix. 1-7.
Our Lord when on earth came not to destroy
men's lives. And yet it was necessary, for our
highest instruction, that we should not think of
Him as revealing a Divinity wholly devoid of
sternness. Twice, therefore, a gleam of the
fires of justice fell on the eyes which followed
Him — through the destruction once of a barren
tree, and once of a herd of swine, which prop-
erty no Jew should have possessed. So now,
when half the gloomy round of the plagues was
being completed, it was necessary to prove that
life itself was staked on this desperate hazard;
and this was done first by the very same ex-
pedient— the destruction of life which was not
human. There is something pathetic, if one
thinks of it, in the extent to which domestic
animals share our fortunes, and suffer through
the brutality or the recklessness of their pro-
prietors. If all men were humane, self-
controlled, and (as a natural result) prosperous,
what a weight would be uplifted from the lower
levels also of treated life, all of which groaneth
and travaileth in pain together until now! The
dumb animal world is partner with humanity,
and shares its fate, as each animal is dependent
on its individual owner.
We have already seen the whole life of Egypt
stricken, but now the lower creatures are to
perish, unless Pharaoh will repent. He is once
more summoned in the name of " Jehovah, God
of the Hebrews," and warned that the hand of
Jehovah, even a very grievous murrain (for so
the verse appears to say), is " upon thy cattle
which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the
asses, upon the camels, upon the herds and
upon the flocks." Here some particulars need
observation. Herds and flocks were every-
where; but horses were a comparatively late in-
troduction into Egypt, where they were as yet
chiefly employed for war. Asses, still so familiar
to the traveller, were the usual beasts of burden,
and were owned in great numbers by the rich,
although rash controversialists have pretended
that, as being unclean, they were not tolerated
in the land.
Camels, it is said, are not to be found on the
monuments, but yet they were certainly known
and possessed by Egypt, though there were
many reasons why they should be held chiefly
on the frontiers, and perhaps in connection with
the Arabian mines and settlements. Upon all
these " in the field " the plague should come.
The murrain still works havoc in the Delta,
chiefly at the period, beginning with December,
when the floods are down and the cattle are
turned out into the pastures, which would this
year have been signally unwholesome. It was
not, then, the fact of a cattle plague which was
miraculous, but its severity, its coming at an ap-
pointed time, its assailing beasts of every kind,
and its exempting those of Israel. We are told
that " all th^ cattle of Egypt died," and yet that
afterwards " the hail . . . smote both man and
E<odus ix. 13-35.]
THE SEVENTH PLAGUE.
157
beast" (ix. 6, 25). It is an inconsistency very
serious in the eyes of people who are too stupid
or too uncandid to observe that, just before, the
mischief was Hmited to those cattle which were
" in the field " ^ver. 3). There were great stalls
in suitable places, to give them shelter during
the inundations; and all that had not yet been
driven out to graze are expressly exempted from
the plague.
Much of Pharaoh's own property perished, but
he was the last man in the country who would
feel personal inconvenience by the loss, and
therefore nothing was more natural than that
his selfish " heart was heavy, and he did not let
the people go." Not even such an effort was
needed as in the previous plague, when we read
that he made his heart heavy, by a deliberate act.
There was nothing to indicate that he had now
reached a crisis — that God Himself in His judg-
ment would henceforth make bold and resolute
against crushing adversities the heart which had
been obdurate against humanity, against evi-
dence, against honour and plighted faith. Noth-
ing is easier than to step over the frontier be-
tween great nations. And in the moral world
also the Rubicon is passed, the destiny of a soul
is fixed, sometimes without a struggle, unawares.
Instead of spiritual conflict, there was intel-
lectual curiosity. " Pharaoh sent, and behold
there was not so much as one of the cattle of the
Israelites dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was
heavy, and he did not let the people go." This
inquiry into a phenomenon which was surpris-
ing indeed, but yet quite unable to afifect his
action, recalls the spiritual condition of Herod,
who was conscience-stricken when first he heard
of Christ, and said, " It is John whom I be-
headed" (Mark vi. 16), but afterwards felt
merely vulgar curiosity and desire to behold a
sign of Him. In the case of Pharaoh it was the
next step to judicial infatuation. When Christ
confronted Herod, He, Who had explained
Himself to Pilate, was absolutely silent. And
this warns us not to think that an interest in re-
ligious problems is itself of necessity religious.
One may understand all mysteries, and yet it
may profit him nothing. And many a repro-
bate soul is controversial, acute, and keenly
orthodox.
THE SIXTH PLAGUE.
Exodus ix. 8-12.
At the close of the second triplet, as of the
first, stands a plague without a warning, but not
without the clearest connection between the blow
and Him who deals it.
To the Jews Egypt was a furnace in which they
were being consumed — whether literally in hu-
man sacrifice, or metaphorically in the hard
labour which wasted them (Deut. iv. 20). And
now the brothers were commanded to fill both
hands with ashes of the furnace and throw them
upon the wind,* either to symbolise the suffering
which was to be spread wide over the land, or
because the ashes of human sacrifices were thus
presented to their evil genius, Typhon. If this
were its meaning, the irony was keen, when at
* The passage in Deuteronomy had not this event
specially in mind, or it wotild have used the same term for
a furnace. The word for ashes implies what can be blown
upon the wind.
II--V0I. I.
the same action a feverish inflammation, break-
ing out in blains, spread over all the nation.
But, apart from any such reference to their
cruel idolatry, it was right that they should suffer
in the flesh. When the higher nature is dead,
there is no appeal so sharp and certain as to the
physical sensibility. And moreover, there are
other sins which have their root in the flesh be-
sides sloth and bodily indulgence. Wrath and
cruelty and pride are strangely stimulated and
excited by self-indulgence. Not in vain does St.
Paul describe a " mind of the flesh," and reckon
among the fruits of the flesh not only unclean-
ness and drunkenness, but, just as truly, strife,
jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, heresies
(Col. ii. 18; Gal. v. 19, 20). From such evil
tempers, stimulated by evil appetites, the slaves
of Egypt had suffered bitterly; and now the
avenging rod fell upon the bodies of their
tyrants.
And we may perhaps detect especial suffering,
certainly an especial triumph to be commemo-
rated, in the failure of the magicians even to
stand before the king. It is implied that they
had done so until now, and this confirms the be-
lief that after the third plague they had not ac-
knowledged Jehovah, but merely said in their
defeat, " This is the finger of a god." Until now
Jannes and Jambres (two, to rival the two
brothers) had withstood Moses, but now the
contrast between the prophet and his victims
writhing in their pain was too sharp for preju-
dice itself to overlook: their folly was "evident
unto all men " (2 Tim. iii. 8, 9). But it was not
destined that Pharaoh should yield even to so
tremendous a coercion what he refused to moral
influences; and as Jesus after His resurrection
appeared not unto all the people (hiding this
crowning evidence from the eyes which had in
vain beheld so much), so " the Lord made strong
the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto
them, as the Lord had spoken unto Moses." In
this last expression is the explicit statement that
it was now that the prediction attained fulfilment,
in the manner which we have discussed already.
But even this strength of heart did not reach
the height of attempting any reprisals upon the
torturers. The sense of the supernatural was
their defence: Moses was as a god unto Pharaoh,
and Aaron was his prophet.
In the narrative of this plague there is an ex-
pression which deserves attention for another
reason. The ashes, it says, " shall become dust."
Is there no controversy, turning upon the too
rigid and prosaic straining of a New Testament
construction, which might be simplified by con-
sidering the Hebrew use of language, exempli-
fied in such an assertion as " It shall become
dust," and soon after, " It is the Lord's pas-
sover"? Do these announce transubstantia-
tions? Did two handfuls of ashes literally be-
come the blains upon the bodies of all the
Egyptians?
THE SEVENTH PLAGUE.
Exodus ix. 13-35.
The hardening of Pharaoh's heart, we have
argued, was not the debauching of his spirit, but
only the strengthening of his will. " Wait on
the Lord and he of ^ood courage "; " Be strong, O
Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and he strong, O
158
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
Joshua, son of Josadak the high priest; and be
strong, all ye people " (Ps. xxvii. 14; Hag. ii. 4),
are clear proofs that what was implied in this
word was not wickedness, but only that iron de-
termination which his choice directed in a
wicked channel. And therefore it was no
mockery, no insincere appeal by one who had
provided against the mischance of its succeeding,
when God again addressed Himself to the rea-
son, and even to the rational fears of Pharaoh.
He had only provided against a terror-stricken
submission, as wholly immoral and valueless, as
the ceasing to resist of one who has swooned
through fright. Now, to give such an one a
stimulant and thus to enable him to exercise his
volition, would be different from inciting him to
rebel.
The seventh plague, then, is ushered in by an
expostulation more earnest, resolute, and mina-
tory than attended any of the previous ones.
And this is the more necessary because human
life is now for the first time at stake. First the
king is solemnly reminded that Jehovah, Whom
he no longer can refuse to know, is the God of
the Hebrews, has a claim upon their services,
and demands them. In oppressing the nation,
therefore, Pharaoh usurped what belonged to the
Lord. Now, this is the eternal charter of the
rights of all humanity. Whoever encroaches on
the just sphere of the free action of his neigh-
bour deprives him, to exactly the same extent,
of the power to glorify God by a free obedi-
ence. The heart glorifies God by submission
to so hard a lot, but the co-operation of the
" whole body and soul and spirit " does not
visibly bear testimony to the regulating power of
grace. The oppressor may contend (like some
slave-owners'! that he guides his human prop-
erty better than it would guide itself. But one
assertion he cannot make: namely, that God is
receiving the loyal homage of a life spontane-
ously devoted; that a man and not a machine is
glorifying God in this body and spirit which are
God's. For the body is but a chattel. This is
why the Christian doctrine of the religious
equality of all men in Christ carries with it the
political assertion of the equal secular rights of
the whole human race. I must not transfer to
myself the solemn duty of my neighbour to ofifer
up to God the sacrifice not only of his chastened
spirit but also of his obedient life.
And these words were also a lifelong admoni-
tion to every Israelite. He held his liberties
from God. He was not free to be violent and
wanton, and to say " I am delivered to comrnit
all these abominations." The dignities of life
were bound up with its responsibilities.
Well, it is not otherwise to-day. As truly as
Moses, the champions of our British liberties
were earnest and God-fearing men. Not for
leave to revel, to accumulate enormous fortunes,
and to excite by their luxuries the envy and rage
of neglected brothers, while possessing more
enormous powers to bless them than ever were
entrusted to a class, — not for this our heroes
bled on the field and on the scafifold. Tyrants
rarely deny to rich men leave to be self-indul-
gent. And self-indulgence rarely nerves men to
heroic effort. It is for the freedom of the soul
that men dare all things. And liberty is doomed
wherever men forget that the true freeman is the
servant of Jehovah. On these terms the first de-
mand for a national emancipation was enforced.
And next, Pharaoh is warned that God, who
at first threatened to destroy his firstborn, but
had hitherto come short of such a deadly stroke,
had not, as he might flatter himself, exhausted
His power to avenge. Pharaoh should yet ex-
perience " all My plagues." And there is a
dreadful significance in the phrase which
threatens to put these plagues, with regard to
others, " upon thy servants and upon thy
people," but with regard to Pharaoh himself
" upon thine heart."
There it was that the true scourge smote.
Thence came ruin and defeat. His infatuation
was more dreadful than hail in the cloud and
locusts on the blast, than the darkness at noon
and the midnight wail of a bereaved nation. For
his infatuation involved all these.
The next assertion is not what the Authorised
Version made it, and what never was fulfilled.
It is not, " Now I will stretch out My hand to
smite thee and thy people with pestilence, and
thou shalt be cut off from the earth." It says.
" Now I had done this, as far as any restraint for
thy sake is concerned, but in very deed for this
cause have I made thee to stand" (unsmitten),
" for to show thee My power, and that My name
may be declared throughout all the earth " (vers.
15, 16). The course actually taken was more for
the glory of God, and a better warning to others,
than a sudden stroke, however crushing.
And so we find, many years after all this gene-
ration has passed away, that a strangely distorted
version of these events is current among the
Philistines in Palestine. In the days of Eli,
when the ark was brought into the camp, they
said, "Woe unto us! who shall deliver us out
of the hand of these mighty gods? These are
the gods that smote the Egyptians with all man-
ner of plagues in the wilderness " (i Sam. iv. 8).
And this, along with the impression which Ra-
hab declared that the Exodus and what followed
it had made, may help us to understand what a
mighty influence upon the wars of Palestine the
scourging of Egypt had, how terror fell upon all
the inhabitants of the land, and they melted away
(Josh. ii. 9 10).
And perhaps it may save us from the uncon-
scious egoism which always deems that I myself
shall not be treated quite as severely as I deserve,
to mark how the punishment of one affects the
interests of all.
Added to all this is a kind of half-ironical
clemency, an opportunity of escape if he would
humble himself so far as to take warning even
to a small extent. The plague was to be of a
kind especially rare in Egypt, and of utterly un-
known severity — such hail as had not been in
Egypt since the day it was founded until now.
But he and his people might, if they would.
hasten to bring in their cattle and all that they
had in the field. Pharaoh, after his sore experi-
ence of the threats of Moses, would find it a hard
trial in any case, whether to withdraw his prop-
erty or to brave the stroke. To him it was a
kind of challenge. To those of his subjects who
had any proper feeling it was a merciful deliver-
ance, and a profoundly skilful education of their
faith, which began by an obedience probably
hesitating, but had few doubts upon the morrow.
We read that he who feared the Lord among the
servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his
cattle flee into the houses; and this is the first
hint that the plagues, viewed as discipline, were
not utterly vain. The existence of others who
feared Jehovah beside the Jews prepares us for
Exodus X. 1-20.]
THE EIGHTH PLAGUE.
159
the " mixed multitude " who came up along with
them (xii. 38), and whose ill-instructed and prob-
ably very selfish adhesion was quite consistent
with such sensual discontent as led the whole
congregation into sin (Num. xi. 4).
To make the connection between Jehovah and
the impending storm more obvious still, Moses
stretched his rod toward heaven, and there was
hail, and the fire mingled with the hail, such as
slew man and beast, and smote the trees, and
destroyed all the vegetation which had yet
grown up. The heavens, the atmosphere, were
now enrolled in the conspiracy against Pharaoh:
they too served Jehovah.
In such a storm, the terror was even greater
than the peril. When a great writer of our own
time called attention to the elaborate machinery
by which God in nature impresses man with
the sense of a formidable power above, he chose
a thunderstorm as the most striking example of
his meaning.
" Nothing appears to me more remarkable
than the array of scenic magnificence by which
the imagination is appalled, in myriads of in-
stances when the actual danger is comparatively
small: so that the utmost possible impression of
awe shall be produced upon the minds of all,
though direct sufifering is inflicted upon few.
Consider, for instance, the moral effect of a
single thunderstorm. Perhaps two or three per-
sons may be struck dead within a space of a
hundred square miles; and their death, unac-
companied by the scenery of the storm, would
produce little more than a momentary sadness
in the busy hearts of living men. But the prepa-
ration for the judgment, by all that mighty
gathering of the clouds; by the questioning^ of
the forest leaves, in their terrified stillness, which
way the winds shall go forth; by the murmuring
to each other, deep in the distance, of the de-
stroying angels before they draw their swords of
fire; by the march of the funeral darkness in the
midst of the noonday, and the rattling of the
dome of heaven beneath the chariot wheels of
death; — on how many minds do not these pro-
duce an impression almost as great as the actual
witnessing of the fatal issue! and how strangely
are the expressions of the threatening elements
fitted to the apprehensions of the human soul!
The lurid colour, the long, irregular, convulsive
sound, the ghastly shapes of flaming and heav-
ing cloud, are all true and faithful in their appeal
to our instinct of danger." — Ruskin, Stones of
Venice, III. 197-8.
Such a tempest, dreadful anywhere, would be
most appalling of all in the serene atmosphere
of Egypt, to unaccustomed spectators, and minds
troubled by their guilt. Accordingly we find
that Pharaoh was less terrified by the absolute
mischief done than by the " voices of God,"
when, unnerved for the moment, he confessed at
least that he had sinned " this time " (a singu-
larly weak repentance for his long and daring re-
sistance, even if we explain it, " this time I con-
fess that I have sinned"), and went on in his
terror to pour out orthodox phrases and pro-
fessions with suspicious fluency. The main point
was the bargain which he proposed: " Intreat
the Lord, for there hath been enough of mighty
thunderings and hail; and I will let you go, and
ye shall stay no longer."
Looking attentively at all this, we discern in it
a sad resemblance to some confessions of these
latter days. Men are driven by afifliction to ac-
knowledge God: they confess the offence which
is palpable, and even add that God is righteous
and that they are not. If possible, they shelter
themselves from lonely condemnation by general
phrases, such as that all are wicked: just as Pha-
raoh, although he would have scoffed at the
notion of any national volition except his owOj
said, " I and my people are sinners." Above all.
they are much more anxious for the removal of
the rod than for the cleansing of the guilt; and
if this can be accomplished through the media-
tion of another, they have as little desire as Pha-
raoh had for any personal approach to God,
Whom they fear, and, if possible, repel.
And by these signs, every experienced observer
expects that if t'ley are delivered out of trouble
they will forget their vows.
Moses was exceedingly meek. And therefore,
or else because the message of God implied that
other plagues were to succeed this, he consented
to intercede, yet adding the simple and dignified
protest, " As for thee and thy people, I know that
ye will not yet fear Jehovah God." * And so it
came to pass. The heart of Pharaoh was made
heavy, and he would not let Israel go.
Looking back upon this miracle, we are re-
minded of the mighty part which atmospheric
changes have played in the history of the world.
Snowstorms saved Europe from the Turk and
from Napoleon: the wind played almost as im-
portant a part in our liberation from James, and
again in the defeat of the plans of the French
Revolution to invade us, as in the destruction of
the Armada. And so we read, " Hast thou
entered the treasuries of the snow? or hast thou
seen the treasuries of the hail, which I have re-
served against the time of trouble, against the
day of battle and war? " (Job xxxviii. 22-3).
CHAPTER X.
THE EIGHTH PLAGUE.
Exodus x. 1-20.
The Lord would not command His servant
again to enter the dangerous presence of the
sullen prince, without a reason which would sus-
tain his faith: "For I have made heavy his
heart." The pronoun is emphatic: it means to
say, " His foolhardiness is My doing and cannot
go beyond My will: thou art safe." And the
same encouragement belongs to all who do the
sacred will: not a hair of their head shall truly
perish, since life and death are the servants of
their God. Thus, in the storm of human pas-
sion, as of the winds, He says, " It is I, be not
afraid "; making the wrath of man to praise Him,
stilling alike the tumult of the waves and the
madness of the people.
It is possible that even the merciful mitigations
of the last plague were used by infatuated hearts
to justify their wilfulness: the most valuable
crops of all had escaped; so that these judg-
ments, however dire, were not quite beyond en-
durance. Just such a course of reasoning de-
ludes all who forget that the goodness of God
leadeth to repentance.
Besides the reasons already given for length-
ening out the train of judgments, it is added that
* E.xcept in one passage CGen. ii. 4 to iii. 23) these titles
of Deity are nowhere else combined in the books of
Moses.
i6o
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
Israel should teach the story to posterity, and
both fathers and children should " know that I
am Jehovah."
Accordingly it became a favourite title — " The
Lord which brought thee up out of the land of
Egypt." Even the apostates under Sinai would
not reject so illustrious a memory: their feast
was nominally to Jehovah; and their idol was an
image of " the gods which brought thee up out
of the land of Egypt " (xxxii. 4, 5).
Has our land no deliverances for which to be
thankful? Instead of boastful self-assertion,
should we not say, " We have heard with our
ears, O God, and our fathers have declared unto
us, the noble works that Thou didst in their days
and in the old time before them " ? Have we
forgotten that national mercies call aloud for
national thanksgiving? And in the family, and
in the secret life of each, are there no rescues, no
emancipations, no enemies overcome by a hand
not our own, which call for reverent acknowl-
edgment? " These things were our examples,
and are written for our admonition."
The reproof now spoken to Pharaoh is sterner
than any previous one. There is no reasoning
in it. The demand is peremptory: " How long
wilt thou refuse to humble thyself? " With it is
a sharp and short command: " Let My people
go, that they may serve Me." And with this is
a detailed and tremendous threat. It is strange,
in the face of the knowledge accumulated since
the objection called for it, to remember that
once this narrative was challenged, because
locusts, it was said, are unknown in Egypt.
They are mentioned in the inscriptions. Great
misery was caused by them in 1463, and just
three hundred years later Niebuhr was himself
at Cairo during a plague of them. Equally arbi-
trary is the objection that Joel predicted locusts
" such as there hath not been ever the like,
neither shall be any more after them, even to the
years of many generations " (ii. 2), whereas we
read of these that " before them there were no
such locusts as they, neither after them shall be
such " (x. 14). The objection is whimsical in
its absurdity, when we remember that Joel spoke
distinctly of Zion and the holy mountain (ii. i),
and Exodus of " the borders of Egypt " (x. 14).
But it is true that locusts are comparatively
rare in Egypt; so that while the meaning of the
threat would be appreciated, familiarity would
not have steeled them against it. The ravages
of the locust are terrible indeed, and coming just
in time to ruin the crops which had escaped the
hail, would complete the misery ot the land.
One speaks of the sudden change of colour by
the disappearance of verdure where they alight
as being like the rolling up of a carpet; and here
we read " they shall cover the eye of the earth."
— a phrase peculiar to the Pentateuch (ver. 15;
Num. xxii. 5, 11); " and they shall eat the residue
of that which has escaped, . . . and they shall
fill thy houses, and the . . . houses of all the
Egyptians, which neither thy fathers nor thy
fathers' fathers have seen."
After uttering the appointed warning, Moses
abruptly left, awaiting no negociations, plainly
regarding them as vain.
But now, for the first time, the servants of
Pharaoh interfered, declared the country to be
ruined, and pressed him to surrender. And yet
it was now first that we read (ver. i) that their
hearts were hardened as well as his. For that is
a hard heart that does not remonstrate against
wrong, however plainly God reveals His dis-
pleasure, until new troubles are at hand, and
which even then has no regard for the wrongs
of Israel, but only for the woes of Egypt. It is
a hard heart, therefore, which intends to repent
upon its deathbed; for its motives are identical
with these.
Pharaoh's behaviour is that of a spoiled child,
who is indeed the tyrant most familiar to us.
He feels that he must yield, or else why should
the brothers be recalled? And yet, when it
comes to the point, he tries to play the master
still, by dictating the terms for his own surren-
der; and breaks off the negociation rather than
do frankly what he must feel that it is neces-
sary to do. Moses laid his finger accurately
upon the disease when he reproached him for
refusing to humble himself. And if his be-
haviour seem unnatural,, it is worth observation
that Napoleon, the greatest modern example of
proud, intellectual, godless infatuation, allowed
himself to be crushed at Leipsic through just
the same reluctance to do thoroughly and with-
out self-deception what he found it necessary to
consent to do. " Napoleon," says his apologist,
Thiers, " at length determined to retreat — a reso-
lution humbling to his pride. Unfortunately,
instead of a retreat frankly admitted ... he de-
termined on one which from its imposing char-
acter should not be a real retreat at all, and
should be accomplished in open day." And this
perversity, which ruined him, is traced back to
" the illusions of pride."
Well, it was quite as hard for the Pharaoh to
surrender at discretion, as for the Corsican to
stoop to a nocturnal retreat. Accordingly, he
asks, " Who are ye that shall go? " and when
Moses very explicitly and resolutely declares
that they will all go, with all their property, his
passion overcomes him, he feels that to consent
is to lose them for ever, and he exclaims, " So be
Jehovah with you as I will let you go and your
little ones; look to it, for evil is before you" —
that is to say. Your intentions are bad. " Go ye
that are men, and serve the Lord, for that is
what ye desire," — no more than that is implied
in your demand, unless it is a mere pretence,
under which more lurks than it avows.
But he and they have long been in a state of
war; menaces, submissions, and treacheries have
followed each other fast, and he has no reason
to complain if their demands are raised. More-
over, his own nation celebrated religious festivals
in company with their wives and children, so
that his rejoinder is an empty outburst of rage.
And of a Jewish feast it was said, a little later,
" Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God,
thou and thy son and thy daughter, and thy
manservant and thy maidservant . . . and the
stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow "
(Deut. xvi. 11). There was no insincerity in
the demand; and although the suspicions of the
king were naturally excited by the exultant and
ever-rising hopes of the Hebrews, and the de-
fiant attitude of Moses, yet even now there is as
little reason to suspect bad faith as to suppose
that Israel, once released, could ever have re-
sumed the same abject attitude toward Egypt as
before. They would have come back victorious,
and therefore ready to formulate new demands;
already half emancipated, and therefore pre-
pared for the perfecting of the work.
And now. at a second command as explicit as
that which bade him utter the warning, Moses,
L...
^s X.
21-29.]
TJIE NINTH PLAGUE.
161
anxiously watched by many, stretched out his
hand over the devoted realm. At the gesture,
the spectators felt that a fiat had gone forth.
But the result was strangely different from that
which followed his invocation, both of the pre-
vious and the following plague, when we may be-
lieve that as he raised his hand, the hail-storm
burst in thunder, and the curtain fell upon the
sky. Now there only arose a gentle east wind
(unlike the " exceeding strong west wind " that
followed), but it blew steadily all that day and
all the following night. The forebodings of
Egypt would understand it well: the prolonged
period during which the curse was being steadily
wafted toward them was an awful measure of the
wide regions over which the power of Jehovah
reached; and when it was morning, the east wind
brought the locusts, that dreadful curse which
Joel has compared to a disciplined and devastat-
ing invader, " the army of the Lord," and the
first woe that heralds the Day of the Lord in
the Apocalypse (Joel ii. i-ii; Rev. ix. i-ii).
The completeness of the ruin brought a swift
surrender, but it has been well said that folly is
the wisdom which is only wise too late, and, let
us add, too fitfully. If Pharaoh had only sub-
mitted before the plague instead of after it! *
If he had only respected himself enough to be
faithful, instead of being too vain really to
yield!
It is an interesting coincidence that, since he
had this time defied the remonstrances of his
advisers, his confession of sin is entirely personal;
it is no longer, " I and my people are sinners,"
but " I have sinned against the Lord your God,
and against you." This last clause was bitter to
his lips, but the need for their intercession was
urge^nt: life and death were at stake upon the re-
moval of this dense cloud of creatures which
penetrated everywhere, leaving everywhere an
evil odour, and of which a later sufferer com-
plains, " We could not eat, but we bit a locust;
nor open our mouths, but locusts filled them."
Therefore he went on to entreat volubly,
" Forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once,
and intreat Jehovah your God that He may take
away from me this death only."
And at the prayer of Moses, the Lord caused
the breeze to veer and rise into a hurricane:
" The Lord turned an exceeding strong west
wind." Now, the locust can float very well
upon an easy breeze, and so it had been wafted
over the Red Sea; but it is at once beaten down
by a storm, and when it touches the water it is
destroyed. Thus simply was the plague re-
moved.
" But the Lord made strong Pharaoh's heart,"
and so, his fears being conquered, his own rebel-
lious will went on upon its evil way. He would
not let Israel go.
This narrative throws light upon a thousand
vows made upon sick beds, but broken when the
sufferer recovers; and a thousand prayers for
amendment, breathed in all the sincerity of panic,
and forgotten with all the levity of security. It
shows also, in the hesitating and abortive half-
submission of the tyrant, the greater folly of
many professing Christians, who will, for
Christ's sake, surrender all their sins except one
* Oddly enough, the same historian already quoted, re-
lating-the story of the same day at Leipsic, says of Napo-
leon's dialogue with M. de Merfeld, that he " used an ex-
pression which, if uttered at the Congress of Prague,
would have changed his lot and ours. Unfortunately, it
was now too late."
or two, and make any confession except that
which really brings low their pride.
Thoroughness, decision, depth, and self-sur-
render, needed by Pharaoh, are needed by every
soul of man.
THE NINTH PLAGUE.
Exodus x. 21-29.
We have taken it as settled that the Pharaoh
of the Exodus was Menephtah, the Beloved of
the God Ptah. If so, his devotion to the gods
throws a curious light upon his first scorn of Je-
hovah, and his long-continued resistance; and
also upon the threat of vengeance to be executed
upon the gods of Egypt, as if they were a resist-
ing power. But there is a special significance
in the ninth plague, when we connect it with
Menephtah.
In the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes there is
to be seen, fresh and lifelike, the admirably sculp-
tured effigy of this king — a weak and cruel face,
with the recedmg forehead of his race, but also
their nose like a beak, and their sharp chin.
Over his head is the inscription:
" Lord of the Two Lands, Beloved of the God Amen ;
Lord of Diadems, Beloved of the God Ptah :
Crowned by Amen with dominion of the world :
Cherished by the Sun in the great abode."
This formidable personage is delineated by the
court sculptor with his hand stretched out in
worship, and under it is written " He adores the
Sun: he worships Hor of the solar horizons."
The worship, thus chosen as the most charac-
teristic of this king, either by himself or by some
consummate artist, was to be tested now.
Could the sun help him? or was it, like so
many minor forces ot earth and air, at the mercy
of the God of Israel?
There is a terrible abruptness about the com-
ing of the ninth plague. Like the third and
sixth, it is inflicted unannounced; and the par-
leying, the driving of a bargain and then break-
ing it, by which the eighth was attended, is
quite enough to account for this. Moreover,
the experience of every man teaches him that
each method has its own impressiveness: the an-
nouncement of punishment awes, and a surprise
alarms, and when they are alternated, every pos-
sible door of access to the conscience is ap-
proached. If the heart of Pharaoh was now
beyond hope, it does not follow that all his
people were equally hardened. What an effect
was produced upon those courtiers who so ear-
nestly supported the recent demand of Moses. .
when this new plague fell upon them unawares!
But not only is there no announcement: the
narrative is so concentrated and brief as to give
a graphic rendering of the surprise and terror
of the time. Not a word is wasted:
" The Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine
hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness
over the land of Egypt, even darkness that may
be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand to-
ward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in
all the land of Egypt three days: they saw not
one another, neither rose any from his place
three days; but all the children of Israel had light
in their dwellings " (vers. 21-3). We are not
told anything of the emotions of the king, as the
prophet strides into his presence, and before the
cowering court, silently raises his hand and
l62
THE BOOK 01-' EXODUS.
quenches the day. We may infer his temper, if
we please, from the frantic outbreak of menace
and rage in which he presently warns the man
whose coming is the same thing as calamity to
see his face no more. Nothing is said, again,
about the evil angels by which, according to
later narratives, that long night was haunted."
And after all it is more impressive to think of
the blank, utter paralysis of dread in which a
nation held its breath, benumbed and motionless,
until vitality was almost exhausted, and even
Pharaoh chose rather to surrender than to die.
As the people lay cowering in their fear, there
was plenty to occupy their minds. They would
remember the first dreadful threat, not yet ac-
complished, to slay their firstborn; and the later
assertion that if pestilence had not destroye<l
them, it was because God would plague them
with all His plagues. They would reflect upon
ail their defeated duties, and how the sun him-
self was now withdrawn at the waving of the
prophet's hand. And then a ghastly foreboding
would complete their dread. What was it that
darkness typified, in every Oriental nation —
nay, in all the world? Death! Job speaks of
" The land of darkness and of the shadow of death ;
A land of thick darkness, as darkness itself ;
A land of the shadow of death without any order,
And where the light is as darkness " (.x. 21, 22).
With us, a mortal sentence is given in a black
cap: in the East, far more expressively, the head
of the culprit was covered, and the darkness
which thus came upon him expressed his doom.
Thus " they covered Haman's face " (Esther vii.
8). Thus to destroy " the face of the covering
that is cast over all peoples and the veil that is
spread over all nations," is the same thing as to
" swallow up death," being the visible destruc-
tion of the embodied death-sentence (Isa. xxv.
7, 8). And now this veil was spread over all the
radiant land of Egypt. Chill, and hungry, and
afraid to move, the worst horror of all that pro-
longed midnight was the mental agony of dire
anticipation.
In other respects there had been far worse
calamities, but through its effect upon the imagi-
nation this dreadful plague was a fit prelude to
the tenth, which it hinted and premonished.
In the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom there is>
a remarkable study of this plague, regarded as
retribution in kind. It avenges the oppression
of Israel. " For when unrighteous men thought
to oppress the holy nation, they being shut up
in their houses, the prisoners of darkness, and
fettered with the bonds of a long night, lay
exiled from the eternal Providence " (xvii. 2).
It expresses in the physical realm their spiritual
misery: " For while they supposed to lie hid in
their secret sins, they were scattered under a
thick veil of forgetfulness " (ver. 3). It retorted
on them the illusions of their sorcerers: "as for
the illusions of art magick, they were put
down. . . For thev. that promised to drive away
terrors and troubles from a sick soul, were sick
themselves of fear, worthy to be laughed at "
(vers. 7, 8). In another place the Egyptians are
declared to be worse than the men of Sodom, be-
cause they brought into bondage friends and not
strangers, and grievouslj afflicted those whom
they had received with feasting; " therefore even
with blindness were these stricken, as those were
* Such is probably not the meaning in Ps. Ixxviii. 4q (see
R. v.), though from it the tradition may have sprung.
at the doors of the righteous man." (xix. 14-17).
And we may well believe that the long night was
haunted with special terrors, if we add this wise
explanation: " For wickedness, condemned by
her own witness, is very timorous, and being
pressed by conscience, always forecasteth griev-
ous things. For " — and this is a sentence of
transcendent merit — " fear is nothing else than
a betrayal of the succours that reason offereth "
(xvii. II, 12). Therefore it is concluded that
their own hearts were their worst tormentors,
alarmed by whistling winds, or melodious song
of birds, or pleasing fall of waters, " for the
whole world shined with clear light, and none
were hindered in their labour: over them only
was spread a heavy night, an image of that dark-
ness which should afterward receive them: yet
were they unto themselves more grievous than
the darkness " (vers. 20, 21).
Isaiah, too, who is full of allusions to the early
history of his people, finds in this plague of dark-
ness an image of all mental distress and spiritual
gloom. " We look for light, but behold dark-
ness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity:
we grope for the wall like the blind, yea, we
grope as those that have no eyes: we stumble at
noonday as in the twilight" (lix. 10). Here the
sinful nation is reduced to the misery of Egypt
But if she were obedient she would enjoy all the
immunities of her forefathers amid Egyptian
gloom: "Then shall thy light rise in darkness
and thy obscurity as the noonday " (Iviii. 10) ;
" Darkness shall cover the earth, and gross dark-
ness the people, but the Lord shall arise upon
thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee "
And, indeed, in the spiritual light which is
sown for the righteous, and the obscuratiqn of
the judgment of the impure, this miracle is ever
reproduced.
The history of Menephtah is that of a mean
and cowardly prince. Dreams forbade him to
share the perils of his army; a prophecy induced
him to submit to exile, until his firstborn was of
age to recover his dominions for him; and all we
know of him is admirably suited to the character
represented in this narrative. He will now sub-
mit once more, and this time every one shall go;
yet he cannot make a frank concession: the
flocks and herds (most valuable after the ravages
of the murrain and the hail) must remain as a
hostage for their return. But Moses is inflexi-
ble: not a hoof shall be left behind; and then the
frenzy of a baffled autocrat breaks out into wild
menaces; " Get thee from me; take heed to thy-
self; see my face no more; for in the day thou
seest my face thou shalt die." The assent of
Moses was grim: the rupture was complete.
And when they once more met, it was the king
that had changed his purpose, and on his face,
not that of Moses, was the pallor of impending
death.
In the conduct of the prophet, all through
these stormy scenes, we see the difference be-
tween a meek spirit and a craven one. He was
always ready to intercede; he never " reviles the
ruler," nor transgresses the limits of courtesy
toward his superior in rank: and yet he never
falters, nor compromises, nor fails to represent
worthily the awful Power he represents.
In the series of sharp contrasts, all the true
dignity is with the servant of God, all the mean-
ness and the shame with the proud king, who
begins by insulting him, goes on to impose on
Exodus xii. 1-2S.]
THE PASSOVER.
163
him, and ends by the most ignominious of sur-
renders, crowned with the most abortive of
treacheries and the most abject of defeats.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST PLAGUE ANNOUNCED.
Exodus xi. i-io.
The eleventh chapter is, strictly speaking, a
supplement to the tenth: the first verses speak,
as if in parenthesis, of a revelation made before
the ninth plague, but held over to be mentioned
in connection with the last, which it now an-
nounces; and the conversation with Pharaoh is
a continuation of the same in which they
mutually resolved to see each other's face no
more. To account for the confidence of Moses.
we are now told that God had revealed to him
the close approach of the final blow, so long
foreseen. In spite of seeming delays, the hour
of the promise had arrived; in spite of his long
reluctance, the king should even thrust them out;
and then the order and discipline of their re-
treat would exhibit the advantages gained by
expectation, by promises ofttynes disappointed,
but always, like a false alarm which tries the
readiness of a garrison, exhibiting the weak
points in their organisation, and carrying their
preparations farther.
The command given already to the women (iii.
22) is now extended to them all — that they
should ask of the terror-stricken people such
portable things as, however precious, poorly re-
quited their generations of unpaid and cruel toil.
(It has been already shown that the word ab-
surdly rendered " borrow " means to ask; and is
the same as when Sisera asked water and Jael
gave him milk, and when Solomon asked wis-
dom, and did not ask long life, neither asked
riches, neither asked the life of his enemies.)
They were now to claim such wages as they
could carry off, and thus the pride of Egypt wis
presently dedicated to construct and beautify the
tabernacle of Jehovah. We read that the people
found favour with the Egyptians, who were
doubtless overjoyed to come to any sort of terms
with them; "moreover the man Moses was very
great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pha-
raoh's servants, and in the sight of the people."
This is no unbecoming vaunt: it speaks only of
the high place he held, as God's deputy and
herald; and this tone of keen appreciation of the
rank conceded him, compared with the utter ab-
sence of any insistence upon any action of his
own. is evidence much rather of the authenticity
of the work than the reverse.
By these demands expectation and faith were
intensified; while the tidings of such confidence
on one side, and such tame submission on the
other, goes far to explain the suspicions and the
rage of Pharaoh.
With this the narrative is resumed. Moses
had said, " Thou shalt see my face no more."
Now he adds, "Thus saith Jehovah, About mid-
night " (but not on that same night, since four
days of preparation for the passover were yet to
come) " I will go out into the midst of Egypt."
This, then, was the meaning of his ready con-
sent to be seen no more: Jehovah Himself, Who
had dealt so dreadfully with them through other
hands, was now Himself to come. " And all the
firstborn of Egypt shall die," from the firstborn
and viceroy of the king to the firstborn of the
meanest of women, and even of the cattle in their
stalls. (It is surely a remarkable coincidence
that Menephtah's heroic son did actually sit upon
his throne, that inscriptions engraven during his
life exhibit his name in the royal cartouche, bat
that he perished early, and long before his
father.) And the wail of demonstrative Oriental
agony should be such as never was heard before.
But the children of Israel should be distinguished
and protected by their God. And all these cour-
tiers should come and bow down before Moses
(who even then has the good feeling not to in-
clude the king himself in this abasement), and
instead of Pharaoh's insulting " Get thee from
me — see my face no more," they should pray him
saying, " Go hence, thou and thy people that
follow thee." And remembering the abject en-
treaties, the infatuated treacheries, and now this
crowning insult, he went out from Pharaoh in
hot anger. He was angry and sinned not.
The ninth and tenth verses are'a kind of sum-
mary: the appeals to Pharaoh are all over, and
henceforth we shall find Moses preparing his
own followers for their exodus. " And the
Lord (had) said unto Moses, Pharaoh will not
hearken unto you, that My wonders may be
multiplied in the land of Egypt. And Mo?es
and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh;
and the Lord made strong Pharaoh's heart, and
he did not let the children of Israel go out of his
land."
In the Gospel of St. John there comes just
such a period. The record of miracle and con-
troversy is at an end, and Jesus withdraws into
the bosom of His intimate circle. It is scarcely
possible that the evangelist was unconscious of
the influence of this passage when he wrote:
" But though He had done so many signs before
them, yet they believed not on Him, that the
word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled
which he spoke, Lord, who hath believed our
report? . . . For this cause they could not be-
lieve, because that Isaiah said again. He hath
blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest
they should see with their eyes and perceive with
their heart, and should turn, and I should heal
them" (John xii. 37-40).
This is the tragedy of Egypt repeated in Israel;
and the fact that the chosen seed is now the
reprobate suffices, if any doubt remain, to prove
that reprobation itself was not caprice, but
retribution.
CHAPTER XII.
THE PASSOVER.
Exodus xii. 1-28.
We have now reached the birthday of the
great Hebrew nation, and with it tlie first
national institution, the feast of passover. which
is also the first sacrifice of directly Divine insM-
tution, the earliest precept of the Hebrew legis-
lation, and the only one sriven in Egypt.
The Jews had by this time learned to feel that
they were a nation, if it were only through the
struggle between their champion and the bead of
the greatest nation in the world. And the first
aspect in which the feast of passover presents
itself is that of a national commemoration.
164
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
This day was to be unto them the beginning of
months; and in the change of their calendar to
celebrate their emancipation, the device was
anticipated by which France endeavoured to
glorify the Revolution. All their reckoning was
to look back to this signal event. " And this
day shall be unto you for a memorial, and ye
shall keep it for a feast unto the Lord; through-
out your generations ye shall keep it a feast by
an ordinance for ever" (xii. 14). "It shall be
for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a
memorial between thine eyes, that the law of the
Lord may be in thy mouth, for with a strong
hand hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt.
Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in its
season from year to year" (xiii. 9, 10).
Now for the first time we read of " the congre-
gation of Israel " (xii. 3, 6), which was an
assembly of the people represented by their
elders (as may be seen by comparing the third
verse with the twenty-first) ; and thus we dis-
cover that the " heads of houses " have been
drawn into a larger unity. The clans are knit
together into a nation.
Accordingly, the feast might not be celebrated
by any solitary man. Companionship was vital
to it. At every table one animal, complete and
undissevered, should give to the feast a unity of
sentiment; and as many should gather around as
were likely to leave none of it uneaten. Neither
might any of it be reserved to supply a hasty
ration amid the confusion of tfie predicted
march. The feast was to be one complete event,
whole and perfect as the unity which it ex-
pressed. The very notion of a people is that of
" community " in responsibilities, joys, and
labours; and the solemn law by virtue of which,
at this same hour, one blow will fall upon all
Egypt, must now be accepted by Israel. There-
fore loneliness at the feast of Passover is by the
law, as well as in idea, impossible to any Jew.
Every one can see the connection between this
festival of unity and another, of which it is writ-
ten, " We, being many, are one body, one loaf,
for we are all partakers of that one loaf."
Now, the sentiment of nationality may so
assert itself, like all exaggerated sentiments, as
to assail others equally precious. ' In this century
we have seen a revival of the Spartan theories
which sacrificed the family to the state. So-
cialism and the phalanstere have proposed to do
by public organisation, with the force of law,
what natural instinct teaches us to leave to do-
mestic influences. It is therefore worthy of
notice that, as the chosen nation is carefully
traced by revelation back to a holy family, so
the national festival did not ignore the family
tie, but consecrated it. The feast was to be
eaten "according to their fathers' houses"; if a
family were too small, it was to the " neighbour
next unto his house " that each should turn for
co-operation; and the patriotic celebration was
to live on from age to age by the instruction
which parents should carefully give their chil-
dren (xii. 3, 26, xiii. 8).
The first ordinance of the Jewish religion was
a domestic service. And this arrangement is
divinely wise. Never was a nation truly pros-
perous or permanently strong which did not
cherish the sanctities of home. Ancient Rome
failed to resist the barbarians, not because her
discipline had degenerated, but because evil
habits in the home had ruined her population.
The same is notoriously true of at least one great
nation to-day. History is the sieve of God, in
which He continually severs the chafT from the
grain of nations, preserving what is temperate
and pure and calm, and therefore valorous and
wise.
In studying the institution of the Passover,
with its profound typical analogies, we must not
overlook the simple and obvious fact that God
built His nation upon families, and bade their
great national institution draw the members of
each home together.
The national character of the feast is shown
further because no Egyptian family escaped the
blow. Opportunities had been given to them to
evade some of the previous plagues. When the
hail was announced, " he that feared the word of
the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh made
his servants and his cattle flee into the house";
and this renders the national solidarity, the part-
nership even of the innocent in the penalties of
a people's guilt, the " community " of a nation,
more apparent now. There was not a house
where there was not one dead. The mixed mul-
titude which came up with Israel came not be-
cause they had shared his exemptions, but be-
cause they dared not stay. It was an object-
lesson given to Israel, which might have warned
all his generation^.
And if there is hideous vice in our own land
to-day, or if the contrasts of poverty and wealth
are so extreme that humanity is shocked by so
much luxury insulting so much squalor, — if in
any respect we feel that our own land, consider-
ing its supreme advantages, merits the wrath of
God for its unworthiness, — then we have to fear
and strive, not through public spirit alone, but
as knowing that the chastisement of nations falls
upon the corporate whole, upon us and upon
our children.
But if the feast of the Passover was a com-
memoration, it also claims to be a sacrifice, and
the first sacrifice which was Divinely founded
and directed.
This brings us face to face with the great ques-
tion. What is the doctrine which lies at the heart
of the great institution of sacrifice?
We are not free to confine its meaning alto-
gether to that which was visible at the time.
This would contradict the whole doctrine of de-
velopment, the intention of God that Chris-
tianity should blossom from the bud of Judaism,
and the explicit assertion that the prophets were
made aware that the full meaning and the date
of what they uttered was reserved for the instruc-
tion of a later period (i Peter i. 12).
But neither may we overlook the first palpable
significance of any institution. Sacrifices never
could have been devised to be a blind and empty
pantomime to whole generations, for the bene-
fit of their successors. Still less can one who
believes in a genuine revelation to Moses sup-
pose that their primary meaning was a false one,
given in order that some truth might afterwards
develop out of it.
What, then, might a pious and well-instructed
Israelite discern beneath the surface of this insti-
tution?
To this question there have been many dis-
cordant answers, and the variance is by no means
confined to unbelieving critics. Thus, a dis-
tinguished living expositor says in connection
with the Paschal institution, " We speak not of
blood as it is commonly understood, but of blood
as the life, the love, the heart, — the whole quality
Exodus xii. 1-28.] THE PASSOVER. 165
of Deity." But it must be answered that Deity asked to believe that Hebrew sacrifices, with all
is the last suggestion which blood would convey their solemn import and all their freight of
to a Jewish mind: distinctly it is creature-life that Christian symbolism, were origmally no more
it expresses; and the New Testament commen- than a gift to the Deity of a part of some happy
tators make it plain that no other notion had banquet.
even then evolved itself: they think of the ofifer- It is quite plain that no such theory can be
ing of the Body of Jesus Christ, not of His reconciled with the story of the first passover.
Deity.* Neither of this feast, nor of that which And accordingly this is declared to be non-
the gospel of Jesus has evolved from it, can we historical, and to have originated in the time of
find the solution by forgetting that the elements the later kings. The offering of the firstborn is
of the problem are, not deity, but a Body and only " the expression of thankfulness to the
Blood. Deity for fruitful flocks and herds. If claim is
But when we approach the theories of rational- also laid to the human firstborn, this is merely
istic thinkers, we find a perfect chaos of rival a later generalisation" (Wellhausen, p. 88).*
speculations. But this claim is by no means the only stum-
We are told that the Hebrew feasts were really bling-block in the way of the theory, serious a
agricultural—" Harvest festivals," and that the stumbling-block though it be. How came the
epithet Passover had its origin in the passage of bright festival to be spoiled by bitter herbs and
the sun into Aries. But this great festival had a " bread of affliction "? Is it natural that a merry
very secondary and subordinate connection with feast should grow more austere as time elapses?
harvest (only the waving of a sheaf upon the Do we not find it hard enough to prevent the
second day) while the older calendar which was most sacred festvals from reversing the supposed
displaced to do it honour was truly agricultural, process, and degenerating into revels? And is
as may still be seen by the phrase, " The feast of not this the universal experience, from San
ingathering at the end of the year, when thou Francisco to Bombay? Why was the mandate
gatherest in thy labours out of the field " (Exod. given to sprinkle the door of every house with
xxiii. 16). blood, if the story originated after the feast had
In dealing with unbelief we must look at things been centralised in Jerusalem, when, in fact, this
from the unbelieving angle of vision. No seep- precept had to be set aside as impracticable, their
tical theory has any right to invoke for its help homes being at a distance? Why,^ again, were
a special and differentiating quality in Hebrew they bidden to slaughter the lamb " between the
thought. Reject the supernatural, and the Jew- two evenings" (Exod. xii. 6)— that is to say,
ish religion is only one among a number of simi- between sunset and the fading out of the light —
lar creations of the mind of man " moving about unless the story was written long before such
in worlds unrecognised." And therefore we numbers had to be dealt with that the priests be-
must ask What notions of sacrifice were enter- gan to slaughter early in the afternoon, and con-
tained all around, when the Hebrew creed was tinned until night? Why did the narrative set
forming itself? forth that every man might slaughter for his own
Now we read that " in the early days ... a house (a custom which still existed in the time
sacrifice was a meal. . . Year after year, the re- of Hezekiah, when the Levites only slaughtered
turn of vintage, corn-harvest, and sheep-shearing " the passovers " for those who were not cere-
brought together the members of the household monially clean, 2 Chron. xxx. 17), if there were
to eat and drink in the presence of Jehovah. . . no stout and strong historical foundation for the
When an honoured guest arrives there is slaugh- older method? • • ,
tered for him a calf, not without an offering of Stranger still, why was the original command
the blood and fat to the Deity " (Wellhausen, invented, that the lamb should be chosen and
Israel, p. 76). Of the sense of sin and propitia- separated four days before the feast? There is
tion "' the ancient sacrifices present few traces. . . no trace of any intention that this precept should
An underlying reference of sacrifice to sin, speak- apply to the first passover alone. It is some-
ing generally, was entirely absent. The ancient what unexpected there, interrupting the hurry
sacrifices were wholly of a joyous nature— a and movement of the narrative with an interval
merry-making before Jehovah with music" of quiet expectation, not otherwise hmted at,
(ibid p. 81). which we comprehend and value when discov-
We are at once confronted by the question, ered, rather than anticipate in advance. It is the
Where did the Jewish nation come by such a very last circumstance which the Priestly Code
friendly conception of their deity? They had would have invented, when the time \vhich could
come out of Egypt, where human sacrifices were be conveniently spent upon a pilgrimage was
not rare They had settled in Palestine, where too brief to suflfer the custom to be perpetuated,
such idyllic notions must have been as strange The selection of the lamb upon the tenth day,
as in modern Ashantee. And we are told that the slaying of it at home, the striking of the
human sacrifices (such as that of Isaac and of blood upon the door, and the use of hyssop, as
Jephthah's daughter) belong to this older period in other sacrifices, with which to sprinkle it
(p 69) Are they joyous and festive? are they whether upon door or altar; the eating of the
not an endeavour, by the oflfering up of some- feast standing, with staflf in hand and girded
thing precious, to reconcile a Being Who is loins; the application only to one day of the
estranged? With our knowledge of what ex-
;cf<»H in Tcrapl in the neriod confessed to be his- * Here the sceptical theorists are widely divided among
isted in Israel in tne perioa coniesseu 10 uc n s them.selves. Kuenen has discussed this whole theory, and
torical, and of the meaning of sacrihces a 1 rejected it as "irreconcilable with what the Old Testa-
around in the period supposed to be mythical, ment itself asserts in justification of this sacrifice." And
or,^ ,.,;fli fViP !idmi<;<;inn that human sacrifices he is driven to connect it with the notion of atonement.
and with the ?^/"'SSlon tnat numan sacrmccs ..j^j^^^^, ^^^^r^ as a severe being: who must be propi-
must be taken into account, it is startling to Oe tiated with sacrifices." He has therefore to introduce the
notion of human sacrifice, in order to get rid of the con-
♦ Thoueh of course the Person Whose Body was thus nection with the penal death of the Egyptians, and of the
offered is Divine (Acts XX. 28), and this gives inestimable miraculous, which this example would establish, {/ie-
value to the offering. ^t^^'"" 0/ Israel, Eng. Trans., i. 2^9, 240.)
i66
THE BOOK Or EXODUS.
precept to eat no leavened bread, ajid the sharing
in the feast by all, without regard to ceremonial
defilement, — all these are cardinal differences be-
tween the first passover and later ones. Can we
be blind to their significance? Even a drastic
revision of the story, such as some have fancied,
would certainly have expunged every divergence
upon points so capital as these. Nor could any
evidence of the antiquity of the institution be
clearer than its existence in a form, the details
ot which have had to be so boldly modified under
the pressure of the exigencies of the later time.
Taking, then, the narrative as it stands, we
place ourselves by an effort of the historical
imagination among those to whom Moses gave
his instructions, and ask what emotions are ex-
cited as we listen.
Certainly no light and joyous feeling that we
are going to celebrate a feast, and share our
good things with our deity. Nay, but an
alarmed surprise. Hitherto, among the admoni-
tory and preliminary plagues of Egypt, Israel
had enjoyed a painless and unbought exemption.
The murrain had not slain their cattle, nor the
locusts devoured their land, nor the darkness ob-
scured their dwellings. Such admonitions they
needed not. But now the judgment itself is im-
pending, and they learn that they, like the Egyp-
tians whom they have begun to despise, are in
danger from the destroying angel. The first
paschal feast was eaten by no man with a light
heart. Each listened for the rustling of awful
wings, and grew cold, as under the eyes of the
death which was. even then, scrutinising his
lintels and his doorposts.
And this would set him thinking that even a
gracious God, Who had " come down " to save
him from his tyrants, discerned in him grave
reasons for displeasure, since his acceptance,
while others died, was not of course. His own
conscience would then quickly tell him what
some at least of those reasons were.
But he would also learn that the exemption
which he did not possess by right (although a
son of Abraham) he might obtain through grace.
The goodness of God did not pronounce him
safe, but it pointed out to him a way of salvation.
He would scarcely observe, so entirely was it a
matter of course, that this way must be of God's
appointment and not of his own invention —
that if he devised much more costly, elaborate,
and imposing ceremonies to replace those which
Moses taught him, he would perish like any
Egyptian who devised nothing, but simply cow-
ered under the shadow of the impending doom.
Nor was the salvation without priced It was
not a prayer nor a fast which bought it, but a
life. The conviction that a redemption was
necessary if God should be at once just and a
jnstifier of the ungodly sprang neither from a
later hairsplitting logic, nor from a methodising
theological science: it really lay upon the very
surface of this and every offering for sin, as dis-
tinguished from those offerings which expressed
the gratitude of the accepted.
We have not far to search for evidence that
the lamb was really regarded as a substitute and
ransom. The assertion is part and parcel of the
narrative itself. For. in commemoration of this
deliverance, every firstborn of Israel, whether of
man or beast, was set apart unto the Lord. The
words are. " Thou shalt cause to pa.ss over unto
the Lord all that openeth the womb, and every
firstling which thou hast that cometh of a beast;
the males shall be the Lord's " (xiii. 12). What,
then, should be done with the firstborn of a
creature unfit for sacrifice? It should be re-
placed by a clean offering, and then it was said
to be redeemed. Substitution or death was the
inexorable rule. '' Every firstborn of an ass thou
shalt redeem with a lamb, and if thou wilt not
redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck." The
meaning of this injunction is unmistakable. But
it applies also to man: " All thy firstborn of man
among thy sons thou shalt redeem." And when
their sons should ask " What meaneth this? "
they were to explain that when Pharaoh hard-
ened himself against letting them go from Egypt,
" the Lord slew all the firstborn in the land, . . .
therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all that openeth
the womb being males; but all the firstborn of
my sons I redeem " (xiii. 12-15).
Words could not more plainly assert that the
lives of the firstborn of Israel were forfeited,
that they were brought back by the substitution
of another creature, which died instead, and that
the transaction answered to the Passover (" thou
shalt cause to pass over unto the Lord "). Pres-
ently the tribe of Levi was taken " instead of all
the firstborn of the children of Israel." But
since there were two hundred and seventy-three
of such firstborn children over and above the
number of the Levites, it became necessary to
"redeem" these; and this was actually done by
a cash payment of five shekels apiece. Of thi>
payment the same phrase is used: it is " redemp-
tion-money " — the money wherewith the odd
number of them is redeemed (Num. iii. 44-51).
The question at present is not whether modern
taste approves of all this, or resents it: we are
simply inquiring whether an ancient Jew was
taught to think of the lamb as offered in his
stead.
And now let it be observed that this idea has
sunk deep into all the literature of Palestine.
The Jews are not so much the beloved of Je-
hovah as His redeemed — " Thy people whom
Thou hast redeemed" (i Chron. xvii. 21). In
fresh troubles the prayer is, " Redeem Israel, O
Lord " (Ps. XXV. 22), and the same word is often
used where we have ignored the allusion and
rendered it " Deliver me because of mine ene-
mies . . . deliver me from the oppression of
men " (Ps. Ixix. 18. cxix. 134). And the future
troubles are to end in a deliverance of the same
kind: "The ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come with singing unto Zion " (Isa. xxxv.
10, li. 11); and at the last " I will ransom them
from the power of the grave " (Hos. xiii. 14).
In all these places, the word is the same as in
this narrative.
It is not too much to say that if modern the-
ology were not affected by this ancient problem,
if we regarded the creed of the Hebrews simply
as we look at the mythologies of other peoples,
there would be no more doubt that the early
Jews believed in propitiatory sacrifice than that
Phoenicians did. We should simply admire the
purity, the absence of cruel and degrading ac-
cessories, Avith which this most perilous and yei
humbling and admonitory doctrine was held in
Israel.
The Christian applications of this doctrine
must be considered along with the whole ques-
tion of the typical character of the history.^ But
it is not now premature to add. that even in the
Old Testament there is abundant evidence that
the types were semi-transparent, and behind
Exodus xii. 1-28.] ■
THE PASSOVER.
167
them something greater was discerned, so that
after it was written " Bring no more vain obla-
tions." Isaiah could exclaim, " The Lord hath
laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was led
as a lamb to the slaughter. When Thou shalt
make His soul a trespass-ofifering He shall see
His seed " (Isa. i. 13, liii. 6, 7, 10). And the full
power of this last verse will only be felt when we
remember the statement made elsewhere of the
principle which underlay the sacrifices: "the life
(or soul) of the flesh is in the blood, and I have-
given it to you upon the altar to make atonement
for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh
atonement by reason of the life " (or " soul " —
Lev. xvii. 11, R. V.). It is even startling to
read the two verses together: " Thou shalt make
His soul a trespass-ofifering;" " The blood
maketh atonement by reason of the soul . . . the
soul of the flesh is in the blood." *
It is still more impressive to remember that a
Servant of Jehovah has actually arisen in Whom
this doctrine has assumed a form acceptable to
the best and holiest intellects and consciences of
ages and civilisations widely remote from that in
which it was conceived.
Another doctrine preached by the passover to
every Jew was that he must be a worker together
with God, must himself use what the Lord
pointed out, and his own lintels and doorposts
must openly exhibit the fact that he laid claim
to the benefit of the institution of the Lord Je-
hovah's passover. With what strange feelings,
upon the morrow, did the orphaned people of
Egypt discover the stain of blood on the for-
saken houses of all their emancipated slaves!
The lamb having been offered up to God, a
new stage in the symbolism is entered upon.
The body of the sacrifice, as well as the blood,
is His: " Ye shall eat it in haste, it is the Lord's
passover" (ver. 11). Instead of being a feast of
theirs, which they share with Him, it is an offer-
ing of which, when the blood has been sprinkled
on the doors. He permits His people, now ac-
cepted and favoured, to partake. They are His
guests; and therefore He prescribes all the man-
ner of their eating, the attitude so expressive of
haste, and the unleavened " bread of affliction "
and bitter herbs, which told that the object of
this feast was not the indulgence of the flesh but
the edification of the spirit, " a feast unto the
Lord."
And in the strength of this meat they are
launched upon their new career, freemen, pil-
grims of God, from Egyptian bondage to a
Promised Land.
It is now time to examine the chapter in more
detail, and gather up such points as the preced-
ing discussion has not reached.
(Ver. I.) The opening words, " Jehovah spake
unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,"
have all the appearance of opening a separate
document, and suggest, with certain other evi-
dence, the notion of a fragment written very
shortly after the event, and afterwards incorpo-
rated into the present narrative. And they are,
in the same degree, favourable to the authenticity
of the book.
* The astonishing- sig-nificance of this declaration -would
only be deepened if we accepted the theories now so fash-
ionable, and believed that the later passage in Isaiah was
the fruit of a period when the full-blown Priestly Code
■was in process of development out of " the small body of
legislation contained in Lev. xvii.— xxvi." What a
strange time for such a spiritual application of sacrificial
language !
(Ver. 2) The commandment to link their eman-
cipation with a festival, and with the calendar, is
the earliest example and the sufficient vindica-
tion of sacred festivals, which, even yet, somo
persons consider to be superstitious and judaical.
Elut it is a strange doctrine that the Passover
deserved honour better than Easter does, or
that there is anything more servile and unchris-
tian in celebrating the birth of all the hopes of
all mankind than in commemorating one's own
birth.
(Ver. 5.) The selection of a lamb for a sacri-
fice so quickly became universal that there is no
trace anywhere of the use of a kid in place of it.
The alternative is therefore an indication of an-
tiquity, while the qualities required — innocent
youth and the absence of blemish — were sure to
suggest a typical significance. For, if they were
merely to enhance its value, why not choose a
costlier animal?
Various meanings have been discovered in the
four days during which it was reserved; but
perhaps the true object was to give time for de-
liberation, for the solemnity and import of the
institution to fill the minds of the people; time
also for preparation, since the night itself was
one of extreme haste, and prompt action can
only be obtained by leisurely anticipation. We
have Scriptural authority for applying it to the
Antitype, Who also was foredoomed, " the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world " (Rev.
xiii. 8).
But now it has to be observed that throughout
the poetic literature the people is taught to think
of itself as a flock of sheep. " Thou leddest Thy
people like a flock by the hand of Moses and
Aaron" (Ps. Ixxvii. 20); "We are Thy people
and the sheep of Thy pasture" (Ps. Ixxix. 13);
" All we like sheep have gone astray " (Isa. liii.
6); "Ye, O My sheep, the sheep of My pasture,
are men" (Ezek. xxxiv. 31); " The Lord of hosts
hath visited His flock " (Zech. x. 3). All such
language would make more easy the conception
that what replaced the forfeited life was in some
sense, figuratively, in the religious idea, a kin^
dred victim. One who offered a lamb as his
substitute sang " The Lord is my shepherd." " I
have gone astray like a lost sheep " (Ps. xxiii. 1,
cxix. 176).
(Ver. 3, 6.) Very instructive it is that this
first sacrifice of Judaism could be offered by all
the heads of houses. We have seen that the Le-
vites were presently put into the place of the
eldest son, but also that this function was exer-
cised down to the time of Hezekiah by all who
were ceremonially clean, whereas the opposite
holds good, immediately afterwards, in the great
passover of Joshua (2 Chron. xxx. 17, xxxv. 11).
It is impossible that this incongruity could be
devised, for the sake of plausibility, in a narra-
tive which rested on no solid basis. It goes far
to establish what has been so anxiously denied —
the reality of the centralised worship in the time
of Hezekiah. And it also establishes the great
doctrine that priesthood was held not by a
superior caste, but on behalf of the whole nation,
in whom it was theoretically vested, and for
whom the priest acted, so that they were " a
nation of priests."
(Ver. 8.) The use of unleavened bread is dis-
tinctly said to be in commemoration of their
haste — " for thou camest out of Egypt in haste "
(Deut. xvi. 3) — but it does not follow that they
were forced by haste to eat their bread unleav-
i68
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
ened at the first. It was quite as easy to prepare
leavened bread as to provide the paschal lamb
four days previously.
We may therefore seek for some further expla-
nation, and this v/e find in the same verse in
Deuteronomy, in the expression " bread of afflic-
tion." They were to receive the meat of pass-
over with a reproachful sense of their unworthi-
ness: humbly, with bread of affliction and with
bitter herbs.
Moreover, we learn from St. Paul that un-
leavened bread represents simplicity and truth;
and our Lord spoke of the leaven of the Phari-
sees and of Herod CMark viii. 15). And this is
not only because leaven was supposed to be of
the same nature as corruption. We ourselves
always mean something unworthy when we
speak of mixed motives, possible though it be to
act from two motives, both of them high-minded.
Now, leaven represents mixture in its most
subtle and penetrating form.
The paschal feast did not express any such
luxurious and sentimental religionism as finds in
the story of the cross an easy joy, or even a deli-
cate and pleasing stimulus for the softer emo-
tions, " a very lovely song of one that hath a
pleasant voice, and playeth well on an instru-
ment." No, it has vigour and nourishment for
those who truly hunger, but its bread is un-
fermented, and it must be eaten with bitter
herbs.
(Ver. g.) Many Jewish sacrifices were " sod-
den," but this had to be roast with fire. It may
have been to represent suffering that this was
enjoined. But it comes to us along with a com-
mand to consume all the flesh, reserving none
and rejecting none. Now, though boiling does
not mutilate, it dissipates; a certain amount of
tissue is lost, more is relaxed, and its cohesion
rendered feeble; and so the duty of its complete
reception is accentuated by the words " not sod-
den at all with water." Nor should it be a bar-
barous feast, such as many idolatries encour-
aged: true religion civilises; " eat not of it at all
raw."
(Ver. ID.) Nor should any of it be left until
the morning. At the first celebration, with a
hasty exodus impending, this would have in-
volved exposure to profanation. In later times
it might have involved superstitious abuses.
And therefore the same rule is laid down which
the Church of England has carried on for the
same reasons into the Communion feast — that all
must be consumed. Nor can we fail to see an
ideal fitness in the precept. Of the gift of God
we may not select what gratifies our taste or
commends itself to our desires; all is good; all
must be accepted; a partial reception of His
grace is no valid reception at all.
(Ver. 12.) In describing the coming wrath, we
understand the inclusion equally of innocent and
guilty men, because it is thus that all national
vengeance operates; and we receive the benefits
of corporate life at the cost, often heavy, of its
penalties. The animal world also has to suffer
with us; the whole creation groaneth together
now, and all expects together the benefit of our
adoption hereafter. But what were the judg-
ments against the idols of Egypt, which this
verse predicts, and another (Num. xxxiii. 4) de-
clares to be accomplished? They doubtless con-
sisted chiefly in the destruction of sacred ani-
mals, from the beetle and the frog to the holy ox
of Apis — from the cat, the monkey, and the dog,
to the lion, the hippopotamus, and the crocodile.
In their overthrow a blow was dealt which shook
the whole system to its foundation; for how
could the same confidence be felt in sacred
images when all the sacred beasts had once been
slain by a rival invisible Spiritual Being! And
more is implied than that they should share the
common desolation: the text says plainly, of
men and beasts the firstborn must die, but all of
these. The difference in the phrase is obvious
and indisputable; and in its fulfilment all Egypt
saw the act of a hostile and victorious deity.
(Ver. 13.) " And the blood shall be to you for
a token upon the houses where ye are." That it
was a token to the destroying angel we see
plainly; but why to themf Is it enough to ex-
plain the assertion, with some, as meaning, upon
their behalf? Rather let us say that the pub-
licity, the exhibition upon their doorposts of the
sacrifice offered within, was not to inform and
guide the angel, but to edify the people. They
should perform -an open act of faith. Their
houses should be visibly set apart. " With the
mouth confession " (oi faith) " is made unto sal-
vation," unto that deliverance from a hundred
evasions and equivocations, and as many inward
doubts and hesitations, which comes when any
decisive act is done, when the die is cast and the
Rubicon crossed. A similar effect upon the
mind, calming and steadying it, was produced
when the Israelite carried out the blood of the
lamb, and by sprinkling it upon the door post
formally claimed his exemption, and returned
with the consciousness that between him and the
imminent death a visible barrier interposed
itself.
Will any one deny that a similar help is offered
to us of the later Church in our many opportuni-
ties of avowing a fixed and personal belief?
Whoever refuses to comply with an unholy cus-
tom because he belongs to Christ, whoever joins
heartily in worship at the cost of making himself
remarkable, whoever nerves himself to kneel at
the Holy Table alt*hough he feels himself un-
worthy, that man has broken through many
snares; he has gained assurance that his choice
of God is a reality: he has shown his flag; and
this public avowal is not only a sign to others,
but also a token to himself.
But this is only half the doctrine of this action.
What he should thus openly avow was his trust
(as we have shown) in atoning blood.
And in the day of our peril what shall be our
reliance? That our doors are trodden by ortho-
dox visitants only? that the lintels are clean, and
the inhabitants temperate and pure? or that the
Blood of Christ has cleansed our conscience?
Therefore (ver. 22) the blood was sprinkled
with hyssop, of which the light and elastic sprays
were admirably suited for such use, but which
was reserved in the Law for those sacrifices
which expiated sin CLev. xiv. 49; Num. xix. 18,
19). And therefore also none should go forth
out of his house until the morning, for we are
not to content ourselves with having once in-
voked the shelter of God: we are to abide under
its protection while danger lasts.
And (ver. 23) upon the condition of this mark-
ing of their doorposts the Lord should pass over
their houses. The phrase is noteworthy, because
it recurs throughout the narrative, being em-
ployed nine times in this chapter; and because
the same word is found in Isaiah, again in con-
trast with the ruin of others, and with an inter-
Exodus xii 29-36]
THE TENTH PLAGUE.
169
esting and beautiful expansion of the hovering,
poised notion which belongs to the word.*
Repeated commandments are given to parents
to teach the meaning of this institution to their
children, (xii. 26, xiii. 8). And there is some-
thing almost cynical in the notion of a later
mythologist devising this appeal to a tradition
which had no existence at all; enrolling, in sup-
port of his new institutions, the testimony (which
had never been borne) of fathers who had never
taught any story of the kind.
On the other hand, there is something idyllic
and beautiful in the minute instruction given to
the heads of families to teach their children, and
in the simple words put into their mouths, " It
is because of that which the Lord did for me
when I came forth out of Egypt." It carries us
forward to these weary days when children
scarcely see the face of one who goes out to
labour before they are awake, and returns ex-
hausted when their day is over, and who himself
too often needs the most elementary instruction,
these heartless days when the teaching of re-
ligion devolves, in thousands of families, upon
the stranger who instructs, for one hour in the
week, a class in Sunday-school. The contrast
is not reassuring.
When all these instructions were given to
Israel, the people bowed their heads and wor-
shipped. The bones of most of them were
doomed to whiten in the wilderness. They per-
ished by serpents and by "the destroyer"; they
fell in one day three-and-twenty thousand, be-
cause they were discontented and rebellious and
unholy. And yet they could adore the gracious
Giver of promises and Slayer of foes. They
would not obey, but they were quite ready to
accept benefits, to experience deliverance, to be-
come the favourites of heaven, to march to
Palestine. So are too many fain to be made
happy, to find peace, to taste the good word of
God and the powers of the age to come, to go to
heaven. But they will not take up a cross.
They will murmur if the well is bitter, if they
have no flesh but only angels' food, if the goodly
land is defended by powerful enemies.
On these terms, they cannot be Christ's dis'
ciples.
It is apparently the mention of a mixed multi-
tude, who came with Israel out of Egypt, which
suggests the insertion, in a separate and dislo-
cated paragraph, of the law of the passover con-
cerning strangers (vers. 38, 43-49).
An alien was not to eat thereof: it belonged
especially to the covenant people. But who was
a stranger? A slave should be circumcised and
eat thereof; for it was one of the benignant pro-
visions of the law that there should not be
added, to the many severities of his condition,
any religious disabilities. The time would come
when all nations should be blessed in the seed
of Abraham. In that day the poor would receive
a special beatitude; and in the meantime, as the
first indication of catholicity beneath the surface
of an exclusive ritual, it was announced, fore-
most among those who should be welcomed
within the fold, that a slave should be circum-
cised and eat the passover.
* So that it is used equally of the slow action of the lame,
and of the lingering- movements of the false prophets
when there ^vas none to answer C2 Sam. iv. 4 ; i Kings
xviii. 26). " The Lord of Hosts shall come down to fight
"ijpon Mount Zion. ... As birds flying, so will the Lord
of Hosts protect Jerusalem ; He will pass over and pre-
serve it " (Isa. xxxi. 4, 5).
And if a sojourner desired to eat thereof, he
should be mindful of his domestic obligations:
all his males should be circumcised along with
him, and then his disabilities were at an end.
Surely we can see in these provisions the germ
of the broader and more generous welcome
which Christ offers to the world. Let it be
added that this admission of strangers had been
already implied at verse 19: while every form of
coercion was prohibited by the words " a so-
journer and a hired servant shall not eat of it,"
in verse 45.
THE TENTH PLAGUE.
Exodus xii. 29-36.
And now the blow fell. Infants grew cold in
their mothers' arms; ripe statesmen and crafty
priests lost breath as they reposed: the wisest,
the strongest, and the most hopeful of the nation
were blotted out at once, for the firstborn of a
population is its flower.
Pharaoh Menephtah had only reached the
throne by the death of two elder brethren, and
therefore history confirms the assertion that he
"rose up," when the firstborn were dead; but
it also justifies the statement that his firstborn
died, for the gallant and promising youth who
had reconquered for him his lost territories, and
who actually shared his rule and " sat upon the
throne," Menephtah Seti, is now shown to have
died early, and never to have held an inde-
pendent sceptre.
We can imagine the scene. Suspense and ter-
ror must have been wide-spread; for the former
plagues had given authority to the more dread-
ful threat, the fulfilment of which was now to be
expected, since all negotiations between Moses
and Pharaoh had been formally broken of?.
Strange and confident movements and doubt-
less menacing expressions among the Hebrews
would also make this night a fearful one, and
there was little rest for " those who feared the
Lord among the servants of Pharaoh." These,
knowing where the danger lay, would watch
their firstborn well, and when the ashy change
came suddenly upon a blooming face, and they
raised the wild cry of Eastern bereavement, then
others awoke to the same misery. From re-
mote villages and lonely hamlets the clamour of
great populations was echoed back; and when,
under midnight skies in which the strong wind
of the morrow was already moaning, the awe-
struck people rushed into their temples, there
the corpses of their animal deities glared at
them with glassy eyes.
Thus the cup which they had made their
slaves to drink was put in larger measure to their
own lips at last, and not infants only were
snatched away, but sons around whom years of
tenderness had woven stronger ties; and the loss
of their bondsmen, from which they feared so
much national weakness, had to be endured
along with a far deadlier drain of their own life-
blood. The universal wail was bitter, and hope-
less, and full of terror even more than woe; for
they said, " We be all dead men." Without the
consolation of ministering by sick beds, or the
romance and gallant excitement of war, " there
was not a house where there was not one dead,"
and this is said to give sharpness to the state-
ment that there was a great cry in Egypt.
170
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
Then came such a moment as the Hebrew
terpperament keenly enjoyed, when " the sons of
them that oppressed them came bending unto
them, and all they that despised them bowed
themselves down at the soles of their feet." Pha-
raoh sent at midnight to surrender everything
that could possibly be demanded, and in his ab-
ject fear added, "and bless me also"; and the
Egyptians were urgent on them to begone, and
when they demanded the portable wealth of the
land, — a poor ransom from a vanquished enemy,
and a still poorer payment for generations of
forced labour. — " the Lord gave them favour "
(is there not a saturnine irony in the phrase?)
" in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let
them have what they asked. And they spoiled
the Egyptians."
By this analogy St. Augustine defended the
use of heathen learning in defence of Christian
truth. Clogged by superstitions, he said, it con-
tained also liberal instruction, and truths even
concerning God — " gold and silver which they
did not themselves create, but dug out of the
mines of God's providence, and misapplied.
These we should reclaim, and apply to Christian
use" (De Doct. Chr.. 60. 61).
And the main lesson of the story lies so
plainly upon the surface that one scarcely needs
to state it. What God requires must ultimately
be done: and human resistance, however stub-
born and protracted, will only make the result
more painful and more signal at the last.
Now, every concern of our obscure daily lives
comes under this law as surely as the actions of
a Pharaoh.
THE EXODUS.
Exodus xii. 37-42.
The children of Israel journeyed from Rameses
to Succoth. Already, at the outset of their
journey, controversy has had much to say about
their route. Much ingenuity has been expended
upon the theory which brought their early jour-
ney along the Mediterranean coast, and made
the overthrow of the Egyptians take place in
" that Serbonian bog where armies whole have
sunk." But it may fairly be assumed that this
view was refuted even before the recent identifi-
cation of the sites of Rameses and Pihahiroth
rendered it untenable.
How came these trampled slaves, who could
not call their lives their own, to possess the cattle
which we read of as having escaped the murrain,
and the number of which is here said to have
been very great?
Just before Moses returned, and when the
Pharaoh of the Exodus appears upon the scene,
we are told that " their cry came up unto God,
. . . and God heard their groaning, and God
remembered His covenant . . . and God saw
the children of Israel, and God took knowledge
of them " (ii. 23).
May not this verse point to something unre-
corded, some event before their final deliverance?
The conjecture is a happy one that it refers to
their share in the revolt of subject races which
drove Menephtah for twelve years out of his
northern territories. If so, there was time for a
considerable return of prosperity; and the re-
tention or forfeiture of their chattels when they
were reconquered would depend very greatly
upon circumstances unknown to us. At all
events, this revolt is evidence, which is amply
corroborated by history and the inscriptions, of
the existence of just such a discontented and
servile element in the population as the " mixed
multitude " which came out with them repeatedly
proved itself to be.
But here we come upon a problem of another
kind. How long was Israel in the house of bond-
age? Can we rely upon the present Hebrew
text, which says that " their sojourning which
they sojourned in Egypt, was four hundred and
thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of
the four hundred and thirty years, even the self-
same day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the
Lord came out of the land of Egypt" (xii. 40, 41).
Certain ancient versions have departed from
this text. The Septuagint reads, " The sojourn-
ing of the children of Israel which they so-
journed in Egypt and in tlie land of Canaan, was
four hundred and thirty years "; and the Samari-
tan agrees with this, except that it has " the so-
journing of the children of Israel and of their
fathers" The question is. which reading is cor-
rect? Must we date the four hundred and thirty
years from Abraham's arrival in Canaan, or
from Jacob's descent into Egypt?
For the shorter period there are two strong
arguments. The genealogies in the Pentateuch
range from four persons to six between Jacob
and the Exodus, which number is quite unable
to reach over four centuries. And St. Paul says
of the covenant with Abraham that " the law
which came four hundred and thirty years after "
(i. e., after the time of Abraham) " could not dis-
annul it " (Gal. iii. 17).
This reference by St. Paul is not so decisive as
it may appear, because he habitually quotes the
Septuagint, even where he must have known that
it deviates from the Hebrew, provided that the
deviation does not compromise the matter in
hand. Here, he was in nowise concerned with
the chronology, and had no reason to perplex
a Gentile church by correcting it. But it was a
different matter with St. Stephen, arguing his
case before the Hebrew council. And he quotes
plainly and confidently the prediction that the
seed of Abraham should be four hundred years
in bondage, and that one nation should entrent
them evil four hundred years (Acts vii. 6).
Again, this is the clear intention of the words in
Genesis (xv. 13). And as to the genealogies, we
know them to have been cut down, so that seven
names are omitted from that of Ezra, and three
at least from that of our Lord Himself. Cer-
tainly when we consider the great population
implied in an army of six hundred thousand adult
men, we must admit that the longer period is
inherently the more probable of the two. But
we can only assert with confidence that just when
their deliverance was due it was accomplished,,
and they who had come down a handful, and
whom cruel oppression had striven to decimate,
came forth, no undisciplined mob, but armies
moving in organised and regulated detachments:
" the Lord did bring the children of Israel forth
by their hosts " (ver. 51). " And the children of
Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt "
(xiii. 18).
Exodus xiii. i.J
THE LAW OF THE FIRSTBORN.
171
CHAPTER Xni.
THE LAW OF THE FIRSTBORN.
Exodus xiii. i.
Much that was said in the twelfth chapter is
repeated in the thirteenth. And this repetition
is clearly due to a formal rehearsal, made when
all " their hosts " had mustered in Succoth after
their, first march; for Moses says, " Remember
this day, in which ye came out " (ver. 3). Al-
ready it had been spoken of as a day much to be
remembered, and for its perpetuation the ordi-
nance of the Passover had been founded.
But now this charge is given as a fit prologue
for the remarkable institution which follows — the
consecration to God of all unblemished males
who are the firstborn of their mothers — for such
is the full statement of what is claimed.
In speaking to Moses the Lord says, " Sanc-
tify unto Me all the firstborn ... it is Mine."
But Moses, addressing the people, advances
gradually, and almost diplomatically. First he
reminds them of their deliverance, and in so
doing he employs a phrase which could only
have been used at the exact stage when they
were emancipated and yet upon Egyptian soil:
" By strength of hand the Lord brought you out
from this place " (ver. 3). Then he charges them
not to forget their rescue, in the dangerous time
of their prosperity, when the Lord shall have
brought them into the land which He swore to
give them; and he repeats the ordinance of un-
leavened bread. And it is only then that he
proceeds to announce the permanent consecra-
tion of all their firstborn — the abiding doctrine
that these, who naturally represent the nation,
are for its unworthiness forfeited, and yet by the
grace of God redeemed.
God. Who gave all and pardons all, demands
a return, not as a tax which is levied for its own
sake, but as a confession of dependence, and like
the silk flag presented to the sovereign, on the
anniversaries of the two greatest of English vic-
tories, by the descendants of the conquerors,
who hold their estates upon that tenure. The
firstborn, thus dedicated, should have formed a
sacred class, a powerful element in Hebrew life
enlisted on the side of God.
For these, as we have already seen, the Levites
were afterwards substituted (Num. iii. 44), and
there is perhaps some allusion to this change in
the direction that " all the firstborn of man
thou shalt redeem " (ver. 13). But yet the de-
mand is stated too broadly and imperatively to
belong to that later modification: it suits exactly
the time to which it is attributed, before the tribe
of Levi was substituted for the firstborn of all.
" They are Mine," said Jehovah, Who needed
not, that night, to remind them what He had
wrought the night before. It is for precisely the
same reason that St. Paul claims all souls for
God: " Ye are not your own, ye are bought with
a price; therefore glorify God with your bodies
and with your spirits, which are God's."
And besides the general claim upon us all.
each of us should feel, like the firstborn, that
every special mercy is a call to special gratitude,
to more earnest dedication. " I beseech yon,
by the mercies of God, that ye present your
bodies a living sacrifice " (Rom. xii. i).
There is a tone of exultant confidence in the
words of Moses, very interesting and curious.
He and his nation are breathing the free air at
last. The deliverance that has been given makes
all the promise that remains secure. As one
who feels his pardon will surely not despair of
heaven, so Moses twice over instructs the people
what to do when God shall have kept the oath
which He swore, and brought them into Canaan,
into the land flowing with milk and honey.
Then they must observe His passover. Then
they must consecrate their firstborn.
And twice over this emancipator and law-
giver, in the first flush of his success, impresses
upon them the homely duty of teaching their
households what God had done for them (vers.
8, 14; cf. xii. 26).
This, accordingly, the Psalmist learned, and in
his turn transmitted. He heard with his ears
and his fathers told him what God did in their
days, in the days of old. And he told the gene-
ration to come the praises of Jehovah, and His
strength, and His wondrous works (Ps. xliv. i,
Ixxviii. 4).
But it is absurd to treat these verses, as Kue-
nen does, as evidence that the story is mere
legend: " transmitted from mouth to mouth, it
gradually lost its accuracy and precision, and
adopted all sorts of foreign elements." To prove
which, we are gravely referred to passages like
this. (Religion of Israel, i. 22, Eng. Vers.) The
duty of oral instruction is still acknowledged, but
this does not prove that the narrative is still un-
written.
From the emphatic language in which Moses
urged this double duty, too much forgotten still,
of remembering and showing forth the goodness
of God, sprang the curious custom of the wear-
ing of phylacteries. But the Jews were not bid-
den to wear signs and frontlets: they were bidden
to let hallowed memories be unto them in the
place of such charms as they had seen the Egyp-
tians wear, " for a sign unto thee, upon thine
hand, and for a frontlet between thine eyes, that
the law of the Lord may be in thy mouth " (ver.
9). Such language is frequent in the Old Testa-
ment, where mercy and truth should be bound
around their necks; their fathers' commandments
should be tied around their necks, bound on
their fingers, written on their hearts; and Sion
should clothe herself with her converts as an
ornament, and gird them upon her as a bride
doth (Prov. iii. 3, vi. 21, vii. 3; Isa. xlix. 18).
But human nature still finds the letter of many
a commandment easier than the spirit, a cere-
mony than an obedient heart, penance than peni-
tence, ashes on the forehead than a contrite
spirit, and a phylactery than the gratitude and
acknowledgment which ought to be unto us for
a sign on the hand and a frontlet between the
eyes.
We have already observed the connection be-
tween the thirteenth verse and the events of the
previous night. But there is an interesting
touch of nature in the words " the firstling of an
ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb." It was
afterwards rightly perceived that all unclean ani-
mals should follow the same rule: but why was
only the ass mentioned? Plainly because those
humble journeyers had no other beast of burden.
Horses pursued them presently, but even the
Egyptians of that period used them only in war.
The trampled Hebrews would not possess
camels. And thus again, in the tenth command-
ment, when the stateliest of their cattle is speci-
172
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
fied, no beast of burden is named with it but the
ass: "Thou shalt not covet ... his ox nor his
ass." It is an undesigned coincidence of real
value; a phrase which would never have been de-
vised by legislators of a later date; a frank and
unconscious evidence of the genuineness of the
story.
Some time before this, a new and fierce race,
whose name declared them to be " emigrants,"
had thrust itself in among the tribes of Canaan
— a race which was long to wage equal war with
Israel, and not seldom to see his back turned in
battle. They now held all the south of Palestine,
from the brook of Egypt to Ekron (Josh. xv. 4,
47). And if Moses in the flush of his success
had pushed on by the straight and easy route
into the promised land, the first shock of com-
bat with them would have been felt in a few
weeks. But " God led them not by the way of
the Philistines, though that was near, for God
said. Lest peradventure the people repent them
when they see war, and they return to Egypt "
(ver. 17).
From this we learn two lessons. Why did not
He, Who presently made strong the hearts of the
Egj'ptians to plunge into the bed of the sea,
make the hearts of His own people strong to
defy the Philistines? The answer is a striking
and solemn one. Neither God in the Old Testa-
ment nor God manifested in the flesh, is ever
recorded to have wrought any miracle of spirit-
ual advancement or overthrow. Thus the Egyp-
tians were but confirmed in their own choice :
their decision was carried further. And even
Saul of Tarsus was illuminated, not coerced : he
might have disobeyed the heavenly vision. He
was not an insincere man suddenly coerced into
earnestness, nor a coward suddenly made brave.
In the moral world, adequate means are always
employed for the securing of desired effects.
Love, gratitude, the sense of danger and of
grace, are the powers which elevate characters.
And persons who live in sensuality, fraud, or
falsehood, hoping to be saved some day by a
sort of miracle of grace, ought to ponder this
truth, which may not be the gospel now fashion-
able, but is unquestionably the statement of a
Scriptural fact : in the moral sphere., God works
by means and not by miracle
A free life, the desert air, the rejection of the
unfit by many visitations, and the growth of a
new generation amid thrilling events, in a soul-
stirring region, and under the pure influences of
the law, — these were necessary before Israel
could cross steel with the warlike children of the
Philistines ; and even then, it was not with them
that he should begin.
The other lesson we learn is the tender fidelity
of God, Who will not suffer us to be tempted
above that we are able to bear. He led them
aside into the desert, whither He still in mercy
leads very many who think it a heavy judgment
to be there.
THE BONES OF JOSEPH.
Exodus xiii. 19.
It is certain that Moses, in the days of his
greatness, must often have mused by the sep-
ulchre of the one Israelite before himself who
helc' high rank in Egypt. The knowledge that
ioseih's elevation was providential must have
elped him at that time, now many years ago, to
think rightly of his own. And now we read that
Moses took the bones of Joseph with him. In
the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 22) it is recorded
as the most characteristic example of the faith
of the patriarch, that instead of desiring to be
carried, like his father, at once to Canaan, he
made mention of the departure of the children of
Israel, and gave commandment concerning his
bones. To him Egypt was no longer an alien
land. There only he had known honour with-
out envy, and happiness without betrayal.
There his bones could rest in quiet; but not for
ever. Personal elevation, which had not rent
the cord between him and his unworthy family,
could still less sever the bands between him and
the sacred race. Let him sleep in Egypt while
his grave there was honoured: let the remem-
brance of him be kept fresh, to protect awhile
his kindred; and when the predicted days of evil
came, let his ashes share the neglect and dis-
honour of his people, if only they would remem-
ber his remains when the Lord would lead them
forth. This confidence in their emancipation
was his faith — which meant, here as always, not
a clear view of truth, but an assuring grasp of it.
He had straitly sworn the children of Israel say-
ing, " God will surely visit you; and ye shall
carry up my bones away hence with you."
Many a Christian might well envy a confidence
so practical, so thoroughly realised, entering so
naturally into the tissue of his thoughts and cal-
culations. And their actual remembrance of
him goes to show that the tradition of his faith
had never completely died out, but was among
the influences which kept alive the nation's
hope.
And as the people bore his honoured ashes
through the desert, these being dead spoke of
bygone times, they linked the present and the
past together, they deepened the national con-
sciousness that Israel was a favoured people,
called to no common destiny, sustained by no
common promises, pressing toward no common
goal.
If Israel had been wise, they would have
thought of him, the Israelite in heart, though
glittering in the splendours of Egypt; and would
have considered well that as little as men de-
tected his secret life from his appearance, so
little could theirs be judged. To the eye. they
were free from the foreign trammels in which he
was seemingly entangled, yet many of them in
heart turned back to all which strove in vain to
bind his affections down. The lesson holds
good to-day. Many a modern religionist looks
askance at the " worldliness " of high office and
rank and state; little dreaming that the " world "
he censures is strong in his own ambitious and
self-asserting spirit, and is overcome by the
gentle and tranquil spirit of hundreds of those
whom he condemns.
Bearing this hallowed burden, which might
easily have become an object of superstitious re-
gard, the nation moved from Succoth to Etham
on the edge of the wilderness. And with them
a Presence moved which rebuked all others,
however venerable. The Lord went before
them. It has already been pointed out that
throughout the early history of this nation, just
come out of an idolatrous land, and too ready
to lapse back into superstition. God never re-
veals Himself except in fire. To Abraham and
to Jacob He appeared in human form, and again
to Joshua; but in the interval, never. So now
Exodus xiv. 1-31.]
THE RED SEA.
17-
they see Him by day in a pillar of cloud to guide
them on the way, and by night in a pillar of fire
to give them light. The glory of the nation was
that manifested Presence, lacking which, Moses
besought Him to carry them up no farther.
Nothing in the Exodus is more impressive, and
it sank deep into the national heart. Many cen-
turies afterwards, the ideal of a golden age was
that the Lord should " create over the whole
habitation of Mount Zion, and over her assem-
blies, a cloud of smoke by day, and the shining
of a flaming fire by night " (Isa. iv. 5).
But it has been well observed that, amid the
various allusions to it in Hebrew poetry, not
one treats it as modern literature has done, with
an eye to its marvellous sublimity and pictur-
esque effects:
" By day, along the astonished lands
The cloudy pillar glided slow :
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands
Returned the fiery column's glow."
The Hebrew poetry is vivid and passionate,
but all its concerns are human or divine — God,
and the life of man. It is not artistic, but in-
spired. " The modern poet is delighting in the
scenic effect; the ancient chronicler was wholly
occupied with the overshadowing power of
God." *
CHAPTER XIV.
THE RED SEA.
Exodus xiv. 1-31.
It would seem that the Israelites recoiled be-
fore a frontier fortress of Egypt at Khetam
(Etham). This is probable, whatever theory of
the route of the Exodus one may adopt; and it
is still open to every reader to adopt almost any
theory he pleases, provided that two facts are
borne in mind: viz., first, that the narrative cer-
tainly means to describe a miraculous interfer-
ence, not superseding the forces of nature, but
wielding them in a fashion impossible to man;
and second, that the phrase translated " Red
Sea " t (xiii. 18, xv. 4) is the same which is con-
fessed by all persons to have that meaning in
chap, xxiii. 31, and in Numbers xxi. 4 and xxxiii.
to.
Checked, without loss or with it. they were
bidden to " turn back," and encamp at Pi-
hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. And
since Migdol is simply a watch-tower (there were
several in the Holy Land, including that which
gave her name to Mary Magdal-ene), we are to
infer that from thence their inexplicable move-
ments were signalled back to Pharaoh. It was
the natural signal for all the wild passions of a
bafifled and half-ruined tyrant to leap into flame.
We are scarcely able to imagine the mental con-
dition of men who conceived that a God Who
had dealt out death and destruction might be far
from invincible from another side. But ages
after this, a campaign was planned upon the in-
genious theory that " Jehovah is a god of the
hills but He is not a god of the valleys " (i
* Mutton's Essays, Vol. ii., Literary: The Poetry of the
Old Test.
+ The Sea of Zuph, or reeds, the word being used of the
reeds in which Moses was laid by his mother and found
by Pharaoh's daughter (ii. 3, 5), rendered "flags" in the
Revised Version.
13— Vol. I.
Kings XX. 28) ; and plenty of people who would
scorn this simple notion are still of opinion that
He is a God of eternity and can save them from
hell, but a little falsehood and knavery are
much better able to save them from want in the
meanwhile. Nay, there are many excellent per-
sons who are not at all of opinion that the prince
of this world has been dethroned.
Therefore, when his enemies recoiled from his
fortresses and wandered away into the wilder-
ness of Egypt, entangling themselves hopelessly
between the sea, the mountains, and his own
strongholds, it might well appear to Pharaoh
that Jehovah was not a warlike deity, that he
himself had now found out the weak point of his
enemies, and could pursue and overtake and
satisfy his lust upon them. There is a signifi-
cant emphasis in the song of Miriam's triumph — ■
" Jehovah is a man of war." At all events, it
was through an imperfect sense of the universal
and practical importance of Jehovah as a factor
not to be neglected in his calculations, through
exactly the same error which misleads every man
who postpones religion, or limits the range of
its influence in his daily life, — it was thus, and
not through any rarer infatuation, that Pharaoh
made ready six hundred chosen chariots and all
the chariots of Egypt, and captains over all of
them. And his court was of the same mind,
saying, " What is this that we have done, that we
have let Israel go from serving us? "
These words are hard to reconcile with the
strange notion that until now a return after
three days was expected, despite the torrent of
blood which rolled between them, and the de-
mands by which the Israelitish women had
spoiled the Egyptians. Upon this theory it is
not their own error, but the bad faith of their
servants, which they should have cried out
against.
At the sight of the army, a panic seized the
servile hearts of the fugitives. First they cried
out unto the Lord. But how possible it is, with-
out any real faith, to address to Heaven the mere
clamours of our alarm, and to mistake natural
agitation for earnestness in prayer, we learn by
the reproaches with which, after thus crying to
the Lord, they assailed His servant. Were there
no graves in that land of superb sepulchres —
that land, now, of universal mourning? Would
God that they had perished with the firstborn!
Why had they been treated thus? Had they not
urged Moses to let them alone, that they might
serve the Egyptians?
And yet these men had lately, for the very
promise of so much emancipation as they now
enjoyed, bowed their heads in adoring thankful-
ness. As it was their fear which now took the
form of supplication, so then it was their hope
which took the form of praise. And we, how
shall we know whether that in us which seems to
be religious gladness and religious grief, is mere
emotion, or is truly sacred? By watching
whether worship and love continue, when emo-
tion has spent its force, or has gone round, like
the wind, to another quarter.
How did Moses feel when this outcry told him
of the unworthiness and cowardice of the nation
of his heart? Much as we feel, perhaps, when
we see the frailties and failures of converts in the
mission-field, and the lapse of the intemperate
who have seemed to be reclaimed for ever. We
thought that perfection was to be reached at a
bound. Now we think that the whole work was
174
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
unreal. Both extremes are wrong: we have
much to learn from the failures of that ancient
church, in which was the germ of hero, psalmist,
and prophet, which was indeed the church in the
wilderness, and whose many relapses were so
tenderly borne with by God and His messenger.
The settled faith of Moses, and the assurances
which he could give the agitated people,* con-
trast nobly with their alarm. But his confidence
also had its secret springs in prayer, for the
Lord said to him, " Wherefore criest thou unto
Me? speak unto the children of Israel that they
go forward."
The words are remarkable on two accounts.
Can prayer ever be out of place? Not if we
mean a prayerful dependent mental attitude to-
ward God. But certainly, yes, if God has al-
ready revealed that for which we still importune
Him, and we are secretly disquieted lest His
promise should fail. It is misplaced if our own
duty has to be done, and we pass the golden mo-
ments in inactivity, however pious. Christ
spoke of men who should leave their gift before
the altar, unpresented, because of a neglected
duty which should be discharged. And perhaps
there are men who pray for the conversion of
the heathen or of friends at home, to whom
God says. Wherefore criest thou unto Me? be-
cause their money and their faithful efforts must
be given, as Moses must arouse himself to lead
the people forward, and to stretch his wand over
the sea.
And again the forces of nature are on the side
of God: the strong wind makes the depths of
the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over.
History has no scene more picturesque than this
wild night march, in the roar of tempest, amid
the flying foam which " baptised " them unto
MoseSjf while the glimmering waters stood up
like a rampart to protect their flanks: the full
moon of passover above them, shown and hidden
as the swift clouds raced before the storm, while
high and steadfast overhead, unshaken by the
fiercest blast, illumined by a mysterious splen-
dour, " stood " the vast cloud which veiled like
a curtain their whole host from the pursuer.
This it was, and the experience of such protec-
tio't that the Egyptians, overawed, came not
near them, which gave them courage to enter
the bed of the sea; and as they trod the strange
road they found that not only were the waters
driven off the surface, but the sands were left
firm to traverse.
But when the blind fury of Pharaoh, " hard-
ened " against everything but the sense that his
prey was escaping, sent his army along the same
track, and this after long delay, at a crisis when
every moment was priceless, then a new ele-
ment of terrible sublimity was added. Through
the pillar of cloud and fire Jehovah looked forth
on the Egyptian host, as they pressed on be-
hind, unable to penetrate the supernatural
gloom, cold fear creeping into every heart, while
the chariot wheels laboured heavily in the wet
* But his assurance is, " The Lord shall fight for you,
and ye shall hold your peace." When Wellhausen would
summarise the wo'rk of Moses, he tells us that " he taught
them to regard self-assertion against the Egyptians as an
article of religion " {History, p. 430). It would be impos-
sible, within the compass of so many words, more com-
pletely to miss the remarkable characteristic which dif-
ferentiates this whole narrative from all other revolution-
ary movements. Expectancy and dependence here take
the place of "self-assertion."
t Not the adults only ; nor yet by immersion, whether
in the rain-cloud or the surf.
sand. In that direful vision at last the ques-
tion was answered, " Who is Jehovah, that I
should let His people go? " Now it was the
turn of those who said " Israel is entangled in
the land, the wilderness hath shut them in,"
themselves to be taken in a worse net. For at
that awful gaze the iron curb of military disci-
pline gave way; their labouring chariots, the
pride and defence of the nation, were forsaken;
and a wild cry broke out, " Let us fly from the
face of Israel, for Jehovah " — He who plagued
us — " fighteth for them against the Egyptians."
But their humiliation came too late,— for in the
morning watch, at a natural time for atmospheric
changes, but in obedience to the rod of Moses,
the furious wind veered or fell, and the sea re-
turned to its accustomed limits; and first, as the
sands beneath became saturated, the chariots
were overturned and the mail-clad charioteers
went down '' like lead," and then the hissing line
of foam raced forward and closed around and
over the shrieking mob which was the pride and
strength of Egypt only an hour before.
But, as the story repeats twice over, with a
very natural and glad reiteration, " the children
of Israel walked on dry land in the midst of the
sea, and the waters were a wall unto them on
their right hand, and on their left " (ver. 29, cf.
22).
ON THE SHORE.
Exodus xiv. 30, 31.
After the haste and agitation of their marvel-
lous deliverance the children of Israel seem to
have halted for awhile at the only spot in the
neighbourhood where there is water, known as
the Ayoun Musa or springs of Moses to this
day. There they doubtless brought into some
permanent shape their rudimentary organisation.
There, too, their impressions were given time
to 'deepen. They " saw the Egyptians dead on
the sea-shore," and realised that their oppres-
sion was indeed at an end, their chains broken,
themselves introduced into a new life, — " bap-
tised unto Moses." They reflected upon the dif-
ference between all other deities and the God of
their fathers. Who, in that deadly crisis, had
looked upon them and their tyrants out of the
fiery pillar. " They feared Jehovah, and they
believed in Jehovah and in His servant Moses."
" They believed in Jehovah." This expression
is noteworthy, because they had all believed in
Him already. " By faith ' they ' forsook Egypt.
By faith ' they ' kept the passover and the sprin-
kling of blood. By faith ' they ' passed through
the Red Sea." But their former trust was poor
and wavering compared with that which filled
their bosoms now. So the disciples followed
Jesus because they believed on Him; yet when
His first miracle manifested forth His glory.
" His disciples believed on Him there." And
again they said. " By this we believe that Thou
earnest forth from God." And after the resur-
rection He said, " Because thou hast seen Me
thou hast believed" (John ii. 11, xvi. 30. xx.
29). Faith needs to be edified by successive ex-
periences, as the enthusiasm of a recruit is con-
verted into the disciplined valour of the veteran.
From each new crisis of the spiritual life the soul
should obtain new powers. And that is a shal-
low and unstable religion which is content with
Exodus XV. 1-22.]
THE SONG OF MOSES.
ns
the level of its initial act of faith (however
genuine and however important), and seeks not
to go from strength to strength.
CHAPTER XV.
THE SONG OF MOSES.
Exodus xv. 1-22.
During this halt they prepared that great song
of triumph which St. John heard sung by them
who had been victorious over the beast, stand-
ing by the sea of glass, having the harps of God.
For by that calmer sea, triumphant over a
deadlier persecution, they still found their adora-
tion and joy expressed in this earliest chant of
sacred victory. Because all holy hearts give like
thanks to Him Who sitteth upon the throne,
therefore "deep aniwers unto deep," and every
great crisis in the history of the Church has
legacies for all time and for eternity; and there-
fore the triumphant song of Moses the servant
of God enriches the worship of heaven, as the
penitence and hope and joy of David enrich the
worship of the Church on earth (Rev. xv. 3).
Like all great poetry, this song is best enjoyed
when it is neither commented upon nor para-
phrased, but carefully read and warmly felt.
There are circumstances and lines of thought
which it is desirable to point out, but only as a
preparation, not a substitute, for the submission
of a docile mind to the influence of the inspired
poem itself. It is unquestionably archaic. The
parallelism of Hebrew verse is already here, but
the structure is more free and unartificial than
that of later poetry; and many ancient words,
and words of Egyptian derivation, authenticate
its origin. So does the description of Miriam,
in the fifteenth verse, as " the prophetess, the
sister of Aaron." In what later time would she
not rather have been called the sister of Moses?
But from the lonely youth who found Aaron and
Miriam together as often as he stole from the
palace to his real home — the lonely man who re-
gained both together when he returned from
forty years of exile, and who sometimes found
them united in opposition to his authority (Num.
xii. I, 2) — from Moses alone the epithet is en-
tirely natural.
It is also noteworthy that Philistia is men-
tioned first among the foes who shall be terrified
(ver. 14, R. v.), because Moses still expected the
invasion to break first on them. But the unbe-
lieving fears of Israel changed the route, so that
no later poet would have set them in the fore-
front of his song. Thus also the terror of the
Edomites is anticipated, although in fact they
sturdily refused a passage to Israel through their
land (Num. xx. 20). All this authenticates the
song, which thereupon establishes the miracu-
lous deliverance that inspired it.
The song is divided into two parts. Up to the
end of the twelfth verse it is historical: the re-
mainder expresses the high hopes inspired by
this great experience. Nothing now seems im-
possible: the fiercest tribes of Palestine and the
desert may be despised, for their own terror will
suffice to "melt" them; and Israel may already
reckon itself to be guided into the holy habita-
tion (ver. 13).
The former part is again subdivided, by a
noble and instinctive art, into two very unequal
sections. With amplitude of triumphant adora-
tion, the first ten verses tell the same story which
the eleventh and twelfth compress into epigram-
matical vigour and terseness. To appreciate the
power of the composition, one should read the
fourth, fifth, and sixth verses, and turn immedi-
ately to the twelfth.
Each of these three divisions closes in praise,
and as in the " Israel in Egypt," it was probably
at these points that the voices of Miriam and the
women broke in, repeating the first verse of the
ode as a refrain (vers, i and 21). It is the ear-
liest recognition of the place of women in public
worship. And it leads us to remark that the
whole service was responsive. Moses and the
men are answered by Miriam and the women,
bearing timbrels in their hands; for although in-
strumental music had been sorely misused in
Egypt, that was no reason why it should be
excluded now. Those who condemn the use of
instruments in Christian worship virtually con-
tend that Jesus has, in this respect, narrowed the
liberty of the Church, and that a potent method
of expression, known to man, must not be con-
secrated to the honour of God. And they make
the present time unlike the past, and also unlike
what is revealed of the future state.
Moreover there was movement, as in very
many ancient religious services, within and with-
out the pale of revelation.* Such dances were
generally slow and graceful; yet the motion and
the clang of metal, and the vast multitudes con-
gregated, must be taken into account, if we
would realise the strange enthusiasm of the
emancipated host, looking over the blue sea to
Egypt, defeated and twice bereaved, and for-
ward to the desert wilcjs of freedom.
The poem is steeped in a sense of gratitude.
In the great deliverance man has borne no part.
It is Jehovah Who has triumphed gloriously
and cast the horse and charioteer — there was no
" rider " — into the sea. And this is repeated
again and again by the women as their response,
in the deepening passion of the ode. " With the
breath of His nostrils the waters were piled
up. . . He blew with His wind and the sea cov-
ered them." And such is indeed the only pos-
sible explanation of the Exodus, so that who-
ever rejects the miracle is beset with countless
difificulties. One of these is the fact that Moses,
their immortal leader, has no martial renown
whatever. Hebrew poetry is well able to com-
bine gratitude to God with honour to the men of
Zebulun who jeopardised their lives unto the
death, to Jacl who put her hand to the nail, to
Saul and Jonathan who were swifter than eagles
and stronger than lions. Joshua and David can
win fame without dishonour to God. Why is it
that here alone no mention is made of human
agency except that, in fact, at the outset of their
national existence, they were shown, once for all,
the direct interposition of their God?
From gratitude springs trust: the great lesson
is learned that man has an interest in the Divine
power. " My strength and song is Jah," says
the second verse, using that abbreviated form of
the covenant name Jehovah, which David also
frequently associated with his victories. " And
He is become my salvation." It is the same
word as when, a little while ago, the trembling
* There is no warrant in the use of Scripture for Stan-
ley's assertion that the word translated " dances" should
be rendered "guitars." (Smith's Diet. 0/ Bt'd/e, Article
Miriam.')
176
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
people were bidden to stand still and see the
salvation of God. They have seen it now. Now
they give the word Salvation for the first tirne
to the Lord as an appellation, and as such it is
destined to endure. The Psalmist learns to call
Him so, not only when he reproduces this verse
word for word (Ps. cxviii. 14), but also when he
says, " He only is my rock and my salvation "
(Ixii. 2), and prays, " Before Ephraim, Benja-
min, and Manasseh, come for salvation to us "
(Ixxx. 2).
And the same title is known also to Isaiah,
who says, " Behold God is my salvation," and
" Be Thou their arm every morning, our salva-
tion also in the time of trouble " (Isa. xii. 2,
xxxiii. 2).
The progress is natural from experience of
goodness to appropriation: He has helped me:
He gives Himself to me; and from that again to
love and trust, for He has always been the same:
" my father," not my ancestors in general, but
he whom I knew best and remember most ten-
derly, found Him the same Helper. And then
love prompts to some return. My goodness ex-
tendeth not to Him, yet my voice can honour
Him; I will praise Him, I will exalt His name.
Now, this is the very spirit of evangelical obedi-
ence, the life-blood of the new dispensation rac-
ing in the veins of the old.
Where praise and exaltation are a spontaneous
instinct, there is loyal service and every good
work, not rendered by a hireling but a child.
Had He not said, " Israel is My son"?
From exultant gratitude and trust, what is
next to spring? That which is reproachfully
called anthropomorphism, something which in-
deed easily degenerates into unworthy notions of
a God limited by such restraints or warped by
such passions as our own, yet which is after all a
great advance towards true and holy thoughts of
Him Who made man after His image and in His
likeness.
Human affection cannot go forth to God with-
out believing that like afifection meets and re-
sponds to it. If He is indeed the best and
purest, we must think of Him as sharing all that
is best and purest in our souls, all that we owe
to His inspiring Spirit.
" So through the thunder comes a human voice,
Saying ' O heart I made, a heart beats here.' "
If ever any religion was sternly jealous of the
Divine prerogatives, profoundly conscious of the
incommunicable dignity of the Lord our God
Who is one Lord, it was the Jewish relieion.
Yet when Jesus was charged with making Hirn-
self God, He could appeal to the doctrine of their
own Scripture — that the judges of the people
exercised so divine a function, and could claim
such divine support, that God Himself spoke
through them, and found representatives in
them. " Is it not written in your law, I said Ye
are gods?" (John x. 34). Not in vain did He
appeal to such scriptures — and there are many
such — to vindicate His doctrine. For man is
never lifted above himself, but God in the same
degree stoops towards us, and identifies Himself
with us and our concerns. Who then shall limit
His condescension? What ground in reason or
revelation can be taken up for denying that it
may be perfect, that it may develop into a per-
manent union of God with the creature whom
He inspired with His own breath? It is by such
steps that the Old Testament prepared Israel for
the Incarnation. Since the Incarnation we have
actually needed help from the other side, to pre-
vent us from humanising our conceptions over-
much. And this has been provided in the ever-
expanding views of His creation given to us by
science, which tell us that if He draws nigh to
us it is from heights formerly undreamed of.
Now, such a step as we have been considering is
taken unawares in the bold phrase " Jehovah is
a man of war." For in the original, as in the
English, this includes the assertion " Jehovah is
a man." Of course it is only a bold figure. But
such a figure prepares the mind for new light,
suggesting more than it logically asserts.
The phrase is more striking when we remem-
ber that remarkable peculiarity of the Exodus
and its revelations which has been already
pointed out. Elsewhere God appears in human
likeness. To Abraham it was so, just before,
and to Manoah soon afterwards. Ezekiel saw
upon the likeness of the throne the likeness of
the appearance of a man (Ezek. i. 26). But
Israel saw no similitude, only he heard a voice.
This was obviously a safeguard against idolatry.
And it makes the words more noteworthy, " Je-
hovah is a man of war," marching with us, our
champion, into the battle. And we know Him
as our fathers knew Him not, — " Jehovah is His
name."
The poem next describes the overthrow of the
enemy: the heavy plunge of men in armour into
the deeps, the arm of the Lord dashing them in
pieces. His " fire " consuming them, while the
blast of His nostrils is the storm which " piles
up " the waters, solid as a wall of ice, " con-
gealed in the heart of the sea." Then the
singers exultantly rehearse the short panting
eager phrases, full of greedy expectation, of the
enemy breathless in pursuit — a passage well re-
membered by Deborah, when her triumphant
song closed by an insulting repetition of the
vain calculations of the mother of Sisera and
" her wise ladies."
The eleventh verse is remarkable as being the
first announcement of the holiness of God.
"Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness?"
And what does holiness mean? The Hebrew
word is apparently suggestive of " brightness,"
and the two ideas are coupled by Isaiah (x. 17):
" The Light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his
Holy One for a flame." There is indeed some-
thing in the purity of light, in its absolute im-
munity from stain — no passive cleanness, as of
the sand upon the shore, but intense and vital —
and in its remoteness from the conditions of
common material substances, that well expresses
and typifies the lofty and awful quality which
separates holiness from mere virtue. " God is
called the Holy One because He is altogether
pure, the clear and spotless Light; so that in the
idea of the holiness of God there are embodied
the absolute moral purity and perfection of the
Divine nature, and His unclouded glory" (Keil,
Pent., ii. 99). In this thought there is already in-
volved separation, a lofty remoteness.
And when holiness is attributed to man, it
never means innocence, nor even virtue, merely
as such. It is always a derived attribute: it is
reflected upon us, like light upon our planet;
and like consecration, it speaks not of man in
himself, but in his relation to God. It expresses
a kind of separation to God, and thus it can
reach to lifeless things which bear a true relation
Exodus XV. 22-7.]
SHUR.
177
to the Divine. The seventh day is thus " hal-
lowed." It is the very name of the " Holy
Place," the " Sanctuary." And the ground where
Moses was to stand unshod beside the burning
bush was pronounced " holy," not by any con-
cession to human weakness, but by the direct
teaching of God. Very inseparable from all
true holiness is separation from what is com-
mon and unclean. Holy men may be involved
in the duties of active life; but only on condi-
tion that in their bosom shall be some inner
shrine, whither the din of worldliness never
penetrates, and where the lamp of God does not
go out.
It is a solemn truth that a kind of inverted
holiness is known to Scripture. Men " sanctify
themselves " (it is this very word), " and purify
themselves to go into the gardens, . . . eating
swine's flesh and the abomination and the
mouse" (Isa. Ixvi. 17). The same word is also
used to def^lare that the whole fruit of a vine-
yard sown with two kinds of fruit shall be for-
feited (Deut. xxii. 9), although the notion there
is of something unnatural and therefore inter-
dicted, which notion is carried to the utmost ex-
treme in another derivative from the same root,
expressing the most depraved of human beings.
Just so, the Greek word " anathema " mean.s
both " consecrated " and " marked out for
wrath" (Luke xxi. 5; i Cor. xvi. 22: the differ-
ence in form is insignificant.) And so again our
own tongue calls the saints " devoted," and
speaks of the " devoted " head of the doomed
sinner, being aware that there is a " separation "
in sin as really as in purity. The gods of the
heathen, like Jehovah, claimed an appropriate
" holiness," sometimes unspeakably degraded.
They too were separated, and it was through
long lines of sphinxes, and many successive
chambers, that the Egyptian worshipper attained
the shrine of some contemptible or hateful deity.
The religion which does not elevate depresses.
But the holiness of Jehovah is noble as that of
light, incapable of defilement. " Who among
the gods is like Thee . . . glorious in holiness? "
And Israel soon learned that the worshipper
must become assimilated to his Ideal: " Ye shall
be holy men unto Me " (xxii. 31). It is so with
us. Jesus is separated from sinners. And we
are to go forth unto Him out of the camp, bear-
ing His reproach (Heb. vii. 26, xiii. 13).
The remainder of the song is remarkable
chiefly for the confidence with which the future
is inferred from the past. And the same argu-
ment runs through all Scripture. As Moses
sang, " Thou shalt bring them in and plant them
in the mountain of Thine inheritance," because
" Thou stretchedest out Thy right hand, the
earth * swallowed " their enemies, so David was
sure that goodness and mercy shouW follow him
all the days of his life, because God was already
leading him in green pastures and beside still
waters. And so St. Paul, knowing in Whom he
had believed, was persuaded that He was able to
keep his deposit until that day (2 Tim. i. 12).
So should pardon and Scripture and the means
of grace reassure every doubting heart; for "if
the Lord were pleased to kill us. He would not
have . . . showed us all these things " (Judg.
xiii. 23). And in theory, and in good hours, we
• This is to be taken literally ; it does not mean the
waves, but the quicksands in which they " drave heavily,"
and which, when steeped in the returning waters, en-
gulfed them.
confess that this is so. But after our song of
triumph, if we come upon bitter waters we mur-
mur; and if our bread fail, we- expect only to
die in the wilderness.
- SHUR.
Exodus xv. 22-7.
•JU>8
From the Red Sea the Israelites marched into
the wilderness of Shur — a general name, of Egyp-
tian origin, for the district between Egypt and
Palestine, of which Etham, given as their route
in Numbers (xxxiii. 8), is a subdivision. The
rugged way led over stone and sand, with little
vegetation and no water. And the " three days'
journey" to Marah, a distance of thirty-three
miles, was their first experience of absolute hard-
ship, for not even the curtain of miraculous cloud
could prevent them from suffering keenly by
heat and thirst.
It was a period of disillusion. Fond dreams
of ease and triumphant progress, with every
trouble miraculously smoothed away, had natu-
rally been excited by their late adventure. Their
song had exulted in the prospect that their ene-
mies should melt away, and be as still as a stone.
But their difficulties did not melt away. The
road was weary. They found no water. They
were still too much impressed by the miracle at
the Red Sea, and by the mysterious Presence
overhead, for open complaining to be heard
along the route; but we may be sure that reac-
tion had set in, and there was many a sinking
heart, as the dreary route stretched on and on,
and they realised that, however romantic the
main plan of their journey, the details might still
be prosaic and exacting. They sang praises unto
Him. They soon forgat His works. Aching
with such disappointments, at last they reached
the waters of Marah, and they could not drink,
for they were bitter.
And if Marah be indeed Huwara, as seems to
be agreed, the waters are still the worst in all the
district. It was when the relief, so confidently
expected, failed, and the term of their sufferings
appeared to be indefinitely prolonged, that their
self-control gave way, and they " murmured
against Moses, saying. What shall we drink?"
And we may be sure that wherever discontent
and unbelief are working secret mischief to the
soul, some event, some disappointment or temp-
tation, will find the weak point, and the favour-
able moment of attack, just as the seeds of dis-
ease find out the morbid constitution, and
assail it.
Now, all this is profoundly instructive, because
it is true to the universal facts of human nature.
When a man is promoted to unexpected rank, or
suddenly becomes rich, or reaches any other un-
looked-for elevation, he is apt to forget that life
cannot, in any position, be a romance through-
out, a long thrill, a whole song at the top note of
the voice. Affection itself has a dangerous mo-
ment, when two united lives begin to realise that
even their union cannot banish aches and anxie-
ties, weariness and business cares. Well for them
if they are content with the power of love to
sweeten what it cannot remove, as loyal soldiers
gladly sacrifice all things for the cause, and as
Israel should have been proud to endure forced
marches under the cloudy banner of its emanci-
pating God.
178
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
As neither rank nor affection exempts men
from the dust and tedium of life, or from its dis-
appointments, so neither does religion. vVhen
one is " made happy " he expects life to be only
a triumphal procession towards Paradise, and he
is startled when " now for a season, if need be.
he is in heaviness through manifold tempta-
tions." Yet Christ prayed not that we should
be taken out of the world. We are bidden to
endure hardness as good soldiers, and to run
with patience the race which is set before us;
and these phrases indicate our need of the very
qualities wherein Israel failed. As yet the people
murmured not ostensibly against God. but only
against Moses. But the estrangement of their
hearts is plain, since they made no appeal to
God for relief, but assailed His agent and repre-
sentative. Yet they had not because they asked
not, and relief was found when Moses cried unto
the Lord. Their leader was " faithful in all his
house"; and instead of upbraiding his followers
with their ingratitude, or bewailing the hard lot
of all leaders of the multitude, whose popularity
neither merit nor service can long preserve un-
clouded, he was content to look for sympathy
and help where we too may find it.
We read that the Lord showed him a tree,
which when he had cast into the waters, the
waters were made sweet. In this we discern the
same union of Divine grace with human energy
and use of means, as in all medicine, and indeed
all uses of the divinely enlightened intellect of
man. It would have been easy to argue that
the waters could only be healed by miracle, and
if God wrought a miracle what need was there
of human labour? There was need of obedience,
and of the co-operation of the human will with
the divine. We shall see, in the case of the arti-
ficers of the tabernacle, that God inspires even
handicraftsmen as well as theologians — being
indeed the universal Light, the Giver of all good,
not only of Bibles, but of rain and fruitful sea-
sons. But the artisan must labour, and the
farmer improve the soil.
Shall we say with the fathers that the tree cast
into the waters represents the cross of Christ?
At least it is a type of the sweetening and assuag-
ing influences of religion — a new element, enter-
ing life, and as well fitted to combine with it as
medicinal bark with water, making all whole-
some and refreshing to the disappointed way-
farer, who found it so bitter hitherto.
The Lord was not content with removing the
grievance of the hour; He drew closer the bonds
between His people and Himself, to guard them
against another transgression of the kind: " there
He made for them a statute and an ordinance,
and there He proved them." It is pure assump-
tion to pretend that this refers to another
account of the giving of the Jewish law, incon-
sistent with that in the twentieth chapter, and
placed at Marah instead of Sinai.* It is a trans-
action which resembles much rather the promises
given (and at various times, although confusion
and repetition cannot be inferred) to Abraham
and Jacob (Gen. xii. 1-3, xv. i, 18-21, xvii. 1-14,
xxii. 15-18, xxviii. 13-15, xxxv. 10-12). He said
" If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of
the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is
right in His eyes, and wilt give ear to His com-
mandments, and wilt keep all His statutes, I will
put none of the diseases upon thee which I have
put upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord which
* Wellhausen, Israel, p. 439.
healeth thee." It is a compact of obedient trust
on one side, and protection on the other. If
they felt their own sinfulness, it asserted that He
who had just healed the waters could also heal
their hearts. From the connection between
these is perhaps derived the comparison between
human hearts and a fountain of sweet water or
bitter (Jas. iii. 11).
But certainly the promised protection takes
an unexpected shape. What in their circum-
stances leads to this specific offer of exemption
from certain foul diseases — " the boil of Egypt,
and the emerods, and the scurvy, and the itch,
whereof thou canst not be healed " (Deut. xxviii.
2j)? How does this meet the case? Doubtless
by reminding them that there are better exemp-
tions than from hardship, and worse evils than
privations. If they do not realise this at the
spiritual level, at least they can appreciate the
threat that " He will bring upon thee again all
the diseases of Egypt which thou wast afraid of "
(Deut. xxviii. 60). To be even a luxurious and
imperial race, but infected by repulsive and hope-
less ailments, is not a desirable alternative.
Now, such evils, though certainly not in each in-
dividual, yet in a race, are the punishments of
non-natural conditions of life, such as make the
blood run slowly and unhealthily, and charge it
with impure deposits. It was God who put them
upon the Egyptians.
If Israel would follow His guidance, and ac-
cept a somewhat austere destiny, then the desert
air and exercise, and even its privations, would
become the efficacious means for their exemp-
tion from the scourges of indulgence. A time
arrived when they looked back with remorse
upon crimes which forfeited their immunity,
when the Lord said, "I have sent among you the
pestilence after the manner of Egypt; your
young men have I slain with the sword " (Amos
iv. 10).
But it is a significant fact that at this day, after
eighteen hundred years of oppression, hardship,
and persecution, of the ghetto and the old-
clothes trade, the Hebrew race is proverbially
exempt from repulsive and contagious disease.
They also " certainly do enjoy immunity from
the ravages of cholera, fever, and small-pox in a
remarkable degree. Their blood seems to be in
a different condition from that of other people.
. . .They seem less receptive of disease caused
by blood poisoning than others " (.Journal of Vic-
toria Institute, xxi. 307). Imperfect as was their
obedience, this covenant at least has been liter-
ally fulfilled to them.
it is by such means that God is wont to re-
ward His children. Most commonly the seal of
blessing from the skies is not rich fare, but bread
and fish by the lake side with the blessing of
Christ upon them; not removal from the desert,
but a closer sense of the protection and accept-
ance of Heaven, the nearness of a loving God,
and with this, an elevation and purification of
the life, and of the body as well as of the soul.
Not in vain has St. Paul written " The Lord for
the body." Nor was there ever yet a race of
men who accepted the covenant of God, and
lived in soberness, temperance, and chastity,
without a signal improvement of the national
physique, no longer unduly stimulated by pas-
sion, jaded by indulgence, or relaxed by the
satiety which resembles but is not repose.
From Marah and its agitations there was_ a
journey of but a few hours to Elim, with its
Exodus xvi. 1-14.]
MURMURING FOR FOOD.
179
twelve fountains and seventy palm trees — a fair
oasis, by which they encamped and rested, while
their flocks spread far and wide over a grassy
and luxuriant valley.
The picture is still true to the Christian life,
with the Palace Beautiful just beyond the lions,
and the Delectable Mountains next after Doubt-
ing Castle.
CHAPTER XVI.
MURMURING FOR FOOD.
Exodus xvi. 1-14.
The Israelites were now led farther away from
all the associations of their accustomed life.
From the waters and the palms of Elim they
marched deeper into the savage recesses of the
desert, haunted by fierce and hostile tribes, such
as presently hung upon their rear-guard and cut
off their stragglers (Deut. xxv. 18). Nor had
they quite emerged from the shadow of their old
oppressions, since Egyptian garrisons were scat-
tered, though sparsely, through this district, in
which gems and copper were obtained. Here,
cut off from all natural modes of sustenance, the
hearts of the people failed them. Such is the
frequent experience of renewed souls, when
privilege and joy are followed by trouble from
without or from within, and the peace of God is
broken by the strife of tongues, by mental per-
plexities, by temptations, by physical pain. Ii:
is quite as wonderful that paltry disturbances
should mar for us the life divine, when once that
life has become a realised experience, as that
men who moved under the shadow of the mar-
vellous cloud could be agitated by fear. for their
supplies. And of this our experience, what befrl
Israel is not a meie type or symbol, it is a case
in point, a parallel example. For it also meant
the breaking-in of the flesh upon the spirit, the
refusal of fallen nature to rise above earthly
wants and cravings even in the light of t^nst and
acceptance, the self-assertion of the baser in-
stincts, and the sacrifice to them of the higher
life. We recognise the herd of slaves, from
whence it must perplex the unbeliever to re-
member that the seed of immortal heroism and
prophetic insight and apostolic service was yet
to ripen, in their poor desire, if they must perish,
to perish well fed rather than emancipated (ver.
3). Most people, we may fear, would choose to
live enslaved rather than to die free men. But
there is a special meanness in their regret, since
die they must, that they had not died satiated.
like the firstborn whom God had slain: " Would
that we had died by the hand of Jehovah in the
land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and
when we ate bread to the full, for ye have
brought us forth into this wilderness to kill this
whole assembly with hunger." And to-day,
among those who scorn them, how many are far
less ambitious of dying holy and pure than rich,
famous or powerful, having glutted their vanity
if not their appetite. In the sight of angels this
is not a much loftier aim; and the apostle reck-
oned among the works of the flesh, emulation as
well as drunkenness (Gal. v. 19-21).
Tertullian draws a striking contrast between
Israel, just now baptised into Moses, but caring
more for appetite than for God, and Christ, after
His baptism, also in the desert, fasting forty
days. " The Lord figuratively retorted upon
Israel His reproach " (Baptism, xx).
We are not to suppose that but for their com-
plaining God would have suffered them to hun-
ger, although Moses declared that the reason
why flesh should be given to them in the even-
ing, and in the morning bread to the full, is " for
that the Lord heareth your murmurings." Bui
there would have been some difi^erence in the
time of the grant, to ripen their faith, some more
direct maniTestation of His grace, to reward
their patience, if unbelief had not precipitated
His design. Thus the disciples, when they awak-
ened Jesus in llie storm, received the rescue for
which they clan! oared, but forfeited some higher
experience whicli would have crowned a serener
confidence: " Wlierefore did ye doubt?" Israel
receives what is best in the circumstances, rather
than the ideal best, now made unsuitable by their
impatience and infidelity. But while the Lord
discontinued the test of need and penury, which
had proved to be too severe a discipline. He
substituted the test of fulr.?ss. For wc real that
the removal of their suspense and anxiety by the
gift of manna from heaven was " to prove them
whether they will walk in My laws or no " (ver.
4). And in so doing it was seen that worldly
and unthankful natures are not to be satisfied;
that the disloyal at heart will complain, however
favoured. For " the children of Israel wept
again and snid. Who will give us flesh to eat?
We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt
for naught, the cucumbers and the melons and
the leeks and the onions and the garlick: but
now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at
all: we have naught save this manna to look to "
(Num. xi. 4-6). Onions and garlick were more
satisfactory to gross appetites than ang«Js' food.
At this point we learn that what is called pros-
perity may indeed be a result of spiritual failure;
that God may sometimes abstain from strong
measures with a soul because what ought to
mould would only crush; and may grant them
their hearts' lust, yet send leanness withal into
their souls. Perhaps we are allowed to be com-
fortable because we are unfit to be heroic.
And we also learn, when prosperous, to re-
member that plenty, equally with want, has its
moral aspect. The Lord tries fortunate men
whether they will be grateful and obedient, trust-
ing in Him and not in uncertain riches, or
whether they will forget Him who has done so
great things for them, and so perish in calm
weather:
" Like ships that liave )2fone down at sea
When heaven was all tranquillity."
There is an experiment being tried upon the
soul, curious, slow, little-suspected, but inces-
sant, in the giving of daily bread.
In promising relief, God required of them
obedience and self-control. They were to re-
spect the Sabbath, and make provision in ad-
vance for its requirements. And this direction,
given before the Mount of the Lord was reached,
has an important bearing upon the question
whether the Fourth Commandment was the first
institution of a holy day — whether, except as a
Church ordinance, the duty of sabbath-keeping
has no support beyond the ceremonial law.
" For that the Lord hath (already) given you
the Sabbath, therefore He giveth you on the
sixth day the bread of two days " (ver. 29).
While conveying the promise of relief, Moses
i8o
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
and Aaron rebuked the people, whose murmurs
against them were in reality murmurs against
God, since they were but His agents, and He had
been visibly their Leader. And the same rebuke
applies, for exactly the same reason, to many a
modern complaint against the weather, against
what people call their " luck," against a thou-
sand provoking things in which the only pos-
sible provocation must come directly from
heaven. It is because our religion is so shallow,
and our consciousness of God in His world so
dim and rudimentary, that we utter such com-
plaints idly, to relieve our feelings, and hear
them spoken without a shock.
Such dulness is not to be removed by sounder
views of doctrine, but by a more vivid realisa-
tion of God. The Israelites knew by what hand
they should have fallen if they had died in
Egypt; yet in fact they forgot their true Cap-
tain, and upbraided their mortal leaders. So do
we confess that afflictions arise not out of the
ground, yet lose the impress of divinity upon
our daily lives, while we ought, like Moses, to
" endure as seeing Him who is invisible."
As our Lord was in the habit of asking for
some confession, or demanding some small co-
operation from those He was about to bless, so
the smoking flax of Hebrew faith is tended: it is
a promise, and not the actual relief, which calms
them. There is a curious difiference in the man-
ner of the communications now made to the
people. First of all the two brothers unite their
energies to hush their outcries: " At evening ye
shall know that Jehovah is your leader from
Egypt, and in the morning ye shall behold His
glory; and what are we, that ye murmur against
us? " Then Moses affirms, with all the energy
of his chieftainship, that in the evening they shall
eat flesh, and in the morning bread to the full.
Again he asks them " What are we? " and more
sternly and directly charges them with murmur-
ing against Jehovah. And this is a good ex-
ample of the true meaning of his " meekness."
He is fiery enough, but not for his own great-
ness: rather because he feels his littleness, and
that the offence is entirely against God, does he
resent their conduct; absence of self-assertion is
hio '•' meekness," and thus we read of it when
Miriam and Aaron spake against him, declaring
that they were commissioned as well as he (Num.
xii. 3). Finally, when order was restored, and
some mysterious manifestation was at hand, he
resumed the solemn and formal usage of con-
veying his orders through his brother, and in
cold, compact, impressive words, said unto
Aaron, " Say unto all the congregation of the
children of Israel, Come near before the Lord,
for He hath heard your murmurings." All this
is very dignified and natural. And so is — what
after ages could scarcely have invented — the im-
pressive reticence of what follows. " They
looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the
glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud."
Were they not then intended to " come near "?
and was it as they turned their faces to draw
nigh that the Vision revealed itself and stopped
them? And what was the untold sight which
they beheld? The narrative belongs to a primi-
tive age; it is quite unlike the elaborate sym-
bolisms of Ezekiel and Daniel, or even of Isaiah,
but yet this undescribed, mystic, and solitary
glory is not less sublime than the train which
covered the Temple-floor, while, hovering above
it, reverent seraphim veiled their faces and their
feet, or the terrible crystal and the wheels of
dreadful height, or the throne of flame whence
issued a fiery stream, and before which thousands
of thousands and myriads of myriads stood
(Isa. vi. 2; Ezek. i. 22, 18; Dan. vii. 9, 10). But
the point to observe is that it is different, more
primitive, an undefined and lonely vision of awe
well fitted for the desert wilds and for the gaze
of men whose hearts must not be misled by the
likeness of anything in heaven or earth; the
glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud (most
probably, but not of necessity, the cloud which
guided them), and in the direction whence they
were so fain to turn away.
No later inventor would have known how to
say so little, much less to make that little har-
monise so exactly with the lessons meant to be
suggested by the wild and solemn solitudes into
which they were now plunged.
And now the Lord Himself repeats the
promise of relief, but first solemnly announces
that He is not heedless of their ill-behaviour
while He tolerates it. The question is suggested,
although not asked. How long will His forbear-
ance last?
Well for them if they learn the lesson, and
" know that I am Jehovah your God," mindful
of their needs, entitled to their fealty. In the
evening, therefore, came a flight of quails; and
in the morning they found a small round thing,
small as the hoar-frost, upon the ground.
MANNA.
Exodus xvi. 15-36.
The manna which miraculously supplied the
wants of Israel was to them an utterly strange
food, the use of which they had to learn. Thus
it was another means of severing their habitual
course of life and association of ideas from their
degraded past. And while we may not press too
far the assertion that it was the " corn of
heaven " and " angels' food " (1. e., " the bread of
the mighty " — Psalm Ixxviii. 24-5, R. V.), yet
the narrative shows, even without help from later
scriptures, that it was calculated to sustain their
energies and yet to leave their appetites unstimu-
lated and unpampered. For they were now
called to purer joys than those of the senses — to
liberty, a divine vocation, the presence of God,
the revelation of His law, and the unfolding of
His purposes. Failing to rise to these heights,
they fell far, murmured again, and perished by
the destroyer, not merely to avenge the petu-
lance of an hour, but for all that it betrayed, for
treason to their vocation and radical inability to
even comprehend its meaning. In the language
of modern science, it answered to Nature's rejec-
tion of the unfit.
Their calling was thus, though under very dif-
ferent forms, that which the apostles found so
hard, yet did not quite refuse: it was to mind
the things of God and not the things of men.
It is well known that the manna of the Israel-
ites bore some resemblance to a natural product
of the wilderness, still exuded by certain plants
during the coolness of the night, and formerly
more plentiful than now, when all vegetation has
been ruthlessly swept away by the Bedouin. But
the differences are much greater than the resem-
blance. The natural product is a drug, and not
a food; it is gathered only during some weeks of
Exodus xvi, 15-36.]
MANNA.
181
summer; it is not liable to speedy corruption,
nor could there be any reason for preserving a
specimen of this common product in the ark; it
could not have sufficed, however aided by their
herds and flocks, to feed one in a hundred of the
Hebrew multitudes, even during the season of its
production; nor could it have ceased on the same
day when they ate the first ripe corn of Canaan.
And yet the resemblance is suggestive. Un-
believers find, in the links which connect most
of our Scripture miracles with nature, in the
undefined and gradual transition from one to the
other, as from a temperate day to night, an ex^
cuse for denying that they are miraculous at all.
But the instructed believer finds a confirmation
of his faith. He reflects that when Fancy be-
gins to toy with the supernatural, she spurns
nature from her: the trammels under which she
has long chafed are hateful to her, and she flies
from them to the utmost extreme.
It could not be thus with Him by whom the
system of the world was framed. He will not
wantonly interfere with His own plan. He will
regard nature as an elastic band to stretch, rather
than as a chain to break. If He will multiply
food, in the New Testament, that is no reason
why His disciples should fare more delicately
than Providence intended for them: they shall
still eat barley loaves and fish. And so the winds
help to overthrow Pharaoh and to bring the
quails; and when a new thing has to be created,
it approaches in its general idea to one of the
few natural products of that inhospitable region.
Now let it be supposed for a moment that the
supply of manna had never ceased, so that until
this day men could every morning gather a day's
ration off the ground. Such continuance of the
provision would not make it any the less a gift;
but only a more lavish boon. And yet it would
clearly cease to be regarded as miraculous, an
exception to the course of nature, miscalled her
" laws," since men do strive to subvert the
miracle by representing that such manna, how-
ever scantily, may still be found. And this may
expose the folly of a wish, probably sometimes
felt by all men, that some miracle had actually
been perpetuated, so that we could strengthen
our faith at pleasure by looking upon an exhi-
bition of divine power. In truth, no marvel
could excel that which annually multiplies the
corn beneath the clod, and by the process of de-
cay in springtime feeds the world in autumn.
Only its steady recurrence throws a veil over our
eyes; and it is a vain conceit that the same web
would not be woven by use between man and the
Worker of any other marvel that was perpetu-
ated. Already the earth is full of the goodness
of the Lord, for all who have eyes to see.
It is also to be observed that the manna was
not given to teach the people sloth. They were
obliged to gather it early, before the sun was
hot. They had still to endure weary marches,
and the care of their flocks and herds.
And, in curious harmony with the manner of
all the gifts of nature, the manna sent from
heaven had yet to be prepared by man: "bake
that which ye will bake, and seethe that which ye
will seethe." Thus God, by natural means and
by the sweat of our brow, gives us our daily
bread; and ill knowledge, art, and culture are
His gifts, although elaborated by the brain and
heart of generations whom He taught.
Moreover, there was a protest against the
grasping, unbelieving temper which cannot trust
God with to-morrow, but longs to have much
goods laid up. That is the temper which for-
feits the smile of God, and grinds the faces
of the poor, to make an ignoble " provision "
for the future. How often, since the time of
Moses, has the unblessed accumulation become
hateful! How often, since the time of St. James,
the rust of such possession has eaten the flesh
like fire! Men would be far more generous, the
difference between wealth and poverty would be
less portentous, and the resources of religion
and charity less crippled, if we lived in the spirit
of the Lord's prayer, desirous of the advance of
the kingdom, but not asking to be given to-
morrow s bread until to-morrow. That lesson
was taught by the manner of the dispensation of
the manna, but the covetousness of Israel would
not learn it. The people actually strove to be
dishonest in their enjoyment of a miracle. It is
no wonder that Moses was wroth with them.
Among the strange properties of their super-
natural food not the least curious was this: that
when they came to measure what they had col-
lected, and compare it with what Moses had
bidden,* the most eager and able-bodied had
nothing over, and the feeblest had no lack.
Every real worker was suoplied, and none was
glutted. This result is apparently miraculous.
St. Paul's use of it does not, as some have sup-
posed, represent it as a result of Hebrew benevo-
lence, sharing with the weak the more abundant
supplies of the strong: the miracle is not cited as
an example of charity, but of that practical
equality, divinely approved, which Christian
charity should reproduce; the Christian Church
is bidden to do voluntarily what was done by
miracle in the wilderness: "your abundance
being a supply at this present time for their
want, that their abundance also may become a
supply for your want, that there may be equality;
as it is written. He that gathered much had
nothing over, and he that gathered little had no
lack " (2 Cor. viii. 15).
It is quite in vain to appeal to this passage in
favour of socialistic theories. In the first place
it applies only to the necessities of existence;
and even granting that the state should enforce
the principle to which it points, the duty would
not extend beyond a liberal poor rate. When
contributions were afterwards demanded for the
sanctuary, there is no trace of a dead level in
their resources: the rulers gave the gems and
spices and oil, some brought gold, with some
were found blue and linen and skins, and others
had acacia-wood to offer (xxxv. 22-4).
In the second place, this arrangement was
only temporary; and while the soil of Canaan
was distinctly claimed for the Lord, the enjoy-
ment of it by individuals was secured, and per-
petuated in their families, by stringent legisla-
tion. Now, land is the kind of property which
socialists most vehemently assail; but persons
who appeal to Exodus must submit to the au-
thority of Judges.
Socialism, therefore, and its coercive measures,
find no more real sanction here than in the
Church of Jerusalem, where the property of Ana-
nias was his own, and the price of it in his own
power. But yet it is highly significant that in
♦The "onier" of this passage is not mentioned else-
where in Scripture : it is known to have been the one-
hundredth part of the homer with which careless readers
sometimes confuse it, and its capacity is variously esti-
mated, from somewhat under half a gallon to somewhat
above three-quarters.
1 82
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
both Testaments, as the Church of God starts
upon its career, an example should be given of
the effacing of inequalities, in the one case by
miracle, in the other by such a voluntary move-
ment as best becomes the gospel. Is not such a
movement, large and free, the true remedy for
our modern social distractions and calamities?
Would it not be wise and Christ-like for the
rich to give, as St. Paul taught the Corinthians
to give, what the law could never wisely exact
from them? Would not self-denial, on a scale
to imply real sacrifice, and fulfilling in spirit
rather than letter the apostle's aspiration for
" equality," secure in return the enthusiastic ad-
hesion to the rights of property of all that is
best and noblest among the poor?
When will the world, or even the Church,
awaken to the great truth that our politics also
need to be steeped in Christian feeling — that hu-
manity requires not a revolution but a pentecost
— that a millennium cannot be enacted, but will
dawn whenever human bosoms are emptied of
selfishness and lust, and filled with brotherly
kindness and compassion? Such, and no more,
was the socialism which St. Paul deduced from
the equality in the supply of manna.
SPIRITUAL MEAT.
Exodus xvi. 15-36.
Since the journey of Israel is throughout full
of sacred meaning, no one can fail to discern a
mystery in the silent ceaseless daily miracle of
bread-giving. But we are not left to our con-
jectures. St. Paul calls manna " spiritual meat,"
not because it nourished the higher life (for the
eaters of it murmured for fiesh, and were not
estranged from their lust), but because it an-
swered to realities of the spiritual world (i Cor.
X. 3). And Christ Himself said, " It was not
Moses that gave you the bread out of heaven,
but My Father giveth you the true Bread from
heaven," making manna the type of sustenance
which the soul needs in the wilderness, and
which only God can give (John vi. 32).
We note the time of its bestowal. The soul
has come forth out of its bondage. Perhaps it
imagines that emancipation is enough: all is
won when its chains are broken: there is to be
no interval between the Egypt of sin and the
Promised Land of milk and honey and repose.
Instead of this serene attainment, it finds that
the soul requires to be fed, and no food is to be
seen, but only a wilderness of scorching heat,
dry sand, vacancy, and hunger. Old things
have passed away, but it is not yet realised that
all things have become new. Religion threatens
to become a vast system for the removal of ac-
customed indulgences and enjoyments, but
where is the recompense for all that it forbids?
The soul cries out for food: well for it if the cry
be not faithless, nor spoken to earthly chiefs
alone!
There is a noteworthy distinction between the
gift of manna and every other recorded miracle
of sustenance. In Eden the fruit of immortality
was ripening upon an earthly tree. The widow
of Zarephath was fed from her own stores. The
ravens bore to Elijah ordinary bread and flesh;
and if an angel fed him, it was with a cake baken
upon coals. Christ Himself was content to
multiply common bread and fish, and even after
His resurrection gave His apostles the fare to
which they were accustomed. Thus they learned
that divine life must be led amid the ordinary
conditions of mortality. Even the incarnation
of Deity was wrought in the likeness of sinful
flesh. But yet the incarnation was the bringing
of a new life, a strange and unknown energy, to
man.
And here, almost at the beginning of revela-
tion, is typified, not the homely conditions of the
inner life, but its unearthly nature and essence.
Here is no multiplication of their own stores, no
gift, like the quails, of such meat as they were
wont to gather. They asked " What is it? "
And this teaches the Christian that his suste-
nance is not of this world. They were fed
" with manna which they knew not ... to make
them know that man doth not live by bread only,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God doth man live" (Deut. viii. 3).
The root of worldliness is not in this indulgence
or that, in gay clothing or an active career; but
in the soul's endeavour to draw its nourishment
from things below. And spirituality belongs not
to an uncouth vocabulary, nor to the robes of
any confraternity, to rigid rules or austere de-
portment; it is the blessedness of a life nour-
ished upon the bread of heaven, and doomed to
starve if that bread be not bestowed. Let not
the wealthy find an insuperable bar to spirituality
in his condition, nor the poor suppose that in-
digence cannot have its treasure upon earth; but
let each man ask whence come his most real and
practical impulses and energies upon life's jour-
ney. If these flow from even the purest earthly
source — love of wife or child, anything else than
communion with the Father of spirits — this is not
the bread of life, and can no more nourish a pil-
grim towards eternity than the husks which
swine eat.
There is no mistaking the doctrine of the New
Testament as to what this bread may be. By
prayer and faith, by ordinances and sacraments
rightly used, the manna may be gathered; but
Jesus Himself is the Bread of life. His Flesh is
meat indeed and His Blood is drink indeed, and
He gives His Flesh for the life of the world.
Christ is the Vine, and we are the branches.
fruitful only by the sap which flows from Him.
As there are diseases which cannot be overcome
by powerful drugs, but by a generous and whole-
some dietary, so is it with the diseases of the
soul — pride, anger, selfishness, falsehood, lust.
As the curse of sin is removed by the faith which
appropriates pardon, so its power is broken by
the steady personal acceptance of Christ; and
our Bread and Wine are His new humanity,
given to us, until He becomes the second
Father of the race, which is begotten again in
Him. An easy temper is not Christian meek-
ness; dislike to witness pain is not Christian love.
All our goodness must strike root deeper than in
the sensibilities, must be nourished by the com-
munication to us of the mind which was in
Christ Jesus.
And this food is universally given, and uni-
versally suitable. The strong and the weak, the
aged chieftain and little children, ate and were
nourished. No stern decree excluded any mem-
ber of the visible Church in the wilderness from
sharing the bread from heaven: they did eat the
same spiiitual meat, provided only that they
gathered it. Their part was to be in earnest in
accepting, and so is ours; but if we fail, whom
Exodus xvii. 1-7.]
MERIBAH.
183
shall we blame except ourselves? In the mys-
tery of its origin, in the silent and secret mode
of its descent from above, in the constancy of its
bestowal, and in its suitability for all the camp,
for Moses and the youngest child, the manna
prefigured Christ.
Every day a fresh supply had to be laid up, and
nothing could be held over from the largest
hoard. So it is with us: we must give ourselves
to Christ for ever, but we must ask Him daily
to give Himself to us. The richest experience,
the purest aspiration, the humblest self-abandon-
ment that was ever felt, could not reach forward
to supply the morrow. Past graces will become
loathsome if used instead of present supplies
from heaven. And the secret of many a scan-
dalous fall is that the unhappy soul grew self-
confident: unlike St. Paul, he reckoned that he
had already attained; and thereupon the graces
in which he trusted became corrupt and vile.
The constant supply was not more needful
than it was abundant. The manna lay all around
the camp: the Bread of Life is He who stands at
our door and knocks. Alas for those who mur-
mur for grosser indulgences! Israel demanded
and obtained them; but while the flesh was in
their nostrils the angel of the Lord went forth
and smote them. Is there no plague any longer
for the perverse? What are the discords that
convulse families, the uncurbed passions to
which nothing is sacred, the jaded appetite and
weary discontent which hates the world even as
it hates itself? what but the judgment of God
upon those who despise His provision, and must
needs gratify themselves? Be it our happiness,
as it is our duty, to trust Him to prepare our
table before us, while He leads us to His Holy
Land.
The Lord of the Sabbath already taught His
people to respect His day. Upon it no manna
fell; and we shall hereafter see the bearing of this
incident upon the question whether the Sabbath
is only an ordinance of Judaism. Meanwhile
they who went out to gather had a sharp lesson
in the difiference between faith, which expects
what God has promised, and presumption, which
hopes not to lose much by disobeying Him.
Lastly, an omer of manna was to be kept
throughout all generations, before the Testi-
mony. Grateful remembrance of past mercies,
temporal as well as spiritual, was to connect
itself with the deepest and most awful mysteries
of religion. So let it be with us. The bitter
proverb that eaten bread i^ soon forgotten must
never be true of the Christian. He is to remem-
ber all the way that the Lord his God hath led
him. He is bidden to " forget not all His bene-
fits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, Who
healeth all thy diseases . . . Who satisfieth thy
mouth with good things." So foolish is the
slander that religion is too transcendental for the
common life of man.
CHAPTER XVII.
MERIBAH.
Exodus xvii. 1-7.
The people, miraculously fed, are therefore
called to exhibit more confidence in God than
hitherto, because much is required of him to
whom much is given. They have now to plunge
deeper into the wilderness; and after two stages
which Exodus omits (Num. xxxiii. 12, 13), and
just as they approach the mount of God, they
find themselves without water. Even the Son of
Man Himself was led into the wilderness next
after the descent of the Spirit, and the avowal
by the voice of God; nor is any true Christian to
marvel if his seasons of special privilege are suc-
ceeded by special demands upon his firmness.
One finds himself conjecturing, very often,
what nobler history, what grander analogies be-
tween type and antitype, what more gracious and
lavish interpositions might have instructed us, if
only the type had been less woefully imperfect
— if Israel had been trustful as Moses was, and
the crude material had not marred the design.
It would be more practical and edifying to re-
flect how often we ourselves, like Israel, might
have learned and exemplified deep things of the
grace of God, when all we really exhibited was
the well-worn lesson of human frailty and divine
forbearance.
In the story of our Lord, it has been observed
that before the Pharisees directly assailed Him-
self, they found fault with His disciples who
fasted not, or accosted them concerning Him
Who ate with sinners. And so here the people
really tempted God, but openly " strove with
Moses," and with Aaron too, for the verb is a
plural one: " Give ye water " (ver. 2).
But as Aaron is merely an agent and spokes-
man, the chief value of this tacit allusion to him,
besides proving his fidelity, is to refute the no-
tion that he sinks into comparative obscurity
only after the sin of the golden calf. Already
his position is one to be indicated rather than
expressed; and Moses said, " Why do ye quarrel
with me? wherefore do ye try the Lord?"
But the frenzy rose higher: it was he, ar^d not
a higher One, who had brought them out of
Egypt; the upshot of it would only be "to kill
us, and our children, and our cattle, with thirst."
Look closely at this expression, and a curious
significance discloses itself. Was it mere covet-
ousness, the spirit of the Jew Shylock lamenting
in one breath his daughter and his ducats, which
introduced the cattle along with the children
into this complaint of dying men? Shylock him-
self, when death actually looked him in the face,
readily sacrificed his fortune. Nor is it credible
that a large number of people, really believing
that a horrible death was imminent, would have
spent any complaints upon their property. The
language is exactly that of angry exaggeration.
They have come through straits quite as des-
perate, and they know it well. It is not the fear
of death, but the painful delay of fescue, the dis-
comfort and misery of their condition in the
meanwhile, the contrast between their sufferings
and their own conception of the rights of the
favourites of heaven, which is audible in this
complaint. And thus their " Trial " and " Quar-
rel " are admirably epitomised in the phrase " Is
Jehovah among us or not?" a phrar.e which has
often since been in the heart, if not. upon the lips,
of men who had supposed the life divine to be
one long holiday, the pilgrimage an excursion,
when without are fightings and within fears,
when they have great sorrow and heaviness in
their hearts.
Because God is not a Judge, but a Father, the
murmurs of Israel do not prevent Him from
showing mercy. Accordingly, when Moses
prays, he is bidden to go on before the people,
x84
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
bringing certain of their elders along with him
for witnesses of the marvel that was to follow.
Such is the Divine method. As soon as un-
belief and discontent estranged the Jews of the
New Testament from Christ, He would not vul-
garise His miracles, nor do many mighty works
among the unbelieving. After His resurrection
He appeared not unto all the people, but unto
witnesses chosen before. And as the Jews were
chosen to bear witness to Him among the na-
tions, so were these elders now to bear witness
among the Jews, who might without their testi-
mony have fallen into some such rationalising
theory as that of Tacitus, who says that Moses
discovered a fountain by examining a spot where
wild asses lay.
With these witnesses, he is bidden to go to a
rock in Horeb (so nearly had these murmurers
approached the scene of the most awful of all
manifestations of Him whose presence they de-
bated), and there God was to stand before them
upon the rock, making His universal presence a
localised consciousness in their experience.
A true religion is progressive: every stage of it
leans on the past and sustains the future; and so
Moses must bring with him " the rod, wherewith
thou smotest the river." The dullest can see the
fitness of this allusion. Among all the wonders
which the shepherd's wand had wrought, the
mastery over the Nile, the plague which in-
flicted an unwonted thirst upon the inhabitants
of that well-watered field of Zoan, was rnost to
the purpose now. To kill and to make alive are
the functions of the same Being, and He Who
spoiled the Egyptian river will now refresh His
heritage that is weary. At the touch of the pro-
phetic wand the \ aters poured forth which
thenceforth supplied them through all their
desert wanderings.
Reserving the symbolic meaning of this event
for a future study, we have to remember mean-
while the warning which the apostle here dis-
covered. All the people drank of the rock, yet
with many of them God was not pleased. Privi-
lege is one thing — acceptance is quite another;
and it shall be more tolerable at last for Sodom
and Gomorrah than for nations, churches, and
men, who were content to resemble soil that
drinketh in the rain that cometh upon it oft, and
yet to remain unfruitful. Already the conduct
of Israel was such that the place was named from
human worthlessness rather than Divine benefi-
cence. Too often, it is the more conspicuous
part of the story of the relations of God and man.
, AMALEK.
Exodus xvii. 8-16.
Nothing can be more natural, to those who
remember the value of a fountain in the East,
than that Amalek should swoop down from his
own territories upon Israel, as soon as this abun-
dant river tepipted his cupidity. This unpro-
voked attack of a kindred nation leads to another
advance in the education of the people.
They had hitherto been the sheep of God: now
they must become His warriors. At the Red
Sea it was said to them, " Stand still, and see
the salvation of the Lord . . . the Lord shall
fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace "
(xiv. 13). But it is not so now. Just as the
function of every true miracle is to lead to a
state of faith in which miracles are not required;
just as a mother reaches her hand to a tottering
infant, that presently the boy may go alone, so
the Lord fought for Israel, that Israel might
learn to fight for the Lord. The herd of slaves
who came out of Egypt could not be trusted to
stand fast in battle; and what a defeat would have
done with them we may judge by their outcries
at the very sight of Pharaoh. But now they had
experience of Divine succor, and had drawn the
inspiring breath of freedom. And so it was rea-
sonable to expect that some chosen men of thern
at least will be able to endure the shock of battle.
And if so, it was a matter of the last importance
to develop and render conscious the national
spirit, a spirit so noble in its unselfish readiness
to die, and in its scorn of such material ills as
anguish and mutilation compared with baseness
and dishonour, that the re-kindling of it in sea-
sons of peril and conflict is more than half a
compensation for the horrors of a battle-field.
We do not now inquire what causes avail to
justify the infliction and endurance of those hor-
rors. Probably they will vary from age to age;
and as the ties grow strong which bind mankind
together, the rupture of them will be regarded
with an ever-deepening shudder, — just as Eng-
land to-day would certainly refuse to make war
upon our American kinsmen for a provocation
which (rightly or wrongly) she would not en-
dure from Russians. But the point to be ob-
served is that war cannot be inherently immoral,
since God instructed in war the first nation that
Pie ever trained, not using its experience of His
immediate interpositions to supersede all need of
human strife, but to make valiant soldiers, and
adding some of the most precious lessons of all
their later experience on the battle-field and bj'
the sword. Now, it assuredly cannot be shown
that anything in itself immoral is fostered and
encouraged by the Old Testament. Slavery and
divorce, which it was not yet possible to extir-
pate, were hampered, restricted, and reduced to
a minimum, being " suffered " " because of the
hardness of 'their' hearts" (Matt. xix. 8). The
wildest assailant of the Pentateuch will scarcely
pretend that it fosters and incites either divorce
or slavery, as, beyond all question, it encourages
the martial ardour of the Jews.
And yet war, though permissible, and in cer-
tain circumstances necessary, is only necessary
as the lesser of two evils; it is not in itself good.
Solomon, not David, could build the temple of
the Lord; and Isaiah sharply contrasts the Mes-
siah with even that providentially appointed con-
queror, the only pagan who is called by God
" My anointed," in that the one comes upon
rulers as upon mortar, and as the potter treadeth
clay, but the Other breaks not a bruised reed,
nor quenches the smoking flax (Isa. xli. 25, xlii.
3, xlv. i). The ideal of humanity is peace, and
also it is happiness, but war may not yet have
ceased to be a necessity of life, sometimes as
ruinous to evade as any other form of suffering.
Another necessity of national development is
the advancement of capable men. The empire of
Napoleon would assuredly have withered, if only
because its chief was as jealous of commanding
genius as he was ready to advance and patronise
capacity of the second order. It is a maxim that
true greatness finds worthy colleagues and suc-
cessors, and rejoices in them. And while the
guidance of Jehovah is to be assumed through-
out, it is significant that the first mention of the
Exodus xvii. 8-16.]
AMALEK.
185
I
I
I
splendid commander and godly judge, during
all whose days and the days of his contempo-
raries Israel served Jehovah, comes not in any
express revelation or commandment of God; but
the narrative relates that Moses said unto Joshua,
" Choose out men for us and go out, fight with
Amalek: to-morrow I will stand on the top of
the hill with the rod of God in my hand." They
are the words of one who had noted him already
as " a man in whom is the Spirit " (Num. xxvii.
18), of one also who had unlearned, in the ex-
perience now of eighty years, the desire of glit-
tering achievement and martial fame, who knew
that the deepest fountains of real power are hid-
den, and was content that another should lead
the headlong and victorious charge, if only it
were his to hold, upon the top of the hill, the
rod of God.
Once it was his own rod: with it the exiled
shepherd controlled the sheep of his master;
that it should be the medium of the miraculous
had appeared to be an additional miracle, but
now it was the very rod of God, nor was any cry
to heaven more eloquent and better grounded
than simply the reaching toward the skies, in
long, steady, mute appeal, of that symbol of all
His dealings with them — the plaguing of Egypt,
the recession of the tide and its wild return, the
bringing of water from the rock. Was all to be
in vain? Should the wild boar waste the vine
just brought out of Egypt before ever it reached
the appointed vineyard? And we also should be
able to plead with God the noble works that He
hath done in our time. For us also there ought
to be such experience as worketh hope. As long
as the exertion was possible even to the heroic
force which age had not abated, Moses thus
prayed for his people; for the gesture was a
prayer, and a grand one, and must not be criti-
cised otherwise than as the act of a poetic and
primitive genius, whose institutions throughout
are full of spiritual import. While he did this,
Israel prevailed; but the slow progress of the
victory reminds us of these dreary centuries dur-
ing which we are just able to discern some
gradual advance of the kingdom of Christ on
earth, but no rout, no collapse of evil. And why
was this? Because the sustaining and perma-
nent energy was not to flow from the prayers of
one, however holy and however eminent; three
men were together in the mountain, and the co-
operation of them all was demanded; so that
only when Aaron and Hur supported the sinking
hand of their chief was the decisive victory
given.
Now, the lesson from all this does not concern
the High-priestly intercession of our Lord, for
the office of Moses is consistently distinguished
from the priesthood. Nor can the notion be
tolerated that if our Lord requires mortal co-
operation before asking and being given the
heathen for His heritage, which is obviously the
case, the reason can be at all expressed by that
weakness which needed support.
No, the Lord our Priest is also Himself the
dispenser of victory. To Him all power is given
on earth, and to Him it is our duty to appeal for
the triumph of His own cause. And here and
there, doubtless, a Christian heart is fervent and
faithful in its intercessions. To these, unknown,
unsuspected by the combatants in the heat of
battle, — to humble saints, some of them bed-
ridden, ignorant, poverty-stricken, despised, holy
souls who have no controversial skill, no mis-
sionary calling, but who possess the grace
habitually to convert their wishes into prayers,
— to such, perhaps, it is due that the idols of
India and China are now bowing down. And
when they cease to be a minority in so doing,
when those who now criticise learn to sustain
their flagging energies, we shall see a day of the
Lord.
Observe, however, that as the active exertion
of the host does not displace the silence of inter-
cession, neither is it displaced itself: Joshua
really bore his part in the discomfiture of Amalek
and his host. And so it is always. The devel-
opment of human energy to the uttermost is a
part of the design of Him Who gave a task even
to unfallen man. Let none suppose that to
labour is (sufficiently and by itself) to pray; but
also let none idly persuade himself that while
energies and responsibilities are his, to pray is
sufficiently to labour.
Thus it came to pass that Israel won its first
victory in battle. Another step was taken to-
ward the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham
to make of him a great nation; and also toward
the gradual transference of the national faith
from a passive reliance in Divine interposition to
an abiding confidence in Divine help. Let it be
clearly understood that this latter is the nobler
and the more mature faith.
With martial ardour. God took care to incul-
cate the sense of national responsibility, without
which warriors become no more than brigands.
So it was with Amalek: he had not been attacked
or even menaced; he had marched out from his
own territories to assail an innocent and kindred
race (" then came Amalek " ver. 8). and his at-
tack had been cruel and cowardly, he smote the
hindmost, all that were feeble and in the rear,
when they were faint and weary, and he feared
not God (Deut. xxv. 18). Against all such tac-
tics the wrath of God was denounced when, be-
cause of them, Amalek was doomed to total
extirpation.
Moses now built an altar, to imprint on the
mind of the people this new lesson. And he
called it, " The Lord is my Banner," a title
which called the nation at once to valour and to
obedience, which asserted that they were an
army, but a consecrated one.
Now let us ask whether this simple story is at
all the kind of thing which legend or myth would
have created, for the first martial exploit of
Israel. The obscure part played by Moses is
not what we would expect; nor, even as a medi-
ator, is the position of one whose arms must be
held up a very romantic conception. If the ob-
ject is to inspire the Jews for later struggles with
more formidable foes, the story is ill-contrived,
for we read of no surprising force of Amalek,
and no inspiriting exploit of Joshua. Every-
thing is as prosaic as the real course of events in
this poor world is wont to be. And on that ac-
count it is all the more useful to us who live
prosaic lives, and need the help of God among
prosaic circumstances.
1 86
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
CHAPTER XVIII.
JETHRO.
Exodus xviii. 1-27.
The defeat of Amalek is followed by the visit
of Jethro; the opposite pole of the relation be-
tween Israel and the nations, the coming of the
Gentiles to his brightness. And already that is
true which repeats itself all through the history
of the Church, that much secular wisdom, the
art of organisation, the structure and discipline
of societies, may be drawn from the experience
and wisdom of the world.
Moses was under the special guidance of God,
as really as any modern enthusiast can claim to
be. When he turned for aid or direction to
heaven, he was always answered. And yet he
did not think scorn of the counsel of his kins-
man. And although eighty years had not
dimmed the fire of his eyes, nor wasted his
strength, he neglected not the warning which
taught him to economise his force; not to waste
on every paltry dispute the attention and wisdom
which could govern the new-born state.
Jethro is the kinsman, and probably the
brother-in-law of Moses; for if he were the
father-in-law, and the same as Reuel in the
second chapter, why should a new name be in-
troduced without any mark of identification?
When he hears of the emancipation of Israel
from Egypt, he brings back to Moses his two
sons and Zipporah, who had been sent away,
after the angry scene at the circumcision of the
younger, and before he entered Egypt with his
life in his hand. Now he was a great personage,
the leader of a new nation, and the conqueror
of the proudest monarch in the world. With
what feelings would the wife and husband meet?
We are told nothing of their interview, nor have
we any reason to qualify the unfavourable im-
pression produced by the circumstances of their
parting, by the schismatic worship founded by
their grandchildren, and by the loneliness im-
plied in the very names of Gershom and Eliezer
— " A-stranger-there," and " God-a-Help."
But the relations between Moses and Jethro
are charming, whether we look at the obeisance
rendered to the official minister of God by him
whom God had honoured so specially, by the
prosperous man to the friend of his adversity, or
at the interest felt by the priest of Midian in all
the details of the great deliverance of which he
had heard already, or his joy in a Divine mani-
festation, probably not in all respects according
to the prejudices of his race, or his praise of Je-
hovah as " greater than all gods, yea, in the-
thing wherein they dealt proudly against them "
(ver. II, R. v.). The meaning of this phrase is
either that the gods were plagued in their own
domains, or that Jehovah had finally vanquished
the Egyptians by the very element in which they
were most oppressive, as when Moses himself
had been exposed to drown.
There is another expression, in the first verse,
which deserves to be remarked. How do the
friends of a successful man think of the scenes
in which he has borne a memorable part? They
chiefly think of them in connection with their
own hero. And amid all the story of the
Exodus, in which so little honour is given to the
human actor, the one trace of personal exulta-
tion is where it is most natural and becoming; it
is in the heart of his relative: " When Jethro . . .
heard of all that the Lord had done for Moses
and for Israel."
We are told, with marked emphasis, that this
Midianite, a priest, and accustomed to act as
such with Moses in his family, " took a burnt-
offering and sacrifices for God; and Aaron came,
and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with
.Moses' father-in-law before God." Nor can v^e
doubt that the writer of the Epistle to the He-
brews, who laid such stress upon the subordi-
nation of Abraham to Melchizedek, would have
discerned in the relative position of Jethro and
Aaron another evidence that the ascendency of
the Aaronic priesthood was only temporary.
We shall hereafter see that priesthood is a func-
tion of redeemed humanity, and that all limita-
tions upon it were for a season, and due to hu-
man shortcoming. But for this very reason (if
there were no other) the chief priest could onlj^
be He Who represents and embodies all hu-
manity, in Whom is neither Jew nor Greek, bar-
barian. Scythian, bond nor free, because He i.-i
all and in all.
In the meantime, here is recognised, in the
history of Israel, a Gentile priesthood.
And, as at the passover, so now, the sacrifice
to God is partaken of by His people, who are
conscious of acceptance by Him. Happy was
the union of innocent festivity with a sacramental
recognition of God. It is the same sentimeni
which was aimed at by the primitive Christian
Church in her feasts of love, genuine meals in
the house of God, until licence and appetite
spoiled them, and the apostle asked " Have ye
not houses to eat and drink in? " (i Cor. xi. 22).
Shall there never come a time when the vic-
torious and pure Church of the latter days shall
regain what we have forfeited, when the doctrine
of the consecration of what is called " secular
life " shall be embodied again in forms like
these? It speaks to us meanwhile in a form
which is easily ridiculed (as in Lamb's well-
known essay), and yet singularly touching and
edifying if rightly considered, in the asking for
a blessing upon our meals.
On the morrow, Jethro saw Moses, all day
long, deciding the small matters and great which
needed already to be adjudicated for the nation.
He who had striven, without a commission, him-
self to smite the Egyptian, and lead out Israel,
is the same self-reliant, heroic, not too discreet
person still.
But the true statesman and administrator is he
who employs to the utmost all the capabilities
and energies of his subordinates. And Jethro
made a deep mark in history when he taught
Moses the distinction between the lawgiver and
the judge, between him who sought from God
and proclaimed to the people the principles of
justice and their form, and him who applied the
law to each problem as it arose.
" It is supposed, and with probability," writes
Kalisch (in loco), " that Alfred the Great, who
was well versed in the Bible, based his own
Saxon constitution of sheriffs in counties, etc..
on the example of the Mosaic division (comp.
Bacou on English Government, i. 70)." _ And thus
it mav be that our own nation owes its free in-
stitutions almost directly to the generous interest
in the well-being of his relative, felt by an
Arabian priest, who cherished, annd the growth
of idolatries all around him, the primitive belief
Exodus xviii. 1-27.]
JETHRO.
187
in God, and who rightly held that the first quali-
fications of a capable judge were ability, and the
fear of God, truthfulness and hatred of unjubt
gain.
We learn from Deuteronomy (i. 9-15), that
Moses allowed the people themselves to elect
these officials, who became not only their judges
but their captains.
! From the whole of this narrative we see clearly
that the intervention of God for Israel is no
more to be regarded as superseding the exercise
j of human prudence and common-sense, than as
dispensing with valour in the repulse of Amalek.
and with patience in journeying through the
wildernes.<i.
THE TYPICAL BEARINGS OF THE
HISTORY.
We are now about to pass from history to
legislation. And this is a convenient stage at
which to pause, and ask how it comes to pass
that all this narrative is also, in some sense, an
allegory. It is a discussion full of pitfalls.
Countless volumes of arbitrary and fanciful in-
terpretation have done their worst to discredit
every attempt, however cautious and sober, at
finding more than the primary signification in
any narrative.* And whoever considers the
reckless, violent, and inconsistent methods of the
m3'stical commentators may be forgiven if he
recoils from occupying the ground which they
have wasted, and contents himself with simply
drawing the lessons which the story directly
suggests.
But the New Testament does not warrant such
a surrender. It tells us that leaven answers to
malice, and unleavened bread to sincerity; that
at the Red Sea the people were baptised; that
the tabernacle and the altar, the sacrifice and the
priest, the mercy-seat and the manna, were all
types and shadows of abiding Christian realitie.^.
It is more surprising to find the return of the
infant Jesus connected with the words " When
Israel was a child then I loved him, and I called
My son out of Egypt,"- — for it is impossible to
doubt that the prophet was here speaking of the
Exodus, and had in mind the phrase " Israel is
My son, My first-born: let My son go, that he
may serve Me" (Matt. i. 15; Hos. xi. i; Exod.
iv. 22).
How are such passages to be explained?
Surely not by finding a superficial resemblance
between two things, and thereupon transferring
to one of them whatever is true of the other.
No thought can attain accuracy except by taking
care not to confuse in this way things which
superficially resemble each other.
But no thought can be fertilising and sug-
gestive which neglects real and deep resem-
blances, resemblances of principle as well as in-
cident, resemblances which are due to the mind
of God or the character of man.
In the structure and furniture of the taber-
nacle, and the order of its services, there are
analogies deliberately planned, and such as
every one would expect, between religious truth
shadowed forth in Judaism, and the same truth
spoken in these latter days unto us in the Son.
* Take as an example the assertion of Bunyan that the
sea in the Revelation is a sea of g'lass, because the laver
in the tabernacle was made of the brazen looking-glasses
of the women. iSolo?no>t's Temple, xxxvi. i.)
But in the emancipation, the progress, and
alas! the «ns and chastisements of Israel, there
are analogies of another kind, since here it is
history which resembles theology, and chiefly
secular things which are compared with spiritual.
But the analogies are not capricious; they aie
based upon the obvious fact that the same God
Who pitied Israel in bondage sees, with the
same tender heart, a worse tyranny. For it is
not a figure of speech to say that sin is slavery.
Sin does outrage the will, and degrade and spoil
the life. The sinner does obey a hard and mer-
ciless master. If his true home is in the king-
dom of God, he is, like Israel, not only a slave
but an exile. Is God the God of the Jew only?
for otherwise He must, being immutable, deal
with us and our tyrant as He dealt with Israel
and Pharaoh. If He did not, by an exertion of
omnipotence, transplant them from Egypt to
their inheritance at one stroke, but required of
them obedience, co-operation, patient discipline,
and a gradual advance, why should we expect
the whole work and process of grace to be
summed up in the one experience which we call
conversion? Yet if He did, promptly and com-
pletely, break their chains and consummate their
emancipation, then the fact that grace is a pro-
gressive and gradual experience does not forbid
us to reckon our.>elves dead unto sin. If the
region through which they were led, during
their time of discipline, was very unlike the land
of milk and honey which awaited the close of
their pilgrimage, it is not unlikely that the same
God will educate his later Church by the same
means, leading us also by a way that we know
not, to humble and prove us, that He may do us.
good at the latter end.
And if He marks, by a solemn institution, the
period when we enter into covenant relations
with Himself, and renounce the kingdom and
tyranny of His foe, is it marvellous that the
apostle found an analogy for this in the great
event by which God punctuated the emancipa-
tion of Israel, leading them out of Egypt through
the sea depths and beneath the protecting cloud?
If privilege, and adoption, and the Divine
good-will, did not shelter them from the conse-
quences of ingratitude and rebellion, if He
spared not the natural branches, we should take
heed lest He spare not us.
Such analogies are really arguments, as solid
as those of Bishop Butler.
But the same cannot be maintained so easily
of some others. When that is quoted of our
Lord upon the cross which was written of the
paschal lamb, " a bone shall not be broken "
(Exod. xii. 46, John xix. 36), we feel that tlie
citation needs to be justified upon difTferent
grounds. But such grounds are available. He
was the true Lamb of God. For His sake the
avenger passes over all His followers. His
flesh is meat indeed. And therefore, although
no analogy can be absolutely perfect, and the
type has nothing to declare that His blood is
drink indeed, yet there is an admirabia fitness,
worthy of inspired record, in the consummating
and fulfilment in Him, and in Him alone of
three sufiferers, of the precept " A bone of
Him shall not be broken." It may not be an
express prophecy which is brought to pass, but
it is a beautiful and appropriate correspondence,
wrought out by Providence, not available for the
coercion of sceptics, but good for the edifying of
believers.
i88
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
And so it is with the calling of the Son out of
Egypt. Unquestionably Hosea spoke of Israel.
But unquestionably too the phrase, " My Son,
My Firstborn," is a startling one. Here is al-
ready a suggestive difference between the mono-
theism of the Old Testament and the austerer
jealous logical orthodoxy of the Koran, which
protests " It is not meet for God to have any
Son, God forbid" (Sura xix. 36). Jesus argued
that such a rigid and lifeless orthodoxy as that
of later Judaism ought to have been scandalised,
long before it came to consider His claims, by
the ancient and recognised inspiration which
gave the name of gods to men who sat in judg-
ment as the representatives of Heaven. He
claimed the right to carry still further the same
principle — namely, that deity is not selfish and
incommunicable, but practically gives itself
away, in transferring the exercise of its functions.
From such condescension everything may be ex-
pected, for God does not halt in the middle of a
path He has begun to tread.
But if this argument of Jesus were a valid one
(and the more it is examined the more profound
it will be seen to be), how significant will then
appear the term " My Son," as applied to Israel!
In condescending so far, God almost pledged
Himself to the Incarnation, being no dealer in
half measures, nor likely to assume rhetorically
a relation to mankind to which in fact He would
not stoop.
Every Christian feels, moreover, that it is by
virtue of the grand and final condescension that
all the preliminary steps are possible. Because
Abraham's seed was one, that is Christ, there-
fore ye (all) if ye are Christ's, are Abraham's
seed, heirs according to promise (Gal. iii. 16, 29).
But when this great harmony comes to be de-
voutly recognised, a hundred minor and inci-
dental points of contact are invested with a
sacred interest.
No doctrinal injury would have resulted, if the
Child Jesus had never left the Holy Land. No
infidel could have served his cause by quoting
the words of Hosea. Nor can we now cite them
against infidels as a prophecy fulfilled. But
when He does return from Egypt our devotions,
not our polemics, hail and rejoice in the coinci-
dence. It reminds us, although it does not
demonstrate, that He who is thus called out of
Egypt is indeed the Son.
The sober historian cannot prove anything,
logically and to demonstration, by the reiterated
interventions in history of atmospheric phe-
nomena. And yet no devout thinker can fail to
recognise that God has reserved the hail against
the time of trouble and war.
In short, it is absurd and hopeless to bid us
limit our contemplation, in a divine narrative, to
what can be demonstrated like the propositions
of Euclid. We laugh at the French for trying to
make colonies and constitutions according to
abstract principles, and proposing, as they once
did, to reform Europe " after the Chinese man-
ner." Well, religion also is not a theory: it is
the true history of the past of humanity, and it
is the formative principle in the history of the
present and the future.
And hence it follows that we may dwell with
interest and edification upon analogies, as every
great thinker confesses the existence of truths,
" which never can be proved."
In the meantime it is easy to recognise the
much simpler fact, that these things happened
unto them by way of example, and they were
written for our admonition.
CHAPTER XIX.
AT SINAI.
Exodus xix. 1-25.
In the third month from the Exodus, and on
the self-same day (which addition fixes the date
precisely), the people reached the wilderness of
Sinai. This answers fairly to the date of Pente-
cost, which was afterwards connected by tradi-
tion with the giving of the law. And therefore
Pentecost was the right time for the gift of the
Holy Ghost, bringing with Him the law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus, and that freedom
from servile Jewish obedience which is not at-
tained by violating law, but by being imbued in
its spirit, by the love which is the fulfilling of the
law.
There is among the solemn solitudes of Sinai
a wide amphitheatre, reached by two converging
valleys, and confronted by an enormous perpen-
dicular cliff, the Ras Sufsafeh — a " natural altar,"
before which the nation had room to congre-
gate, awed by the stern magnificence of the ap-
proach, and by the intense loneliness and deso-
lation of the surrounding scene, and thus pre-
pared for the unparalleled revelation which
awaited them.
It is the manner of God to speak through
nature and the senses to the soul. We cannot
imagine the youth of the Baptist spent in Naza-
reth, nor of Jesus in the desert. Elijah, too,
was led into the wilderness to receive the vision
of God, and the agony of Jesus was endured at
night, and secluded by the olives from the pas-
chal moon. It is by another application of the
same principle that the settled Jewish worship
was bright with music and splendid with gold
and purple; and the notion that the sublime and
beautiful in nature and art cannot awaken the
feelings to which religion appeals, is as shallow
as the notion that when these feelings are
awakened all is won.
What happens next is a protest against this
latter extreme. Awe is one thing: the submis-
sion of the will is another. And therefore Moses
was stopped when about to ascend the mountain,
there to keep the solemn appointment that was
made when God said, " This shall be the token
unto thee that I have sent thee: When thou hast
brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall
serve God upon this mountain " (iii. 12). His
own sense of the greatness of the crisis perhaps
needed to be deepened. Certainly the nation
had to be pledged, induced to make a deliberate
choice, now first, as often again, under Joshua
and Samuel, and when Elijah invoked Jehovah
upon Carmel. (Josh. xxiv. 24; i Sam. xii. 14;
I Kings xviii. 21, 39.)
It is easy to speak of pledges and formal decla-
rations lightly, but they have their warrant in
many such Scriptural analogies, nor should we
easily find a church, careful to deal with souls,
which has not employed them in some form,
whether after the Anglican and Lutheran fashion,
by confirmation, or in the less formal methods
of other Protestant communions, or even by de-
laying baptism itself until it becomes, for the
adult in Christian lands, what it is to the convert
from false creeds.
Exodus xix. 1-25.]
AT SINAI.
189
Therefore the Lord called to Moses "as he
climbed the steep, and offered through him a
formal covenant to the people.
" Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob,*
and tell the children of Israel: Ye have seen what
I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on
eagles' wings, and brought you unto Myself."
The appeal is to their personal experience and
their gratitude: will this be enough? Will they
accept His yoke, as every convert must, not
knowing what it may involve, not yet having
His demands specified and His commandments
before their eyes, content to believe that what-
ever is required of them will be good, because
the requirement is from God? Thus did Abra-
ham, who went forth, not knowing whither, but
knowing that he was divinely guided. " Now,
therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed and
keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar
treasure unto Me from among all peoples; for
all the earth is Mine, and ye shall be unto Me a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
Thus God conveys to them, more explicitly
than hitherto, the fact that He is the universal
Lord, not ruling one land or nation only, nor,
as the Pentateuch is charged with teaching, their
tutelary deity among many others. Thus also
the seeds are sown in them of a wholesome and
rational self-respect, such as the Psalmist felt,
who asked " What is man, that Thou art mind-
ful of him?" yet realised that such mindfulness
gave to man a real dignity, made him but little
lower than the angels, and crowned him with
glory and honour.
Abolish religion, and mankind will divide into
two classes, — one in which vanit3^ unchecked by
any spiritual superior, will obey no restraints of
law, and another of which the conscious petti-
ness will aspire to no dignity of holiness, and
shrink from no dishonour of sin. It is only the
presence of a loving God which can unite in us
the sense of humility and greatness, as having
nothing and yet possessing all things, and valued
by God as His " peculiar treasure." t
And with a reasonable self-respect should come
a noble and yet sober dignity — " Ye shall be a
kingdom of priests," a dynasty (for such is the
meaning) of persons invested with royal and also
with priestly rank. This was spoken just before
the law gave the priesthood into the hands of
one tribe; and thus we learn that Levi and Aaron
were not to supplant the nation, but to repre-
sent it.
Now, this double rank is the property of re-
deemed humanity: we are "a kingdom and
priests unto God." Yet the laity of the Corin-
thian Church were rebuked for a self-asserting
and mutinous enjoyment of their rank: " Ye
have reigned as kings without us"; and others
there were in this Christian dispensation who
"perished in the gainsaying of Korah " (i Cor.
iv. 8; Jude 11).
If the words " He hath made us a kingdom
and priests " furnish any argument against the
* This phrase is not found elsewhere in the Pentateuch.
Is it fancy which detects in it a desire to remind them of
their connection with the least worthy rather than the
noblest of the Patriarchs? One would not expect, for
instance, to read, Fear not, thou worm Abraham, or even
Israel ; Isut the name of Jacob at once calls up humble
associations.
tThis word is the same which occurs in the verse so
beautifully but erroneously rendered " They shall be
Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up
My Jewels " (Mai. iii. 17, A. V.). "They shall be Mine
. . . in the day that I do make, even a peculiar treasure "
<R, V.-).
13— Vol. I.
existence of an ordained ministry now, then
there should have been no Jewish priesthood, for
the same words are here. And is it supposed
that this assertion only began to be true when
the apostles died? Certainly there is a kind of
self-assertion in the ministry which they con-
demn. But if they are opposed to its existence,
alas for the Pastoral Epistles! It was because
the function belonged to all, that no man might
arrogate it who was not commissioned to act on
behalf of all.
But while the individual may not assert him-
self to the unsettling of church order, the privi-
lege is still common property. All believers
have boldness to enter into the holiest place of
all. All are called upon to rule for God " over a
few things," to establish a kingdom of God
within, and thus to receive a crown of life, and
to sit with Jesus upon His throne. The very
honours by which Israel was drawn to God are
offered to us all, as it is written, " We are the
circumcision," " We are Abraham's seed and
heirs according to the promise" (Phil. iii. 3;
Gal. iii. 29).
To this appeal the nation responded gladl>-.
They could feel that indeed they had been sus-
tained by God as the eagle bears her young — not
grasping them in her claws, like other birds, but
as if enthroned between her wings, and sheltered
by her body, which interposed between the
young and any arrow of the hunter. Thus, say
the Rabbinical interpreters, did the pillar of
cloud intervene between Israel and the Egyp-
tians. If the image were to be pressed so far, we
could now find a much closer analogy for the
eagle " preferring itself to be pierced rather than
to witness the death of its young " (Kalisch).
But far more tender, and very touching in its
domestic homeliness, is the metaphor of Him
Whose discourses teem with allusions to the Old
Testament, yet Who preferred to compare Him-
self to a hen gathering her chickens under her
wing.
With the adhesion of Israel to the covenant,
Moses returned to God. And the Lord said,
" Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the
people may hear when I speak with thee, and
may also believe thee for ever."
The design was to deepen their reverence for
the Lawgiver Whose law they should now re-
ceive; to express by lessons, not more dreadful
than the plagues of Egypt, but more vivid and
sublime, the tremendous grandeur of Him Who
was making a covenant with them. Who had
borne them on His wings and called them His
firstborn Son, Whom therefore they might be
tempted to approach with undue familiarity, were
it not for the mountain that burned up to heaven,
the voice of the trumpet waxing louder and
louder, and the Appearance so fearful that Moses
said, " I exceedingly fear and quake " ( rb <pav-
ra^dfievov — Heb. xii. 21).
When thus the Deity became terrible, the en-
voy would be honoured also.
But it is important to observe that these ter-
rible manifestations were to cease. Like the im-
pressions produced by sickness, by sudden
deaths, by our own imminent danger, the emo-
tion would subside, but the conviction should
remain: they should believe Moses for ever.
Emotions are like the swellings of the Nile; they
subside again; but they ought to leave a fertilis-
ing deposit behind.
That the impression might not be altogether
190
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
passive, and therefore ephemeral, the people were
bidden to " sanctify themselves "; all that is com-
mon and secular must be suspended for awhile;
and it is worth notice that, as when the family
of Jacob put away their strange gods, so now the
Israelites must wash their clothes (cf. Gen. xxxv.
2). For one's vestment is a kind of outer self,
and has been with the man in the old occupations
from which he desires to purify himself. It was
therefore that when Jehu was made king, and
when Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph, men
put their garments under their chief to express
their own subjection (2 Kings ix. 13; Matt. xxi.
7). Much of the philosophy of Carlyle is latent
in these ancient laws and usages.
Moreover, the mountain was to be fenced from
the risk of profanation by any sudden impulsive
movement of the crowd, and even a beast that
touched it should be slain by such weapons as
men could hurl without themselves pursuing it.
Only when the trumpet blew a long summons
might the appointed ones come up to the mount
(ver. 13).
On the third day, after a soul-searching inter-
val, there were thunders and lightnings, and a
cloud, and the trumpet blast; and while all the
people trembled, Moses led them forth to meet
with God. Again the narrative reverts to the
terrible phenomena — the fire like the smoke of
a furnace (called by an Egyptian name which
only occurs in the Pentateuch), and the whole
mountain quaking. Then, since his commission
was now to be established, Moses spake, and the
Lord answered him with a voice. And when he
again climbed the mountain, it became necessary
to send him back with yet another warning,
whether his example was in danger of embolden-
ing others to exercise their newly given priest-
hood, or the very excess of terror exercised its
well-known fascinating power, as men in a
burning ship have been seen to leap into the
flames.
And the priests also, who come near to God,
should sanctify themselves. It has been asked
who these were, since the Levitical institutions
were still non-existent (ver. 22, cf. 24). But it
is certain that the heads of houses exercised
priestly functions; and it is not impossible that
the elders of Israel who came to eat before God
with Jethro (xviii. 12) had begun to perform re-
ligious functions for the people. Is it supposed
that the nation had gone without religious
services for three months?
It has been remarked by many that the law of
Moses appealed for acceptance to popular and
even democratic sanctions. The covenant was
ratified by a plebiscite. The tremendous evi-
dence was offered equally to all. For, said St.
Augustine. " as it was fit that the law which was
given, not to one man or a few enlightened
people, but to the whole of a populous nation,
should be accompanied by awe-inspiring signs,
great marvels were wrought . . . before the
people" (De Civ. Dei. x. 13).
We have also to observe the contrast between
the appearance of God on Sinai and His mani-
festation in Jesus. And_ this also was strongly
wrought out by an ancient father, who repre-
sented the Virgin Mary, in the act of giving
Jesus into the hands of Simeon, as saying, " The
blast of the trumpet does not now terrify those
who approach, nor a second time does the moun-
tain, all on fire, cause terror to those who come
nigh, nor does the law punish relentlessly those
who would boldly touch. What is present here
speaks of love to man; what is apparent, of the
Divine compassion." (Methodius, De Sym. ct
Anna, vii.)
But we must remember that the Epistle to the
Hebrews regards the second manifestation as the
more solemn of the two, for this very reason:
that we have not come to a burning mountain,
or to mortal penalties for carnal irreverence,
but to the spiritual mountain Zion, to countless
angels, to God the Judge, to the spirits of just
men made perfect, and to Jesus Christ. If they
escaped not, when they refused Him Who
warned on earth, much more we, who turn away
from Him Who warneth from heaven (Heb. xii.
18-25).
There is a question, lying far behind all these,
which demands attention.
It is said that legends of wonderful appear-
ances of the gods are common to all religions;
that there is no reason for giving credit to this
one and rejecting all the rest; and, more thaa
this, that God absolutely could not reveal Him-
self by sensuous appearances, being Himself a
Spirit. In what sense and to what extent God
can be said to have really revealed Himself, we
shall examine hereafter. At present it is enough
to ask whether human love and hatred, joy
and sorrow, homage and scorn can manifest
themselves bv looks and tones, by the open palm
and the clenched fist, by laughter and tears, by a
bent neck and by a curled lip. For if what is
most immaterial in our own soul can find sen-
suous expression, it is somewhat bold to deny
that a majesty and power beyond anything hu-
man may at least be conceived as finding utter-
ance, through a mountain burning to the summit
and reeling to the base, and the blast of a
trumpet which the people could not hear and
live.
But when it is argued that wondrous theoph-
anies are common to all faiths, two replies pre-
sent themselves. If all the races of mankind
agree in believing that there is a God, and that
He manifests Himself wonderfully, does that
really prove that there is no God, or even that
He never manifested Himself wondrously? We
should certainly be derided if we insisted that ,
such a universal belief proved the truth of the
story of Mount Sinai, and perhaps we should de-
serve our fate. But it is more absurd by far to
pretend that this instinct, this intuition, this uni-
versal expectation that God would some day,
somewhere, rend the veil which hides Him, does
actually refute the narrative.
We have also to ask for the production of
those other narratives, sublime in their concep-
tion and in the vast audience which they chal-
lenged, sublimely pure alike from taint of idola-
trous superstition and of moral evil, profound
and far-reaching in their practical effect upon
humanity, which deserve to be so closely asso-
ciated with the giving of the Mosaic law that in
their collapse it also must be destroyed, as the
fall of one tree sometimes breaks the next. But
this narrative stands out so far in the open, and
lifts its head so high, that no other even touches
a bough of it when overturned.
Is it seriously meant to compare the alleged
disappearance of Romulus, or the secret inter-
views of Numa with his Egeria, to a history like
this? Surely one similar story should be pro-
duced, before it is asserted that such stories are
everywhere.
Exodus XX. i-i/.]
THE LAW.
191
CHAPTER XX.
THE LAW.
Exodus xx. 1-17.
We have now reached that great event, one of
the most momentous in all history, the giving of
the Ten Commandments. And it is necessary
to consider what was the meaning of this event,
what part were they designed to play in the re-
ligious development of mankind.
1. St. Paul tells us plainly what they did not
effect. By the works of the law could no flesh
be justified: to the father of the Hebrew race
faith was reckoned instead of righteousness; the
first of their royal line coveted the blessedness
not of the obedient but of the pardoned; and
Habakkuk declared that the just should live by
his faith, while the law is not of faith, and ofifers
life only to the man that doeth these things
(Rom. iv. 3, 6; Gal. iii. 12). In the doctrinal
scheme of St. Paul there was no room for a com-
promise between salvation by faith and reliance
upon our own performance of any works, even
those simple and obvious duties which are of
world-wide obligation.
2. But he never meant to teach that a Chris-
tian is free from the obligation of the moral law.
If it is not true that we can keep it and so earn
heaven, it is equally false that we may break it
without penalty or remorse. What he insisted
upon was this: that obligation is one thing, and
energy is another; the law is good, but it has
not the gift of pardon or of inspiration; by itself
it will only reveal the feebleness of him who
endeavours to perform it, only force into direst
contrast the spiritual beauty of the pure ideal and
the wretchedness of the sinner, carnal, sold under
sin. In this respect, indeed, the law was its own
witness. For if, among all the millions of its
children, one had lived by obedience, how could
he have shared in its elaborate sacrificial appara-
tus, in the hallowing of the altar from pollution
by the national uncleanness, in the sprinkling of
the blood of the offering for sin? Take the case
of the highest official. A sinless high priest
under the law would have been paralysed by his
virtue, for his duty on the greatest day of all the
year was to make atonement first for his own
sins.
3. The law being an authorised statement of
what innocence means, and therefore of the only
terms upon which a man might hope to live by
works, is an organic whole, and we either keep
it as a whole or break it. Such is the meaning
of the words, he that ofifendeth in one point is
guilty of all; because He who gave the seventh
commandment gave also the sixth — so that if one
commit no adultery, yet kill, he has become a
transgressor of the law in its integrity (James ii.
11). The challenge of God to human self-
righteousness is not one which can be half met.
If we have not thoroughly kept it, we have thor-
oughly failed.
4. But this failure of man does not involve any
fajKire, in the law, to accomplish its intended
^rk. It is, as has been said, a challenge. The
sense of our inability to meet it is the best intro-
duction to Him Who came not to call the right-
eous but sinners to repentance, and thus the law
became a tutor to bring men to Christ. It
awoke the conscience, brought home the sense
of guilt, and entered, that sin might abound in
us, whose ignorance had not known sin without
it. It was strictly that which Moses most fre-
quently calls it — the Testimony.
5. Finally, however, the teaching of Scripture'
is not that Christians are condemned to live al-
ways in a condition of balfled striving, hopeless
longing, conscious transgression of a code which
testifies against them. The old and carnal nature
gravitates downward, to selfishness and sin, .\s
surely as by a law of the physical universe. But
the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus eman-
cipates us from that law of sin and death — the
higher nature doing, by the very quality of its
life, what the lower nature cannot be driven to
do, by dread of hell or by desire of heaven. The
creature of earth becomes a creature of air, and
is at home in a new sphere, poised on its wings
upon the breeze. Love is the fulfilling of the
law. And the Christian is free from its dicta-
tion, as affectionate men are free from any con-
trol of the laws which command the maintenance
of wife and child, not because they may defy the
statutes, but because their volition and the
statutes coincide. Liberty is not lawlessness — it
is the reciprocal harmony of law and the will.
And thus the grand paradox of Luther is en-
tirely true: " Unless faith be without any, even
the smallest works, it does not justify, nay, it
is not faith. And yet it is impossible for faith to
be without works — earnest, many, and great"
We are justified by faith without the works of
the law, and yet we do not make void the law by
faith — nay, we establish the law.
All this agrees exactly with the contrast, so
often urged, between the giving of the Law and
the utterance of the Sermon on the Mount. The
former echoes across wild heights, and through
savage ravines: the latter is heard on the grassy
slopes of the hillside which overlooks the smil-
ing Lake of Galilee. The one is spoken in thun-
der and graven upon stone: the other comes
from the lips, into which grace is poured, of
Him Who was fairer than the children of men.
The former repeats again and again the stern
warning, "Thou shalt not!" The latter crowns
a sevenfold description of a blessedness, which
is deeper than joy, though pensive and even
weeping, by adding to these abstract descriptions
an eighth, which applies them, and assumes them
to be realised in His hearers; — " Blessed are ye."
If so much as a beast touched the mountain it
should be stoned. But Simeon took the Divine
Infant in his arms.
And this is not because God has become
gentler, or man worthier: it is because God the
Law-giver upon His throne has come down to
be God the Helper. But the beatitudes could
never have been spoken, if the law had not been
imposed: the blessedness of a hunger and thirst
for righteousness was created by the majestic
and spiritual beauty of the unattained commanr!-
ment.
Yes, it had a spiritual beauty. For, however
formal, external, and even shallow, the com-
mandments may appear to flippant modern
babblers, St. Paul bewailed the contrast between
the law, which was spiritual, and his own carnal
heart. And he, who had kept all the letter from
his youth, was only the more vexed and haunted
by the fleeting consciousness of a higher " good
thing " unattained. Did not one table say
" Thou shalt not covet," and the other promise
mercy to thousands of those that love?
192
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
This leads us to consider the structure and
arrangement of the Decalogue. Scripture itself
tells us that there were " ten words " or precepts,
written upon both sides of two tables. But
various answers have been given at different
times, to the question, How shall we divide the
ten?
The Jews of a later period made a first com-
mandment of the words, " I am the Lord thy
God," which is not a commandment at all. And
they restored the proper number, thus exceeded,
by uniting in one the prohibition of other gods
and of idolatry; although the worship of the
golden calf, almost immediately after the law was
given, suffices to establish the distinction. For
then, as well as under Gideon, Micah, and Jero-
boam, the sin of idolatry fell short of apostasy
to a wholly different god (Judges viii. 23, 27,
xvii. 3, 5; I Kings xii. 28). The worship of
images dishonours God, even if it be His sem-
blance that they claim. In this arrangement, the
tables were allotted five commandments each.
Another curious arrangement was devised, ap-
parently by St. Augustine; and the weight of his
authority imposed it upon Western Christianity
until the Reformation, and upon the Latin and
Lutheran churches unto this day. Like the for-
mer, it adds the second commandment to the
first, but it divides the tenth. And it gives to
the first table three commandments, " since the
number of commandments which concern God
seem to hint at the Trinity to careful students,"
while the seven commandments of the second
table suggest the Sabbath. Such mystical refer-
ences are no longer weighty arguments. And
the proposed division of the tenth commandment
seems quite precluded by the fact that in Exodus
we read, " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
house nor his wife," while in Deuteronomy the
order is reversed: so that its advocates are di-
vided among themselves as to whether the covet-
ing of a house or a wife is to attain the dignity
of separate mention.
The ordinary English arrangement assigns to
the tables four commandments and six respect-
ively. And the noble catechism of the Church
of England appears to sanction this arrangernent
by including among " my duties to my neigh-
bour " that of loving, honouring, and succouring
my father and mother. There are several ob-
jections to this arrangement. It is unsym-
metrical. There seems to be something more
sacred and divine about my relationship with my
father and mother than those which connect me
with my neighbour. The first table begins with
the gravest offence, and steadily declines to the
lowest; sin against the unique personality of
God being followed by sin against His spiritu-
ality of nature. His name, and His holy day. It
now the sin against His earthly representative,
the very fountain and sanction of all law to child-
hood, be added to the first table, the same order
will pervade those of the second — namely, sin
against my neighbour's life, his family, his prop-
erty, his reputation, and lastly, his interest in my
inner self, in the wishes that are unspoken, the
thoughts and feelings which
" I wad nae tell to nae man."
We thus obtain both the simplest division and
the clearest arrangement. In Romans xiii. 9 the
fifth commandment is not enumerated when re-
hearsing the actions which transgress the second
table. In the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy all
the later commandments are joined with the
sixth by the copulative (represented along with
the negative fairly enough in our English by
" Neither "), which seems to indicate that these
five were united together in the author's mind.
But the fifth stands alone, like all those of the
first table. Now, it is clear that such an arrange-
ment gives great sanction and weight to the
sacred institution of the family.
Finally, the comprehensiveness and spirituality
of the law may be observed in this; that the first
table forbids sin against God in thought, word,
and deed; and the second table forbids sin
against man in deed, word, and thought.
THE PROLOGUE.
Exodus xx. 2.
The Decalogue is introduced by the words " I
am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage."
Here, and in the previous chapter, is already a
great advance upon the time when it was said to
them " The God of thy fathers, the God of Abra-
ham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, hath appeared."
Now they are expected to remember what He
has done for themselves. For, although religion
must begin with testimony, it ought always to
grow up into an experience. Thus it was that
many of the Samaritans believed on Jesus be-
cause of the word of the woman; but presently
they said, " Now we believe, not because of thy
speaking, for we have heard Him ourselves, and
know." And thus the disciples who heard John
the Baptist speak, and so followed Jesus, having
come and seen where He abode, could say, " We
have found the Messiah."
This prologue is vitally connected with both
tables of the law. In relation to the first, it
recognises the instinct of worship in the human
heart. In vain shall we say Do not worship
idols, until the true object of adoration is sup-
plied, for the heart must and will prostrate itself
at some shrine. A leader of modern science con-
fesses " the immovable basis of the religious sen-
timent in the nature of man," adding that " to
yield this sentiment reasonable satisfaction is the
problem of problems at the present hour." * It
is indeed a problem for the unbelief which, be-
cause it professes to be scientific, cannot shut its
eyes to the fact that men whose faith in Christ
has suffered shipwreck are everywhere seen to
be clinging to strange planks — spiritualism,
esoteric Buddhism, and other superstitions, —
which prove that man must and will reverence
something more than streams of tendencies, or
beneficial results to the greatest numbers. The
Law of Moses abolishes superstition by no mere ^
negation, but by the proclamation of a true God.
Moreover, it declares that this God is know-
able, which flatly contradicts the brave assertion
of modern agnostics that the notion of a God is
not even " thinkable." That assertion is a bald
and barren platitude in the only sense in which
it is not contrary to the experience of all man-
kind. As we cannot form a complete and per-
* Prof. Tyndall, Belfast Address, p. 60. What progress
has scientific unbelief made since 1874 in solving this
"question of questions for the present hour"? It has
perfected the phonograph, but it has not devised a creed.
Exodus XX. 3.]
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT
193
feet, nor even an adequate notion of God. so no
man ever yet conceived a complete and adequate
notion of his neighbour, nor indeed of himself.
But as we can form a notion of one another, dim
and fragmentary indeed, yet more or less accu-
rate and fit to guide our actions, so has every
nation and every man formed some notion of
deity. Nor could even the agnostic declare
that God is unthinkable, unless the word God, of
which he makes this assertion, conveyed to him
some idea, some thought, more or less worthy of
the thinking. The ancient Jew never dreamed
that he could search out the Almighty to perfec-
tion, yet God was known to him by His actions
(the only means by which we know our fellow-
men) ; and the combined terror and loving-kind-
ness of these at once warned him against re-
volt, and appealed to his loyalty for obedience.
In relation to the second lable. the prologue
was both an argument and an appeal. Why
should a man hope to prosper by estranging his
best Friend, his Emancipator and Guide? And
even if disobedience could obtain some paltry
advantage, how base would he be who snatched
at it, when forbidden by the God Who broke his
chains, and brought him out of the house of
bondage — a Benefactor not ungenial and remote,
but One Who enters into closest relations with
him, calling Himself " Thy God " !
Now, a greater emancipation and a closer per-
sonal relationship belong to the Church of
Christ. When a Christian hears that God is un-
thinkable, he ought to be able to answer, " God
is my God, and He has brought my soul out of
its house of bondage."
Moreover, his emancipation by Christ from
many sins and inner slaveries ought to be a fact
plain enough to constitute the sorest of prob-
lems to the observing world.
It must be observed, besides, that the Law,
which was the centre of Judaism, does not ap-
peal chiefly to the meaner side of human nature.
Hell is not yet known, for the depths of eternity
could not be uncovered before the clouds had
rolled away from its heights of love and conde-
scension; or else the sanity and balance of hu-
man nature would have been overthrown. But
even temporal judgments are not set in the fore-
most place. As St. Paul, who knew the terrors
of the Lord, more commonly and urgently be-
sought men by the mercies of God, so \yere the
ancient Jews, under the burning mountain, re-
minded rather of what God had bestowed upon
them, than of what He might inflict if they pro-
voked Him. And our gratitude, like theirs,
should be excited by His temporal as well as His
spiritual gifts to us.
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT.
"Thou shalt have none other gods before Me."— xx. 3.
When these words fell upon the ears of Israel,
they conveyed, as their primary thought, a pro-
hibition of the formal worship of rival deities,
Egyptian or Sidonian gods. Following imme-
diately upon the proclamation of Jehovah, their
own God, they declared His intolerance of
rivalry, and enjoined a strict and jealous mono-
theism. For God was a reality. Races who
worshipped idealisations or personifications
might easily make room for other poetic em-
bodiments of human thought and feeling; but
Jehovah would vindicate His rights. He had
proved himself very real in Egypt. Other gods
would not displace Him: He would observe
them: they would be " before Me." * God does
not quit the scene when man forgets Him.
Now, it is hard for us 10 realise the charm
which the worship of false gods possessed for
ancient Israel. To comprehend it we must re-
flect upon the universal ignorance which made
every phenomenon of nature a portentous mani-
festation of mysterious and varied power, which
they could by no means trace back to a common
origin, while the crash and discord of the results
appeared to indicate opposing wills behind. We
must reflect how closely akin is awe to worship,
and how blind and unintelligent was the awe
which storm and earthquake and pestilence then
excited. We must remember the pressure upon
them of surrounding superstitions armed with
all the civilisation and art of their world. Above
all, we must consider that the gods which se-
duced them were not of necessity supreme:
homage to them was very fairly consistent with
a reservation of the highest place for another;
so that false worship in its early stages need not
have been much more startling than belief in
witchcraft, or in the paltry and unimaginative
" spirits " which, in our own day, are reputed to
play the banjo in a dark room, and to untie
knots in a cabinet. Is it for us to deride them?
To oppose all such tendencies, the Lord ap-
pealed not to philosophy and sound reason.
These are not the parents of monotheism: they
are the fruit of it. And so is our modern
science. Its fundamental principle is faith in
the unity of nature, and in the extent to which
the same laws which govern our little world
reach through the vast universe. And that faith
is directly traceable to the conviction that all
the universe is the work of the same Hand.
" One God, one law, one element; " — the
preaching of the first was sure to suggest the
other two. Nor could any race which believed
in a multitude of gods labour earnestly to reduce
various phenomena to one cause. Monotheism
is therefore the parent of correct thinking, and
could not draw its sanctions thence. No: the
law appeals to the historical experience of Israel;
it is content to stand and fall by that; if they ac-
knowledged the claim of God upon their loyalty,
all the rest followed. Their own story made
good this claim. And so does the whole story
of the Church, and the whole inner life of every
man who knows anything of himself, bear wit-
ness to the religion of Jesus.
Never let us weary of repeating that while we
have ample controversial resource, while no mis-
sile can pierce the chain-armour of the Christian
evidences connected and interwoven into a
great whole, and while the infidelity which is
called scientific is really infidel only so far as it
begs its case (which is an unscientific thing to
do), nevertheless the strength of our position is
experimental. If the experience which testifies
to Jesus were historical alone, I might refuse to
give it credit: if it were only personal. I might
ascribe it to enthusiasm. But as long as a great
cloud of living witnesses, and all the history of
the Church, declare the reality of His salvation,
while I myself feel the sufficiency of what He
* "Or beside me" (R. V.) The preposition is so vague
that either of our English words may suggest quite too
definite a meaning as when "before Me " is made to mean
"in My angry eyes " or " beside Me " is taken to hint at
resentment for intrusion upon the same throne.
194
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
offers (or else the bitter need of it), so long the
question is not between conflicting theories, but
between theories and facts. To have another
god is to place him beside One Whom we al-
ready have, and Who has wrought for us the
great emancipation. It is not an error in theo-
logical science: it is ingratitude and treason.
But it very soon became evident that men
could apostatise from God otherwise than in
formal worship, chant and sacrifice and prostra-
tion: "This people honoureth me with their
mouths, but their hearts are far from Me." God
asks for love and trust, and our litanies should
express and cultivate these. Whatever steals
away these from the Lord is really His rival,
and another god. " What is it to have a God?
or what is God? " Luther asks. And he an-
swers, " He is God, and is so called, from Whose
goodness and power thou dost confidently
promise all good things to thyself, and to Whom
thou dost fly from all adverse affairs and press-
ing perils. So that to have a God is nothing
else than to trust Him and believe in Him with
all the heart, even as I have often alleged that
the reliance of the heart constitutes alike one's
God and one's idol. . . In what thing soever
thou hast thy mind's reliance and thine heart
fixed, that is beyond doubt thy God " (Larger
Catechism).
And again: "What sort of religion is this, to
bow not the knees to riches and honour, but to
offer them the noblest part of you, the heart and
mind? It is to worship the true God outwardly
and in the flesh, but the creature inwardly and in
spirit" (X. Fricccpta Witt. Prcedicata).
It was on this ground that he included charms
and spells among the sins against this command-
ment, because, though " they seem foolish rather
than wicked, yet do they lead to this too grave
result, that men learn to rely upon the creature
in trifles, and so fail in great things to relj' upon
God" {Ibid.).
This view of false worship is frequent in Scrip-
ture itself. The Chaldeans were idolaters of an
elaborate and imposing ritual, but their true
deities were not to be found in temples. They
adored what they really trusted upon, and that
was their military prowess — the god of the
modern commander, who said that Providence
sided with the big battalions. The Chaldean is
" he whose might is his god," whereas the sacred
warrior has the Lord for his strength and shield
and very present help in battle. Nay, regarding
men " as the fishes of the sea," and his own vast
armaments as the fisher's apparatus to sweep
them away, the Chaldean, it is said, " sacrificeth
unto his net, and burnetii incense unto his drag;
because by them his portion is fat and his meat
plenteous" (Hab. i. ii, 14-16). Multitudes of
humbler people practise a similar idolatry. They
say to God " Give us this day our daily bread ";
but they really ascribe their maintenance to
their profession or their trade; and so this is the
true object of their homage. They, too, burn
incense to their drag.
Others had no thought of a higher blessedness
than animal enjoyment. Their god was their
belly. They set the excitement of wine in the
place of the fulness of the Spirit, or preferred
some depraved union upon earth to the honour
of being one spirit with the Lord (Phil. iii. 19:
Eph. V. 18; I Cor. vi. 16, 17). And some tried
to combine the world and righteousness; not to
lose heaven while grasping wealth, and receiv-
ing here not only good things, but the only good
things they acknowledged — their good things
(Luke xvi. 25). As the Samaritans feared the
Lord and served graven images, so these wert?
fain to serve God and mammon (2 Kings xvii.
41; Matt. vi. 24).
Now, these departures from the true Centre of
all love and Source of all light were really a
homage to His great rival, " the god of this
world." Whenever men seek to obtain any
prize by departing from God they do reverence
to him who falsely said of all the kingdoms of
the earth, and their glory, " These things are de-
livered unto me. and to whomsoever I will I give
them." They deny Him to Whom indeed all
power is committed in heaven and earth.
What is the remedy, then, for all such formal
or virtual apostasies? It is to "have" the true
God — which means, not only to know and con-
fess, but to be in real relationship with Him.
Despite His so-called self-sut!iciency, man is
not very self-sufficing, after all. The vast en-
dowments of Julius Cssar did not prevent him
from chafing because, at the age when he was
still obscure. Alexander had conquered the
world. To be Julius Cssar was not enough for
him. Nor is an3' man able to stand alone. In
the Old Testament Joshua said, " If it seem evil
unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day
whom ye will serve," — implying that they must
obey some one and will do better to choose a
service than to drift into one (Josji. -xxiv. 15).
And in the New Testament Jesus declared that
no man can serve two masters; but added that he
would not break with both and go free, he was
sure to love and cleave to one of them. Now,
he only is proof against apostasy, who has real-
ised the wants of the soul within him, and the
powerlessness of all creatures to satisfy or save,
and then, turning to the cross of Christ, has
found his sufficiency in Him. " Lord, to whom
shall we go? Thou hast the words of everlasting
life." Marvellous it is to think that underneath
the stern words "' Thou shalt have none other,"
lies all the condescension of the privilege " Thou
shalt have . . . Me."
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT.
" Thou slialt not make unto thee a graven image, . . .
thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve
Iheni." — XX. 4-6.
How far does the second of these clauses
modify the first? Men there are who maintain
the severe independence of the former, so that
it forbids the presence of any image or likeness
in the house of God, even for innocent purposes
of adornment. But the Decalogue is not a
liturgical directory: what it forbids in church it
forbids anywhere: and on this theory the statues
in Parliament Square would be idolatrous, as
well as those in Westminster Abbey. And such
Christians are more Judaical than the Jews, who
were taught to place in the very Holy of Holies
golden cherubim overshadowing the mercy-seat,
and to represent them again upon its curtains.
It is therefore plain that the precept never for-
bade imagery, but idolatry, which is the making
of images to satisfy the craving of men's hearts
for a sensuous worship — the making of theni
" unto thee." The second clause qualifies and
elucidates the first. And what the command-
Exodus XX. 4-6.]
THE SECOND COMMANDMENT.
195
ment prohibits is any attempt to help our wor-
ship by representing the object of adoration to
the senses.
The higher and more subtle idolatries do not
conceive that wood or gold is actually trans-
formed into their deities; but only that the
deities are locally present in the images, which
express their attributes — power in a hundred
hands, beneficence in a hundred breasts. But in
thus expressing, they degrade and cramp the
conception.
They may perhaps evade the reproach of Isaiah
that they warm themselves with a portion of
timber, and roast meat with another portion,
and make the remainder a god (Isa. xliv. 15-17),
by urging that the timber is not the god, but an
abode which he chooses because it expresses his
specific qualities. But they cannot evade the
reproach of St. Paul, that being ourselves the
offspring of God, we ought not to compare Him
to the workmanship of our hands, graven with
art and man's device (Acts xvii. 29).
A truly spiritual worship is intellectually as
well as morally the most elevating exercise of
the soul, which it leads onward and upward,
making of all that it knows and thinks a vesti-
bule, beyond which lie higher knowledge and
deeper feeling as yet unattained.
Why is Gothic architecture better adapted for
religious buildings than any Grecian or Oriental
style. Because its long aisles, vaulted roofs, and
pointed arches, leading the vision up to the un-
seen, tell of mystery, and draw the mind away
beyond the visible and concrete to something
greater which it hints; while rounded arches and
definite proportions shut in at once the vision
and the mind. The difference is the same as be-
tween poetry and logic.
And so it is with worship. We fetter and
cramp our thoughts of deity when we bind them
to even the loftiest conceptions which have ever
been shut up in marble or upon canvas. The
best image that ever took shape is ipferior to the
poorest spiritual conception of God, in this re-
spect if in no other — that it has no expansive-
ness, it cannot grow. And in connecting our
prayers with it, we virtually say, " This satisfies
my conception of God."
It is not to be condemned merely as inade-
quate, for so are all our highest thoughts of deity;
nor only because average humanity (which is
supposed to stand most in need of the help and
suggestion of art) will never learn the fine dis-
tinctions by which subtle intellects withhold
from the image itself the worship which it
evokes, and which goes out in its direction. It
is still more mischievous because, even for the
trained theologian, it is the petrifaction of what
is meant to develop and expand, the solidifica-
tion of the inadequate, the accepting of what is
human as our idea of the divine.
Nor will it long continue to be merely inade-
quate. Experience proves that ideas, like air
and water, cannot be confined without stagnat-
ing. Idolatries not only fail to develop, they
degenerate; and systems, however orthodox they
may appear at starting, which connect worship
with palpable imagery, are doomed to sink into
superstition.
To this precept there is added a startling and
painful caution — " For I the Lord thy God am
a jealous God." That a man should be jealous
IS no passport to our friendship: we think of un-
reasonable estrangements, exaggerated demands,
implacable and cruel resentments. It would not
enter the average mind to doubt that one is
highly praised when another says of him, " I
never traced in his words or actions the slightest
stain of jealousy." And yet we are to think of
God Himself as the jealous God.
Upon reflection, however, we must admit that
a man is not condemned as jealous-minded be-
cause he is capable of jealousy, but because he
has an unjust and unreasonable tendency to-
wards it. It is a narrowing and suspicious
quality when it operates without due cause, a
vindictive and cruel one when it operates in ex-
cessive measure. But what should we think of
a parent who felt no jealousy if the heart of his
child were stolen from him by intriguing serv-
ants or by frivolous comrades? Now, God has
called Israel His son, even His firstborn. The
truth is that with us jealousy is dangerous and
frequently perverted, because we are bad judges
of the measure of our own rights, especially
when our affections are involved. But sorne
measure of jealousy is the necessary pain
of love neglected, love wronged or slighted by
those upon whom it has a claim. Jealousy is
the shadow thrown where the sunshine of love
is intercepted, and it is strong in proportion to
the strength of the light. It operates in the
heart exactly like the sense of justice in the
reason. Justice expects a recompense where it
has given service, and jealousy asks for love
where it has given affection.
And therefore, when God tells us that He is
jealous. He implies that He condescends to love
us, to look for a return, to desire more from us
than outward service. We cannot be jealous
concerning things which are indifferent to us.
Even the jealousy of rival competitors for busi-
ness or for place may be measured by the desire
of each for that which the other would engross.
The politician is not jealous of the millionaire,
nor the capitalist of the prime minister.
Now, if God is jealous when the enemies of
our soul would steal away our loyalty, it surely
follows that we shall not be left to contend with
those enemies alone: He values us; He is upon
our side; He will help us to overcome them.
And now we begin to see why this attribute is
connected with the second commandment and
not the first. The apostate who betakes himself
to another god is almost beyond the reach of
this tender and intimate emotion: he is still
loved, for God loves all men; but yet perhaps the
chord is unstrung which trembles responsive to
this plaintive note.
When a man who confesses God begins to
weary of spiritual intercourse with the Lord of
spirits, when he can no longer worship One
whose actual presence is realised because His
voice is heard within, when the likeness of man
or brute, or brightness of morning, or marvel
of life or its reproductiveness, contents him as a
representation of God the invisible, then his
heart is beginning to go after the creature, to
content itself with artistic loveliness or majesty,
to let go the grasp as upon a living hand, by
which alone the soul may be sustained when it
stumbles, or guided when it would err.
To those who are within His covenant — to us,
therefore, as to His ancient Israel — He says, " I
the Lord thy God am a jealous God." Because
I am " thy God."
The assertion of a Divine jealousy is but one
difficulty of this remarkable verse. The Lord
196
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
goes on to describe Himself as " visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate
Me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them
that love Me and keep My commandments."
And is this reasonable? To punish the child, to
be avenged upon the children's children, for sins
which are not their own? We know how often
the sceptic has made gain out of this representa-
tion— which is but his own unauthorised gloss,
since in reality God has said nothing about pun-
ishing the righteous with the wicked. It is not
true that all sad and disastrous consequences are
penal; many are disciplinary, and even to the
people of God some are surgical, cutting away
what would lead to disease and death. Are no
evil consequences probable, if men brought up
amid scenes dishonouring to God were treated
exactly like those who have since childhood felt
as it were the hand of a Father upon their head?
For themselves it is best and kindest that so deep
a loss could come home to their consciousness
in pain.
At all events, the assertion so early made in
Scripture is confirmed in all the experience of
the race. Insanity, idiocy, scrofula, consump-
tion, are too often, though not always, the he-
reditary results of guilt. Sins of the flesh are
visited upon the bodily system. Sins of the
temper, such as pride, cynicism, and frivolity, are
felt in the mental structure of the race. And the
sins which offend directly against God, do they
bring no results with them? Ask of the investi-
gators of the new science of heredity and trans-
mitted peculiarities, whether it stops short of the
highest and holiest parts of human nature. Or
consider the ravages which victory and conse-
quent wealth have made, again and again, in the
character of whole nations.
There is no doctrine impugned in Scripture,
which men have less prospect of shaking off,
even if they close their Bibles for ever, than this.
If it were not there, we should be perplexed at a
want of conformity between the ways of God in
nature and what is asserted of Him in His
Book.
But it is either slander or blindness to repre-
sent this law, viewed in its entirety, as other
than benevolent. The transmission of the result
of evil is only a part of the vast law which has
bound men together in nations and families, as
partners and members with each other. It is
clear that distinctive advantages cannot be be-
stowed upon the children of the good, as such,
unless the same advantages be withheld from the
evil race beside them. If the prizes of a univer-
sity are won by knowledge, the result is that
ignorance is " visited," in the withholding of
them. And if, in the vaster university of life,
health, affluence, good repute, and a clear intel-
lect are the transmitted results of virtue, then
disease, poverty, neglect, and incompetence be-
come the dire bequest of the unrighteous.
There is no choice, therefore, except either to
carry out this law, or else to bid every man in
the world begin life, not as " the heir of all the
ages," but absolutely destitute of all that has
been acquired by his fellow-men.
Sometimes a hint is given us of what this
would be. There is brought occasionally into
civilised communities, from the depths of forests,
a creature without language or decency or intel-
lect, with low forehead and brutal appetites, who
in his early childhood had wandered away and
been lost, — brought up, men say, by the strange
compassion of some lower creature, and now
sunken well-nigh to its level. To this degrada-
tion we should all come, if it were not for the
transmitted inheritance of our fathers. And so
vast is the upward force of this grand law, that
it is steadily though slowly upheaving the whole
mass; and the lowest of to-day, visited for ances-
tral failings by sinking to the bottom, is higher
than if he had been left absolutely alone.
This over-weight of good is clearly seen by
comparing the clauses, for the sins of the fathers
are visited upon the children to the third and
fourth generation, but mercy is shown in them
that love God upon a wholly different scale.
Even " unto thousands " would enormously
counterbalance three generations. But the Re-
vised Version rightly suggests " a thousand gen-
erations " in the margin, and supports it by one
of its very rare references. It is plainly stated In
Deuteronomy vii. 9, that He " keepeth cove-
nant and mercy with them that love Him ard
keep His commandments unto a thousand
generations."
Lastly, it is to be observed that in all th s
passage the gospel is shining through the law.
It is not a question of just dealing, but of em(v
tion. God is not a master exacting taskwork,
but a Father, jealous if we refuse our hearts. He
visits sin upon the posterity " of them that hate,"
not only of them that disobey Him. And when
our hearts sink, we who are responsible for gen-
erations yet to be, as we reflect upon our frailty,
our ignorance, and our sins, upon the awful con-
sequences which may result from one heedless
act — nay, from a gesture or a look — He reminds
us that He does not requite those who serve
Him only with a measured wage, but shows
" mercy " upon those who love Him unto a
thousand generations.
THE THIRD COMMANDMENT.
•' Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in
vain." — XX. 7.
What is the precise force of this prohibition?
The word used is ambiguous: sometimes it must
be rendered as here, as in the verses " Vain is the
help of man," and " Except the Lord build the
house, their labour is but vain that build it "
(Psalm cviii. 12, cxxvii. i). But sometimes it
clearly means false, as in the texts " Thou shalt
not raise a false report," and " swearing falsely in
making a covenant" (Exod. xxiii. i; Hos. x. 4).
Yet again, it hangs midway between the two
ideas, as when we read of " lying vanities," and
again, " trusting in vanity and speaking lies "
(Psalm xxxi. 6; Isa. lix. 4).
In favour of the rendering " falsely " it is
urged that our Lord quotes it as " said to them
of old time ' Thou shalt not forswear thyself ' "
(Matt. V. 33). But it is by no means clear that
He quotes this text: the citation is closer to the
phraseology of Lev. xix. 12, and it is found
in a section of the Sermon which does not
confine its citations to the Decalogue i,cf. ver.
38).
The Authorised rendermg seems the more
natural when we remember that civic duty had
not yet come upon the stage. When we have
learned to honour only one God, and not to de-
Exodus XX. 8-1 I.J
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT.
197
grade nor materialise our conception of Him,
the next step is to inculcate, not yet veracity to-
ward men when God has been invoked, but rev-
erence, in treating the sacred name.
We have already seen the miserable supersti-
tions by which the Jews endeavoured to satisfy
the letter while outraging the spirit of this pre-
cept. In modern times some have conceived
that all invocation of the Divine Name is un-
lawful, although St. Paul called God for a wit-
ness upon his soul, and the strong angel shall yet
swear " by Him Who liveth for ever and ever "
(2 Cor. i. 22; Rev. x. 6).
As it is not a temple but a desert which no
foot ever treads, so the sacred name is not hon-
oured by being unspoken, but by being spoken
aright.
Swearing is indeed forbidden, where it has
actually disappeared, namely, in the mutual
intercourse of Christian people, whose affirma-
tion should suffice their brethren, while the need
of stronger sanctions " cometh of evil," even
of the consciousness of a tendency to untruth-
fulness, which requires the stronger barrier of
an oath. But our Lord Himself, when adjured
by the living God, responded to the solemn au-
thority of that adjuration, although His death
was the result.
The name of God is not taken in vain when
men who are conscious of His nearness, and act
with habitual reference to His will, mention Him
more frequently and familiarly than formalists
approve. It is abused when the insincere and
hollow professor joins in the most solemn act
of worship, honours Him with the lips while the
heart is far from Him — nay, when one strives to
curb Satan, and reclaim his fellow-sinner, by the
use of good and holy phrases, in which his own
belief is merely theoretical; and fares like the
sons of Sceva, who repeated an orthodox ad-
juration, but fled away overpowered and
wounded. Or if the truth unworthily spoken
asserts its inherent power, that will not justify
the hollowness of his profession, and in vain will
he plead at last, " Lord, Lord, have we not in
Thy name cast out devils, and in Thy name done
many marvellous acts? "
The only safe rule is to be sure that our con-
ception of God is high and real and intimate; to
be habitually humble and trustful in our attitude
toward Him; and then to speak sincerely and
frankly, as then we shall not fail to do. The
words which rise naturally to the lips of men
who think thus cannot fail to do Him honour,
for out of the fulness of the heart the mouth
speaketh.
And the prevalent notion that God should be
mentioned seldom and with bated breath is
rather an evidence of men's failure habitually to
think of Him aright, than of filial anti loving
reverence. There is a large and powerful school
of religion in our own day, whose disciples talk
much more of their own emotions and their own
souls than St. Paul did, and much less about God
and Christ. Some day the proportions will be
restored. In the great Church of the future men
will not morbidly shrink from confessing their
inner life, but neither will it be the centre of
their contemplation and their discourse: they
will be filled with the fulness of God; out of the
abundance of their hearts their mouths will
speak; His name shall be continually in their
mouth, and yet they shall not take the name of
the Lord their God in vain.
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT.
Exodus xx. 8-11.
It cannot be denied that the commandment to
honour the Sabbath day occupies a unique place
among the ten. It is, at least apparently, a for-
mal precept embedded in the heart of a moral
code, and good men have thought very differ-
ently indeed about its obligation upon the Chris-
tian Church.
The great Continental reformers, Lutheran
and Calvinistic alike, who subscribed the Con-
fession of Augsburg, there affirmed that " Scrip-
ture hath abolished the Sabbath by teaching that
all Mosaic ceremonies may be omitted since the
gospel has been revealed " (II. vii. 28). The
Scotch reformers, on the other hand, declared
that God " in His Word, by a positive moral and
perpetual commandment, binding all men in all
ages, hath particularly appointed one day in
seven for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto Him "
(Westminster Confess., XXI. vii). They are even
so bold as to declare that this day " from the be-
ginning of the world to the resurrection of
Christ was the last day of the week, and from
the resurrection of Christ was changed into the
first day of the week"; but this proposition
would be as hard to prove as the contrary asser-
tion, still maintained by some obscure religion-
ists, that the change of day, for however suffi-
cient and sublime a reason, was beyond the
capacity of the Church of Christ to enact.
Amid these conflicting opinions the doctrinal
formularies of the Church of England are char-
acteristically guarded and prudent; but her wor-
shippers are bidden to seek mercy from the Lord
for past violations of this law, and an inclina-
tion of heart to keep it in the future; and when
the Ten have been recited, they pray that " all
these Thy laws " may be written upon their
hearts. There is no doubt, therefore, about the
opinion of our own Reformers concerning the
divine obligation of the commandment.
In examining the problem thus presented to
us our chief light must be that of Scripture itself.
Is the Sabbath what the Lutheran confession
called it, a mere " Mosaic ceremony," or does it
rest upon sanctions which began earlier anVi
lasted longer than the precept to abstain from
shell-fish, or to sanctify the first-born of cattle?
Does its presence in the Decalogue disfigure
that great code, as the intrusion of these other
precepts would do? When we find a Gentile
church reminded that the next precept to this
" is the first commandment with promise " (Eph.
vi. 2), can we suppose that the tables to which
St. Paul appealed, and the promise which he
cited at full length, were both cancelled; that in
so far as a moral element existed in them, that
portion of course survived their repeal, but the
code itself was gone? If so, the temporal
promise went with it, and its quotation by St.
Paul is strange. Strange also, upon this suppo-
sition, was t"he stress which he habitually laid
upon the law as a convicting power, and as
being only repealed in the letter so far as it was
fulfilled by the spontaneous instinct of love
which was the fulfilling of the law.
The position of the commandment among a
number of moral and universal duties cannot
but weigh heavily in its favour. It prompts us
to ask whether our duty to God is purely nega-
198
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
tive, to be fulfilled by a policy of non-interven-
tion, not worshipping idols, nor blaspheming.
Something more was already intimated in the
promise of mercy to them " that love Me." For
love is chiefly the source of active obedience:
while fear is satisfied by the absence of provoca-
tion, love wants not only to abstain from evil
but to do good. And how may it satisfy this
instinct when its object is the eternal God, Who,
if He were hungry, would not tell us? It finds
the necessary outlet in worship, in adoring com-
munion, in the exclusion for awhile of worldly
cares, in the devotion of time and thought to
Him. Now, the foundation upon which all
the institutions of religion may be securely
built, is the day of rest. Call it external, formal,
unspiritual if you will; say that it is a carnal ordi-
nance, and that he who keeps it in spirit is free
from the obligation of the letter. But then,
what about the eighth commandment? Are we
absolved also from the precept " Thou shalt not
steal," because it too is concerned with external
actions, because " this . . . thou shalt not
steal . . . and if there be any other command-
ment, it is briefly comprehended in this one say-
ing. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself " ?
Do we say, the spirit has abolished the letter:
love is the rescinding of the law? St. Paul said
the very opposite: love is the fulfilling of the law,
not its destruction; and thus he re-echoed the
words of Jesus, " I am not come to destroy the
law, but to fulfil."
All men know that the formal regulations
which defend property are relaxed as the ties of
love and mutual understanding are made strong;
that to enter unannounced is not a trespass, that
the same action which will be prosecuted as a
theft by a stranger, and resented as a liberty by
an acquaintance, is welcomed as a graceful
freedom, almost as an endearment, by a friend.
And yet the commandment and the rights of
property hold good: they are not compromised,
but glorified, by being spiritualized. As it is be-
tween man and his brother, so should it be be-
tween us and our Divine Father. We have
learned to know Him very differently from those
who shuddered under Sinai: the whole law is not
now written upon tables of stone, but upon
fleshly tables of the heart. But among the pre-
cfepts which are thus etherialised and yet estab-
lished, why should not the fourth commandment
retain its place? Why should it be supposed that
it must vanish from the Decalogue, unless the
gathering of sticks deserves stoning? The insti-
tution, and the ceremonial application of it to
Jewish life, are entirely different things; just as
respect for property is a fixed obligation, while
the laws of succession vary.
Bearing this distinction in mind, we come to
the question. Was the Sabbath an ordinance
born of Mosaism, or not? Grant that the word
" Remember," if it stood alone, might conceiv-
ably express the emphasis of a new precept, and
not the recapitulation of an existing one. Grant
also that the mention in Genesis of the Divine
rest might be made by anticipation, to be read
with an eye to the institution which would be
mentioned later. But what is to be made of the
fact that on the seventh day manna was with-
held from the camp, before they had arrived at
Horeb, and tlierefore before the commandment
had been written by the finger of God upon the
stone? Was this also done by anticipation?
Upon any supposition, it aimed at teaching the
nation that the obligation of the day was not
based upon the positive precept, but the precept
embodied an older and more fundamental
obligation.
How is the Sabbath spoken of in those prophe-
cies which set least value upon the merely cere-
monial law?
Isaiah speaks of mere ritual as slightly as St.
Paul. To fast and afflict one's soul is nothing,
if in the day of fasting one smites with the fist
and oppresses his labourers. To loose the bonds
of wickedness, to free the oppressed, to share
one's bread with the hungry, this is the fast
which God has chosen, and for him who fasts
after this fashion the light shall break forth like
sunrise, and his bones shall be strong, and he
himself like an unfailing water-spring. Now, it
is the same chapter which thus waives aside mere
ceremonial in contempt, which lavishes the most
ample promises on him who turns away his foot
from the Sabbath, and calls the Sabbath a de-
light, and the holy of the Lord, honourable, and
honours it (Isa. Iviii. 5-1 1, 13-14).
There is no such promise in Jeremiah, for the
observance of any merely ceremonial law, as
that which bids the people to honour the Sab-
bath day, that there may enter into their gates
kings and princes riding in chariots and upon
horses, and that the city may remain for ever
(Jer. xvii. 24, 25).
And Ezekiel declares that in the day when
God made Himself known to His people in the
land of Egypt, He gave them statutes and judg-
ments and His sabbaths (Ezek. xx. 11, 12).
Now, this phrase is a clear allusion to the word
of God in Jeremiah, that " I spake not unto their
fathers in the day when I brought them out of
Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices,
but this thing I commanded them, saying.
Hearken unto My voice," etc. (Jer. vii. 23).
And it sharply contrasts the sacredness of God's
abiding ordinances with the temporary institu-
tions of the sanctuary. But it reckons the Sab-
bath among the former.
It is objected that our Lord Himself treated
the Sabbath lightly, as a worn-out ordinance.
But He was " a minister of the circumcision."
and always discussed the lawfulness of His Sab-
bath miracles as a Jew with Jews. Thus He
argued that men, admittedly under the law.
baked the shewbread, circumcised children, and
even rescued cattle from jeopardy upon the
seventh day. He appealed to the example of
David, who met a sufficiently urgent necessity by
eating the consecrated bread, " which was not
lawful for him to eat" (Matt. xii. 4).
He did not hint that the law of the Sabbath
had disappeared, but insisted that it was meant
to serve man and not to oppress him: that "the
sabbath was made for man, and not man for the
sabbath" (Mark ii. 27).
Now, there is not in the life of Christ an asser-
tion, so broad and strong as that the Sabbath
was made for the human race, which can be nar-
rowed down to a discussion of any merely local
and temporary institution. He Who stood
highest, and saw the widest horizons, declared
that the Sabbath was intended for humanity, and
not for a section or a sect of it. Not because
He was the King of the Jews, but because He
was the Son of Man, the ripe fruit and the
leader of the world-wide race which it was given
to bless, therefore He was also its Lord.
And in Him, so are we. Like all things
Exodus XX. 12.]
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT.
199
present and things to come, it is our help, we are
not its slaves.
There is something abject in the notion of a
Christian freeman, who has been for a long week
imprisoned in some gloomy and ill-ventilated
workshop, whose lungs would be purified, and
therefore his spirits uplifted, and therefore his
reason and his affections invigorated, and there-
fore his worship rendered more fresh, warm, and
reasonable, by the breathing of a purer air, yet
whose conception of a day of rest is so slavish
that he dares not " rest " from the pollution of
an infected atmosphere, and from the closeness
of a London court, because he conceives it im-
perative to " rest " only from that bodily exer-
cise, to enjoy which would be to him the most
real and the most delightful repose of all.
But there are other things more abject still;
and one of them is the miserable insincerity of
the affluent and luxurious, using the exceptional
case of him whose week-days are thus oppressed,
to excuse their own wanton neglect of religious
ordinances, accepting at the hands of Chris-
tianity the sacred holiday, but ignoring utterly
the fact that the Lord sanctified and hallowed it,
that it is to be called the holy of the Lord, and
to be honoured, and that we are free from the
letter of the precept only in so far as we rise to
the spirit of it, in loving and true communion
with the Father of spirits.
Another utterance of Jesus throws a strong-
light upon the nature and the limits of our obli-
gation. " My Father worketh even until now,
and I work " (John v. 17) is an appeal to the fact
that in the long sabbath of God His world is not
deserted; creation may be suspended, but the
■bounties of Providence go on; and therefore
Christ also felt that His day of rest was not one
of torpor, that in healing the impotent man upon
the Sabbath He was bbt following the example
of Him by whose rest the day was sanctified.
All works of beneficent love, all that ministers
to human recovery from anguish, and carries out
the Divine purposes of grace for body or soul,
rescue from danger, healing of disease, reforma-
tion of guilt, are sanctioned by this defence of
Christ.
They need not plead that the commandment is
abrogated, but that Jesus of Nazareth, of the
seed of David, found nothing in such liberties
inconsistent with the duties of a devout Hebrew.
THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT.
" Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may
be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee." — XX. 12.
This commandment forms a kind of bridge
between the first table and the second. Obedi-
ence to parents is not merely a neighbourly
virtue; we do not honour them simply as our
feilow-men: they are the vicegerents of God to
our childhood; through them He supplies our
necessities, defends our feebleness, and pours in
light and wisdom upon our ignorance; by them
our earliest knowledge of right and wrong is
imparted, and upon the sanction of their voice it
long depends.
It is clear that parental authority cannot be
undermined, nor filial disobedience and irrever-
ence gain ground, without shaking the founda-
tions of our religious life, even more perhaps
than of our social conduct.
Accordingly this commandment stands before
the sixth, not because murder is a less ofifence
against society, but because it is more emphati-
cally against our neighbour, and less directly
against God.
The human infant is dependent and helpless
for a longer period, and more utterly, than the
young of any other animal. Its growth, which
is to reach so much higher, is slower, and it is
feebler during the process. And the reason of
this is plain to every thoughtful observer. God
has willed that the race of man should be bound
together in the closest relationships, both
spiritual and secular; and family affection pre-
pares the heart for membership alike of the
nation and the Church. With this inner circle
the wider ones are concentric. The pathetic de-
pendence of the child nourishes equally the
strong love which protects and the grateful love
which clings. And from our early knowledge
of human generosity, human care and goodness,
there is born the capacity for belief in the heart
of the great Father, from Whom every family in
heaven and earth derived its Greek name of
Fatherhood (Eph. iii. 15).
Woe to the father whose cruelty, selfishness,
or evil passions make it hard for his child to
understand the Archetype, because the type is
spoiled! or whose tyranny and self-will suggest
rather the stern God of reprobation, or of ser-
vile, slavish subjection, than the tender Father
of freeborn sons, who are no more under tutors
and governors, but are called unto freedom.
But how much sorer woe to the son who dis-
honours his earthly parent, and in so doing slays
within himself the very principle of obedience to
the Father of spirits!
No earthly tie is perfect, and therefore no
earthly obedience can be absolute. Some crisis
comes in every life when the most innocent and
praiseworthy affection becomes a snare — when
the counsel we most relied upon would fain mis-
lead our conscience — when a man, to be Christ's
disciple, must " hate father and mother," as
Christ Himself heard the temptation of the Evil
One speaking through chosen and beloved lips,
and said '' Get thee behind Me, Satan." Even
then we shall respect them, and pray as Christ
prayed for His failing apostle, and when the
storm has spent itself they shall resume their
due place in the loving heart of their Christian
offspring.
So Jesus, when Mary would interrupt His
teaching, said " Who is My mother? " But im-
minent death could not prevent Him from pity-
ing her sorrow, and committing her to His be-
loved disciple as to a son.
From the letter of this commandment streams
out a loving influence to sanctify all the rest of
our relationships. As the love of God implies
that of our brother also, so does the honour of
parents involve the recognition of all our do-
mestic ties.
And even unassisted nature will tend to make
long the days of the loving and obedient child;
for life and health depend far less upon afifluence
and luxury than upon a well-regulated disposi-
tion, a loving heart, a temper which can obey
without chafing, and a conscience which respects
law. All these are being learned in disciplined
and dutiful households, which are therefore the
nurseries of happy and righteous children, and
so of long-lived families in the next generation
also. Exceptions there must be. But the rule
200
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
is clear, that violent and curbless lives will spend
themselves faster than the lives of the gentle, the
loving, the law-abiding and the innocent.
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT.
" Thou Shalt do no murder."— xx. 13.
We have now clearly passed to the considera-
tion of man's duty to his fellow-man, as a part of
his duty to his Maker. It is no longer as hold-
ing a divinely appointed relation to us, but
simply as he is a man, that we are bidden to re-
spect his person, his family, his property, and
his fair fame.
And the influence of the teaching of our Lord
is felt in the very name which we all give to the
second table of the law. We call it " our duty
to our neighbour." But we do not mean to
imply that there lives on the surface of the globe
one whom we are free to assault or to pillage.
The obligation is universal, and the name we
give it echoes the teaching of Him who said
that no man can enter the sphere of our pos-
sible influence, even as a wounded creature in a
swoon whom we may help, but he should there-
upon become our neighbour. Or rather, we
should become his; for while the question asked
of Him was " Who is my neighbour? " (whom
should I love?) Jesus reversed the problem when
He asked in turn not To whom was the wounded
man a neighbour? but Who was a neighbour
unto him? (who loved him?)
Social ethics, then, have a religious sanction.
It is the constant duty and effort of the Church
of God to saturate the whole life of man, all his
conduct and his thought, with a sense of sacred-
ness; and as the world is for ever desecrating
what is holy, so is religion for ever consecrating
what is secular.
In these latter days men have thought it a
proof of grace to separate religion from daily life.
The Antinomian, who maintains that his ortho-
dox beliefs or feelings absolve him from the obli-
gations of morality, joins hands with the Italian
brigand who hopes to be forgiven for cutting
throats because he subsidises a priest. The en-
thusiast who insists that all sins, past and future,
were forgiven him when he believed, approaches
far nearer than he supposes to the fanatic of an-
other creed, who thinks a formal confession and
an external absolution sufficient to wash away
sin. All of them hold the grand heresy that one
may escape the penalties without being freed
from the power of evil; that a life may be saved
by grace without being penetrated by religion,
and that it is not exactly accurate to say that
Jesus saves His people from their sins.
It is scarcely wonderful, when some men thus
refuse to morality the sanctions of religion, that
others propose to teach morality how she may
go without them. In spite of the experience of
ages, which proves that human passions are only
too ready to defy at once the penalties of both
worlds, it is imagined that the microscope and
the scalpel may supersede the Gospel as teachers
of virtue; that the self-interest of a creature
doomed to perish in a few years may prove more
effectual to restrain than eternal hopes and fears;
and that a scientific prudence may supply the
place of holiness. It has never been so in the
past. Not only Judea, but Egypt, Greece, and
Rome, were strong as long as they were right-
eous, and righteous as long as their morality-
was bound up in their religion. When they
ceased to worship they ceased to be self-con-
trolled, npr could the most urgent and manifest
self-interest, nor all the resources of lofty phi-
losophy, withhold them from the ruin which
always accompanies or follows vice.
Is it certain that modern science will fare any
better? So far from deepening our respect for
human nature and for law, she is discovering
vile origins for our most sacred institutions and'
our deepest instincts, and whispering strange
means by which crime may work without detec-
tion and vice without penalty. Never was there
a time when educated thought was more sug-
gestive of contempt for one's self and for one's
fellow-man, and of a prudent, sturdy, remorse-
less pursuit of self-interest, which may be very
far indeed from virtuous. The next generation
will eat the fruit of this teaching, as we reap what
our fathers sowed. The theorist may be as pure
as Epicurus. But the disciples will be as the
Epicureans.
Is there anything in the modern conception of
a man which bids me spare him, if his existence
dooms me to poverty and I can quietly push him
over a precipice? It is quite conceivable that I
can prove, and very likely indeed that I can per-
suade myself, that the shortening of the life of
one hard and grasping man may brighten the
lives of hundreds. And my passions will simply
laugh at the attempt to restrain me by arguing
that great advantages result from the respect for
human life upon the whole. Appetites, greeds,
resentments do not regard their objects in this
broad and colourless way; they grant the gen-
eral proposition, but add that every rule has its .
exceptions. Something more is needed: some-
thing which can never be obtained except from a
universal law, from the 'sanctity of all human
lives as bearing eternal issues in their bosom,
and from the certainty that He who gave the
mandate will enforce it.
It is when we see in our fellow-man a divine
creature of the Divine, made by God in His own
image, marred and defaced by sin, but not be-
yond recovery, when his actions are regarded as
wrought in the sight of a Judge Whose presence
supersedes utterly the slightness, heat, and inade-
quacy of our judgment and our vengeance, when
his pure affections tell us of the love of God
which passeth knowledge, when his errors af-
fright us as dire and melancholy apostasies from
a mighty calling, and when his death is solemn
as the unveiling of unknown and unending des-
tinies, then it is that we discern the sacredness of
life, and the awful presumption of the deed which
quenches it. It is when we realise that he is our
brother, holding his place in the universe by the
same tenure by which we hold our own, and dear
to the same Father, that we understand how
stern is the duty of repressing the first resentful
movements within our breast which would even
wish to crush him, because they are a rebellion
against the Divine ordinance and against the
Divine benevolence.
Is it asked, how can all this be reconciled with
the lawfulness of capital punishment? The death
penalty is frequent in the Mosaic code. But
Scripture regards the judge as the minister and
agent of God. The stern monotheism of the
Old Testament " said. Ye are Gods." to those
who thus pronounced the behest of Heaven: and
private vengeance becomes only more culpable
Exodus XX. 15 J
THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT.
201
when we reflect upon the high sanction and au-
thority by which alone public justice presumes
to act.
Now, all these considerations vanish together,
when religion ceases to consecrate morality.
The judgment of law differs from my own merely
as I like it better, and as I am a party (perhaps
■unwillingly) to the general consent which creates
it; he whom I would assail is doomed in any case
to speedy and complete extinction; his longer
life is possibly burdensome to himself and to
society; and there exists no higher Being to re-
sent my interference, or to measure out the ex-
istence which I think too protracted. It is clear
that such a view of human life must prove fatal
to its sacredness; and that its results would make
themselves increasingly felt, as the awe wore
away which old associations now inspire.
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT.
" Thou Shalt not commit adultery."— xx. 14.
This commandment follows very obviously
from even the rudest principle of justice to our
neighbour. It is among those that St. Paul
enumerates as " briefly comprehended in this
saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy-
self."
And therefore nothing need here be said about
the open sin by which one man wrongs another.
Wild and evil theories may be abroad, new
schemes of social order may be recklessly in-
vented and discussed; yet, when the institution
of the permanent family is assailed, every
thoughtful man knows full well that all our
interests are at stake in its defence, and the
nation could no more survive its overthrow than
the Church.
But when our Lord declared that to excite de-
sire through the eyes is actually this sin, already
ripe. He appealed to some deeper and more
spiritual consideration than that of social order.
What He pointed to is the sacredness of the hu-
man body — so holy a thing that impurity, and
even the silent excitement of passion, is a wrong
done to our nature, and a dishonour to the
temple of the Holy Ghost.
Now, this is a subject upon which it is all the
more necessary to write, because it is hard to
speak about.
What is the human body, in the view of the
Christian? It is the one bond, as far as we
know in all the universe, between the material
and the spiritual worlds, one of which slopes
thence down to inert molecules, and the other
upward to the throne of God.
Our brain is the engine-room and laboratory
■whereby thought, aspiration, worship express
themselves and become potent, and even com-
municate themselves to others.
But it is a solemn truth that the body not only
interprets passively but also influences and
modifies the higher nature. The mind is helped
by proper diet and exercise, and hindered by im-
pure air and by excess or lack of food. The in-
fluence of music upon the soul has been observed
at least since the time of Saul. And hereafter
the Christian body, redeemed from the con-
tagion of the fall, and promoted to a spiritual
impressibility and receptiveness which it has
never yet known, is meant to share in the heav-
enly joys of the immortal spirit before God.
This is the meaning of the assertion that it is
sown a natural (=: soulish) body, but shall be
raised a spiritual body. In the meantime it must
learn its true function. Whatever stimulates
and excites the animal at the cost of the immortal
within, will in the same degree cloud and obscure
the perception that a man's life consisteth not in
his pleasures, and will keep up the illusion that
the senses are the true ministers of bliss. The
soul is attacked through the appetites at a point
far short of their physical indulgence. And
when lawless wishes are deliberately toyed with,
it is clear that lawless acts are not hated, but
only avoided through fear of consequences. The
reins which govern the life are no longer in the
hands of the spirit, nor is it the will which now
refuses to sin. How, then, can the soul be alert
and pure? It is drugged and stupefied: the
ofifices of religion are a dull form, and its truths
are hollow unrealities, assented to but unfelt, be-
cause unholy impulses have set on fire the course
of nature, in what should have been the temple
of the Holy Ghost.
Moreover, the Christian life is not one of mere
submission to authority; its true law is that of
ceaseless upward aspiration. And since the
union of husband and wife is consecrated to be
the truest and deepest and most far-reaching of
all types of the mystical union between Christ
and His Church, it demands an ever closer ap-
proach to that perfect ideal of mutual love and
service.
And whatever impairs the sacred, mysterious,
all-pervading unity of a perfect wedlock is either
the greatest of misfortunes or of crimes.
If it be frailty of temper, failure of common
sympathies, an irretrievable error recognised too
late, it is a calamity which may yet strengthen
the character by evoking such pity and helpful-
ness as Christ the Bridegroom showed for the
Church when lost. But if estrangement, even of
heart, come through the secret indulgence of
lawless reverie and desire, it is treason, and crim-
inal although the traitor has not struck a blow,
but only whispered sedition under his breath in
a darkened room.
THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT.
"Thou shalt not steal."— XX. 15.
There is no commandment against which hu-
man ingenuity has brought more evasions to
bear than this. Property itself is theft, says the
communist. " It is no grave sin," says the Ro-
man text-book, "to steal in moderation"; and
this is defined to be, " from a pauper less than a
franc, from a daily labourer less than two or
three, from a person in comfortable circum-
stances anything under four or five francs, or
from a very rich man ten or twelve francs. And
a servant whom force or necessity compels to
accept an unjust payment, may secretly com-
pensate himself, because the workman is worthy
of his hire." * A moment's reflection discovers
this to be the most naked rationalism, choosing
some of the commandments of God for honour,
and some for contempt as " not very grave," and
wholly ignoring the principle that whoever at-
tacks the code at any one point " is guilty of all,"
because he has despised it as a code, as an
organic system.
* Gury, Compend., i., sees. 607, 623.
202
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
Nothing is easier than to confuse one's con-
science about the ethics of property. For the
arrangements of various nations differ: it is a
geographical line which defines the right of the
elder son against his brothers, of sons against
daughters, and of children against a wife; and
the demand is still more capricious which the
state asserts against them all, under the name of
successioTi duty, and which it makes upon other
property in the form of a multitude of imposts
and taxes. Can all these different arrangements
be alike binding? Add to this variability the im-
mense national revenues, which are apparently
so little affected by individual contributions, and
it is no wonder if men fail to see that honesty to
the public is a duty as immutable and stern as
any other duty to their neighbour. Unfortu-
nately the evil spreads. The same considera-
tions which make it seem pardonable to rob the
nation apply also to the millionaire; and they
tempt many a poor man to ask whether he need
respect the wealth of a usurer, or may not ad-
just the scales of Mine and Thine, which law
causes to hang unfairly.
It is forgotten that a nation has at least the
same authority as a club to regulate its own
affairs, to fix the relative position and the sub-
scription of its members. Common honesty
teaches me that I must ■ onform to these rules or
leave the club; and this duty is not at all affected
by the fact that other associations have different
rules. In three such societies God Himself has
placed us all — the family, the Church, and the
nation; and therefore I am directly responsible
to God for due respect to their laws. It is not
true that the statute-book is inspired, any more
than that the regulations of a household are
divinely given. Yet a Divine sanction, such as
rests upon the parental rule of fallible human
creatures, hallows also national law. I may ad-
vocate a change in laws of which I disapprove,
but I am bound in the meantime to obey the
conditions upon which I receive protection from
foreign foes and domestic fraud, and which can-
not be subjected to the judgment of every indi-
vidual, except at the cost of a dissolution of so-
ciety, and a state of anarchy compared with
which the worst of laws would be desirable.
This revolt of the individual is especially
tempting when selfishness deems itself wronged,
as by the laws of property. And the eighth com-
mandment is necessary to protect society not
merely against the violence of the burglar and
the craft of the impostor, but also against the
deceitfulness of our own hearts, asking What
harm is in the evasion of an impost? What
right has a successful speculator to his millions?
Why should I not do justice to myself when law
refuses it?
There is always the simple answer. Who made
me a judge in my own case?
But when we regard the matter thus, it be-
comes clear that honesty is not mere abstinence
from pillage. The community has larger claims
than this upon us, and is wronged if we fail to
discharge them.
The rich man robs the poor if he does not play
his part in the great organisation by which he is
served so well: every one robs the community
who takes its benefits and returns none; and in
this sense the bold saying is true, that every man
lives by one of two methods — by labour or by
theft.
St. Paul does not exhort men to refrain from
theft merely in order to be harmless, but to do
good. That is the alternative contemplated
when he says, " Let the thief steal no more, but
rather let him labour, working with his hands
the thing that is good, that he may have whereof
to give to him that hath need " (Eph. iv. 28).
THE NINTH COMMANDMENT.
"Thou Shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh-
bour."— XX. 16.
St. James called the tongue a world of iniquity.
And against its lawlessness, which inflames the
whole course of nature, each table of the law
contains a warning. For it is equally ready to
profane the name of God, and to rob our neigh-
bour of his fair fame.
Jesus Christ regarded verbal professions as a
very poor thing, and asked, " Why call ye Me
Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I com-
mand you? " He aimed a parable at the hollow-
ness of merely saying, " I go, sir." But, worth-
less though such phrases be, the act which sub-
stitutes professions for actual service is no trifle;
and our Lord felt the importance of words,
empty or sincere, so profoundly as to stake upon
this one test the eternal destinies of His people:
By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by
thy words thou shalt be condemned." Now, the
tongue is thus important because it is so prompt
and v/illing a servant of the mind within. We
scarcely think of it as a servant at all: our words
do not seem to be more than " expressions,"
manifestations of what is within us.
But a thought, once expressed, is transformed
and energetic as a bullet when the charge is fired;
it modifies other minds, and the word which we
took to be far less potent than a deed becomes
the mover of the fateful deeds of many men.
And thus, being at once powerful and unsus-
pected, it is the most treacherous and subtle of
all the forces which we wield.
And the ninth commandment does not under-
take to bridle it by merely forbidding us in a
court of justice to wrong our fellow-man by
perjury.
We transgress it whenever we conceive a
strong suspicion and repeat it as a thing we
know; when we allow the temptation of a biting
epigram to betray us into an unkind expression
not quite warranted by the facts; when we vin-
dicate ourselves against a charge by throwing
blame where it probably but not certainly ought
to lie; or when we are not content to vindicate
ourselves without bringing a countercharge
which it would perplex us to be asked to prove;
when we give way to that most shallow and
meanest of all attempts at cleverness which
claims credit for penetration because it can dis-
cover base motives for innocent actions, so that
high-mindedness becomes pride, and charity
withers up into love of patronising, and forbear-
ance shrivels into lack of spirit. The pattern and
ideal of such cleverness is the east wind, which
makes all that is fair and sensitive to shut itself
up, forbids the bud to expand into a blossom,
and puts back the coming of the springtime and
of the singing bird.
There are very gifted persons who have never
found out that a kindly and winning phrase may
have as much literary merit as a stinging one,
and it is quite as fine a thing to be like the dew
Exodus XX. 17.]
THE TENTH COMMANDMENT.
?.os
on Hermon as to shoot out arrows, even bitter
words.
It is a pity that our harsh judgments always
speak more loudly and confidently than our
kindly ones, but the reason is plain: angry pas-
sion prompts the former, and its voice is loud;
while the calm reflection which tones down and
sweetens the judgment softens also the expres-
sion of it.
It has to be remembered, also, that false wit-
ness can reach to nations, organisations, politi-
cal movements as well as individuals. The habit
of putting the worst construction upon the in-
tentions of foreign powers is what feeds the
mutual jealousies that ultimately blaze out in
war. The habit of thinking of rival politicians
as deliberately false and treasonable is what
lowers the standard of the noblest of secular pur-
suits, until each party, not to be undone, protests
too much, raises its voice to a falsetto to scream
its rival down, and relaxes its standard of right-
eousness lest it should be outdone by the un-
scrupulousness of its rival.
And there is yet another neighbour, against
whom false witness is wofully rife, both in the
Church and in society. That neighbour is man-
kind at large. There is a prevalent theory of
human sinfulness which unconsciously scofTs at
the appeals of the gospel, striving indeed to in-
fluence me by love, gratitude, admiration for the
Perfect One, and desire to be like Him, by the
hope of holiness and the shame of vileness, but
telling me at the same time that I have no sym-
pathies whatever except with evil. The observa-
tion of every day shows that man's nature is cor-
rupt, but it also shows that he is not a fiend —
that he has fallen indeed, but remembers yet in
what image he was made. But the world can-
not upbraid the Church for these exaggerations,
since they are but the echo of its own.
" I do believe,
Though I have found them not. that there may be
Words which are things, hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing ; I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve ;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream."
Childe Harold, III., cxiv.
Cynicism is false witness; and if it does not
greatly wrong any one of our fellow-men, it in-
jures both society and the cynic. If he is of a
coarse fibre, it excuses him to himself in becom-
ing the hard and unloving creature which he
fancies that all men are. If he is too proud or
too self-respecting to yield to this temptation, it
isolates him, it chills and withers his sympathies
for people quite as good as himself, whom he
thinks of as the herd.
As for the more flagrant sins, so for this, the
remedy is love. Love sympathises, makes allow-
ance for frailty, discovers the germs of good,
hopeth all things, taketh not account of evil.
THE TENTH COMMANDMENT.
" Thou shalt not covet . . . anything that is his."— .xx. 17.
It will be remembered that the order of the
catalogue of objects of desire is diff'erent in
Exodus and in Deuteronomy. In the latter " thy
neighbour's wife " is first, as of supreme impor-
tance; and therefore it has been thought possible
to convert it into a separate commandment.
But this the order in Exodus forbids, by plac-
ing the house first, and then the various living
possessions which the householder gathers
around him. What is thought of is the gradual
process of acquisition, and the right of him who
wins first a house, then a wife, servants, and
cattle, to be secure in the possession of them all.
Now, between foes, we saw that the evil temper
is what leads to the evil deed, and the man who
nurses hatred is a murderer at heart. Just so
the householder is not rendered safe, and cer-
tainly not happy in the enjoyment of his rights,
by the seventh commandment and the eighth,
unless care be taken to prevent the accumulation
of those forces which will some day break
through them both. To secure cities against ex-
plosion, we forbid the storage of gunpowder and
dynamite, and not only the firing of magazines.
But the moral law is not given to any man for
his neighbour's sake chiefly. It is for me:
statutes whereby I myself may live. And as the
Psalmist pondered on them, they expanded
strangely for his perception. " I have kept Thy
testimonies," he says; but presently asks to be
quickened, — " So shall I observe the testimony of
Thy mouth," — and prays, " Give me understand-
ing, that I may knozv Thy testimonies." And at
the last, he confesses that he has " gone astray
like a lost sheep " (Ps. cxix. 22, 88, 125, 176).
Starting with a literal innocence, he comes to
feel a deep inward need, need of vitality to obey,
and even of power to tinderstand aright. If the
sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, it follows
that they are a spirit, and inward loyalty is the
necessary condition upon which external obedi-
ence can be accepted. The cheers of a traitor,
the flattery of one who scorns, the ritual of a
hypocrite, these are quite as valuable, as indica-
tions of what is within, as a reluctant relinquish-
ment to my neighbour of what is his. I must
not covet. Plainly this is the sharpest and most
searching precept of all; and accordingly St.
Paul asserts that without this he would not have
suffered the deep internal discontent, the con-
sciousness of something wrong, which tortured
him, even although no mortal could reproach
him, even though, touching the righteousness of
the law, he was blameless. He had not known
coveting except the law had said " Thou shalt
not covet."
Here, then, we perceive with the utmost clear-
ness what St. Paul so clearly discerned — the true
meaning of the Law, its convicting power, its
design to work not righteousness, but self-
despair as the prelude of self-surrender. For
who can, by resolving, govern his desires? Who
can abstain not only from the usurping deed, but
from the aggressive emotion? Who will not
despair when he learns that God desireth truth
in the inward parts? But this despair is the way
to that better hope which adds, " In the hidden
part Thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean."
And as a strong interest or affection has power
to destroy in the soul many weaker ones, so the
love of God and our neighbour is the appointed
way to overcome the desire of taking from our
neighbour what God has given to him, refusing
it to us.
^04
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
THE LESSER LAW.
Exodus xx. i8 — xxiii. 3i.
With the close of the Decalogue and its uni-
versal obligations, we approach a brief code of
laws, purely Hebrew, but of the deepest moral
interest, confessed by hostile criticism to bear
every mark of a remote antiquity, and distinctly
severed from what precedes and follows by a
marked difference in the circumstances.
This is evidently the book of the Covenant to
which the nation gave its formal assent (xxiv. 7),
and is therefore the germ and the centre of the
system afterwards so much expanded.
And since the adhesion of the people was re-
quired, and the final covenant was ratified as
soon as it was given, before any of the more for-
mal details were elaborated, and before the taber-
nacle and the priesthood were established, it may
fairly claim the highest and most unique posi-
tion among the component parts of the Penta-
teuch, excepting only the Ten Commandments.
Before examining it in detail, the impressive
circumstances of its utterance have to be
observed.
It is written that when the law was given, the
voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder
still. And as the multitude became aware that
in this tempestuous and growing crash there was
a living centre, and a voice of intelligible words,
their awe became insufferable: and instead of
needing the barriers which excluded them from
the mountain, they recoiled from their appointed
place, trembling and standing afar off. " And
they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us and
we will hear, but let not God speak with us lest
we die." It is the same instinct that we have
already so often recognised, the dread of holi-
ness in the hearts of the impure, the sense of un-
worthiness, which makes a prophet cry, " Woe
is me, for I am undone! " and an apostle, " De-
part from me, for I am a sinful man."
Now, the New Testament quotes a confession
of Moses himself, well-nigh overwhelmed, " I
do exceedingly fear and quake " (Heb. xii. 21).
And yet we read that he " said unto the people,
Fear not, for God is come to prove you, and that
His fear may be before your faces, that ye sin
not " (xx. 20). Thus we have the double para-
dox,— that he exceedingly feared, yet bade them
fear not, and yet again declared that the very
object of God was that they might fear Him.
Like every paradox, which is not a mere con-
tradiction, this is instructive.
There is an abject fear, the dread of cowards
and of the guilty, which masters and destroys
the will — the fear which shrank away from the
mount and cried out to Moses for relief. Such
fear has torment, and none ought to admit it
who understands that God wishes him well and
is merciful.
There is also a natural agitation, at times in-
evitable though not unconquerable, and often
strongest in the highest natures because they are
the most finely strung. We are sometimes
taught that there is sin in that instinctive recoil
from death, and from whatever brings it close,
which indeed is implanted by God to prevent
foolhardiness, and to preserve the race. Our
duty, however, does not require the absence of
sensitive nerves, but only their subjugation and
control. Marshal Saxe was truly brave when he
looked at his own trembling frame, as the can-
non opened fire, and said, " Aha! tremblest thou?
thou wouldest tremble much more if thou
knewest whither I mean to carry thee to-day."
Despite his fever-shaken nerves, he was per-
fectly entitled to say to any waverer, '' Fear not."
And so Moses, while he himself quaked, was
entitled to encourage his people, because he
could encourage them, because he saw and an-
nounced the kindly meaning of that tremendous
scene, because he dared presently to draw near
unto the thick darkness where God was.
And therefore the day would come when, with
his noble heart aflame for a yet more splendid
vision, he would cry, " O Lord, I beseech Thee
show me Thy glory " — some purer and clearer
irradiation, which would neither baffle the moral
sense, nor conceal itself in cloud.
Meanwhile, there was a fear which should en-
dure, and which God desires: not panic, but awe;
not the terror which stood afar off, but the rev-
erence which dares not to transgress. " Fear
not, for God is come to prove you " (to see
whether the nobler emotion or the baser will
survive), " and that His fear may be before your
faces " (so as to guide you, instead of pressing
upon you to crush), " that ye sin not."
How needful was the lesson may be seen by
what followed when they were taken at their
word, and the pressure of physical dread was
lifted off them. " They soon forgat God their
Saviour . . . they made a calf in Horeb, and
worshipped the work of their own hands." Per-
haps other pressures which we feel and lament
to-day, the uncertainties and fears of modern life,
are equally required to prevent us from forget-
ting God.
Of the nobler fear, which is a safeguard cf the
soul and not a danger, it is a serious question
whether enough is alive among us.
Much sensational teaching, many popular
books and hymns, suggest rather an irreverent
use of the Holy Name, which is profanation,
than a filial approach to a Father equally revered
and loved. It is true that we are bidden to come
with boldness to the throne of Grace. Yet the
same Epistle teaches us again that our approach
is even more solemn and awful than to the
Mount which might be touched, and the pro-
faning of which was death; and it exhorts us to
have grace whereby we may offer service well-
pleasing to God with reverence and awe, " for
our God is a consuming fire " (Heb. iv. 16, xii.
28). That is the very last grace which some
christians ever seem to seek.
When the people recoiled, and Moses, trust-
ing in God, was brave and entered the cloud,
they ceased to have direct communion, and he
was brought nearer to Jehovah than before.
What is now conveyed to Israel through him
is an expansion and application of the Deca-
logue, and in turn it becomes the nucleus of the
developed law. Its great antiquity is admitted
by the severest critics; and it is a wonderful
example of spirituality and searching depth, and
also of such germinal and fruitful principles as
cannot rest in themselves, literally applied, but
must lead the obedient student on to still better
things.
It is not the function of law to inspire men to
obey it; this is precisely what the law could not
do, being weak through the flesh. But it could
arrest the attention and educate the conscience.
Simple though it was in the letter, David could
Exodus XX. i8-xxiii. 33.]
THE LESSER LAW.
205
meditate upon it day and night. In the New
Testament we know of two persons who had
scrupulously respected its precepts, but they
both, far from being satisfied, were filled with a
divine discontent. One had kept all these things
from his youth, yet felt the need of doing some
good thing, and anxiously demanded what it was
that he lacked yet. The other, as touching the
righteousness of the law, was blameless, yet
when the law entered, sin revived and slew him.
For the law was spiritual, and reached beyond
itself, while he was carnal, and thwarted by the
flesh, sold under sin, even while externally be-
yond reproach.
This subtle characteristic of all noble law will
te very apparent in studying the kernel of the
Inw, the code within the code, which now lies
before us.
Men sometimes judge the Hebrew legislation
harshly, thinking that they are testing it, as a
1 )ivine institution, by the light of this century.
1 hey are really doing nothing of the sort. If
tliere are two principles of legislation dearer
than all others to modern Englishmen, they are
the two which these flippant judgments most
ij^nore, and by which they are most perfectly
refuted.
One is that institutions educate communities.
It is not too much to say that we have staked
the future of our nation, and therefore the hopes
of humanity, upon our conviction that men can
be elevated by ennobling institutions, — that the
franchise, for example, is an education as well
as a trust.
The other, which seems to contradict the first,
and does actually modify it, is that legislation
must not move too far in advance of public
opinion. Laws may be highly desirable in the
abstract, for which communities are not yet ripe.
A constitution like our own would be simply
ruinous in Hindostan. Many good friends of
temperance are the reluctant opponents of legis-
lation which they desire in theory but which
would only be trampled upon in practice, be-
cause public opinion would rebel against the
law. Legislation is indeed educational, but the
danger is that the practical outcome of such
legislation would be disobedience and anarchy.
Now, these principles are the ample justifica-
tion of all that startles us in the Pentateuch.
Slavery and polygamy, for instance, are not
abolished. To forbid them utterly would have
substituted far worse evils, as the Jews then were.
But laws were introduced which vastly amelio-
rated the condition of the slave, and elevated
the status of woman — laws which were far in ad-
vance of the best Gentile culture, and which so
educated and softened the Jewish character that
men soon came to feel the letter of these very
laws too harsh.
That is a nobler vindication of the Mosaic
legislation than if this century agreed with every
letter of it. To be vital and progressive is a
better thing than to be correct. The law waged
a far more effectual war upon certain evils than
Ly formal prohibition, sound in theory but pre-
mature by centuries. Other good things besides
liberty are not for the nursery or the school.
And " we also, when we were children, were
held in bondage " (Gal. iv. 3).
It is pretty well agreed that this code may be
d>vided into five parts. To the end of the
tv.'entieth chapter it deals directly with the wor-
ship of God. Then follow thirty-two verses
14-Vol. I.
treating of the personal rights of man as distin'
guished from his rights of property. From the
thirty-third verse of the twenty-first chapter to
the fifteenth verse of the twenty-second, the
rights of property are protected. Thence to the
nineteenth verse of the twenty-third chapter is a
miscellaneous group of laws, chiefly moral, but
deeply connected with the civil organisation of
the state. And thence to the end of the chapter
is an earnest exhortation from God, introduced
by a clearer statement than before of the manner
in which He means to lead them, even by that
mysterious Angel in Whom " is My Name."
Part I. — The Law of Worship.
Exodus xx. 22-26.
It is no vain repetition that this code begins
by reasserting the supremacy of the one God.
That principle underlies all the law, and must be
carried into every part of it. And it is now en-
forced by a new sanction, — " Ye yourselves have
seen that I have talked with you from heaven:
ye shall not make other gods with Me; gods of
silver or gods of gold ye shall not make unto
you " (vers. 22, 23). The costliest material of this
low world should be utterly contemned in rivalry
with that spiritual Presence revealing Himself
out of a wholly different sphere; and in so far as
they remembered Him, and the Voice which had
thrilled their nature to its core, in so far would
they be free from the desire for any carnal and
materialised divinity to go before them.
Impressed with such views of God, their
service of Him would be moulded accordingly
(24, 25). It is true that nothing could be too
splendid for His sanctuary, and Bezaleel was
presently to be inspired, that the work of the
tabernacle might be worthy of its destination.
Spirituality is not meanness, nor is art without
a consecration of its own. But it must not in-
trude too closely upon the solemn act wherein
the soul seeks the pardon of the Creator. The
altar should not be a proud structure, richly
sculptured and adorned, and offering in itself, if
not an object of adoration, yet a satisfying centre
of attention for the worshipper. It should be
simply a heap of sods. And if they must needs
go further, and erect a more durable pile, it must
still be of materials crude, inartistic, such as the
earth itself affords, of unhewn stone. A golden
casket is fit to convey the freedom of some his-
toric city to a prince, but the noblest offering of
man to God is too humble to deserve an ostenta-
tious altar.
" If thou lift up a tool upon it thou hast pol-
luted it:" it has lost its virginal simplicity; it no
longer suits a spontaneous offering of the heart,
it has become artificial, sophisticated, self-con-
scious, polluted.
It is vehemently urged that these verses sanc-
tion a plurality of altars (so that one might be of
earth and another of stone), and recognise the
lawfulness of worship in other places than at a
central appointed shrine. And it is concluded
that early Judaism knew nothing of the exclusive
sanctity of the tabernacle and the temple.
This argument forgets the circumstances.
The Jews had been led to Horeb, the mount of
God. They were soon to wander away thence
through the wilderness. Altars had to be set up
in many places, and might be of different ma-
2o6
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
teriah. It was an important announcement that
in every place where God would record His
name He would come unto them and bless them.
But certainly the inference leans rather toward
than against the belief that it was for Him to
select every place which should be sacred.
The last direction given with regard to wor-
ship is a homely one. It commands that the
altar must not be approached with steps, lest the
clothes of the priest should be disturbed and his
limbs uncovered. Already we feel that we have
to reckon with the temper as well as the letter of
the precept. It is divinely unlike the frantic in-
decencies of many pagan rituals. It protests
against all infractions of propriety, even the
slightest, such as even now discredit many a
zealous movement, and bear fruit in many a scan-
dal. It rebukes all misdemeanour, all forgetful-
ness in look and gesture of the Sacred Presence,
in every worshipper, at every shrine.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE LESSER LAW {continued).
Part II. — Rights of the Person.
Exodus xxi. 1-32.
The first words of God from Sinai had de-
clared that He was Jehovah Who brought them
out of slavery. And in this remarkable code, the
first person whose rights are dealt with is the
slave. We saw that a denunciation of all slavery
would have been premature, and therefore un-
wise; but assuredly the germs of emancipation
were already planted by this giving of the fore-
most place to the rights of the least of all and
the servant of all.
As regards the Hebrew slave, the effect was to
reduce his utmost bondage to a comparatively
mild apprenticeship. At the worst he should go
free in the seventh year; and if the year of jubi-
lee intervened, it brought a still speedier eman-
cipation. If his debt or misconduct had
jr\olved a family in his disgrace, they should
also share his emancipation, but if while in
bondage his master had provided for his mar-
riage with a slave, then his family must await
their own appointed period of release. It fol-
lowed that if he had contracted a degrading
alliance with a foreign slave, his freedom would
inflict upon him the pang of final severance from
his dear ones. He might, indeed, escape this
pain, but only by a deliberate and humiliating
act, by formally renouncing before the judges
his liberty, the birthright of his nation (" they
are My servants, whom I brought forth out of
Egypt, they shall not be sold as bondservants "
—Lev. XXV. 42), and submitting to have his ear
pierced, at the doorpost of his master's house, as
if, like that, his body were become his master's
property. It is uncertain, after this decisive
step, whether even the year of jubilee brought
him release; and the contrary seems to be im-
plied in his always bearing about in his body an
indelible and degrading mark. It will be re-
membered that St. Paul rejoiced to think that
his choice of Christ was practically beyond re-
call, for the scars on his body marked the
tenacity of his decision (Gal. vi. 17). He wrote
this to Gentiles, and used the Gentile phrase for
the branding of a slave. But beyond question
this Hebrew of Hebrews remembered, as he
wrote, that one of his race could incur lifelong
subjection only by a voluntary wound, endured
because he loved his master, such as he had re-
ceived for love of Jesus.
When the law came to deal with assaults it was
impossible to place the slave upon quite the
same level as the freeman. But Moses excelled
the legislators of Greece and Rome, by making
an assault or chastisement which killed him
upon the spot as worthy of death as if a freeman
had been slain. It was only the victim who lin-
gered that died comparatively unavenged (20,
21). After all, chastisement was a natural right
of the master, because he owned him (" he is his
money ") : and it would be hard to treat an ex-
cess of what was permissible, inflicted perhaps
under provocation which made some punishment
necessary, on the same lines with an assault that
was entirely lawless. But there was this grave
restraint upon bad temper, — that the loss of any
member, and even of the tooth of a slave, in-
volved his instant manumission. And this
carried with it the principle of moral responsi-
bility for every hurt (26, 27).
It was not quite plain that these enactments
extended to the Gentile slave. But in accord-
ance with the assertion that the whole spirit of
the statutes was elevating, the conclusion ar-
rived at by the later authorities was the generous
one.
When it is added that man-stealing (upon
which all our modern systems of slavery were
founded) was a capital ofTence, without power of
commutation for a fine (xxi. 16), it becomes clear
that the advocates of slavery appeal to Moses
against the outraged conscience of humanity
without any shadow of warrant either from the
letter or the spirit of the code.
There remains to be considered a remarkable
and melancholy sub-section of the law of slavery.
In every age degraded beings have made gain
of the attractions of their daughters. With them,
the law attempted nothing of moral influence.
But it protected their children, and brought
pressure to bear upon the tempter, by a series of
firm provisions, as bold as the age could bear,
and much in advance of the conscience of too
many among ourselves to-day.
The seduction of any unbetrothed maiden in-
volved marriage, or the payment of a dowry.
And thus one door to evil was firmly closed
(xxii. 16).
But when a man purchased a female slave, with
the intention of making her an inferior wife,
whether for himself or for his son (such only
are the purchases here dealt with, and an ordi-
nary female slave was treated upon the same
principles as a man), she was far from being the
sport of his caprice. If indeed he repented at
once, he might send her back, or transfer her to
another of her countrymen upon the same terms,
but when once they were united she was pro-
tected against his fickleness. He might not
treat her as a servant or domestic, but must,
even if he married another and probably a chief
wife, continue to her all the rights and privileges
of a wife. Nor was her position a temporary
one, to her damage, as that of an ordinary slave
was, to his benefit.
And if there was any failure to observe these
honourable terms, she could return with un-
blemished reputation to her father's home, with-
Exodus xxi 1-32.]
THE LESSER LAW.
207
out forfeiture of the money which had been paid
for her (xxi. 7-11).
Does any one seriously believe that a system
like the African slave trade could have existed in
such a humane and genial atmosphere as these
enactments breathed? Does any one who knows
the plague spot and disgrace of our modern
civilisation suppose for a moment that more
could have been attempted, in that age, for the
great cause of purity? Would to God that the
spirit of these enactments were even now re-
spected! They would make of us, as they have
made of the Hebrew nation unto this day, models
of domestic tenderness, and of the blessings in
health and physical vigour which an untainted
life bestows upon communities.
By such checks upon the degradation of
slavery, the Jew began to learn the great lesson
of the sanctity of manhood. The next step was
to teach him the value of life, not only in the
avenging of murder, but also in the mitigation
of such revenge. The blood-feud was too old,
too natural a practice to be suppressed at once;
but it was so controlled and regulated as to be-
come little more than a part of the machinery of
justice.
A premeditated murder was inexpiable, not to
be ransomed; the murderer must surely die.
Even if he fled to the altar of God, intending to
escape thence to a city of refuge when the
avenger ceased to watch, he should be torn from
that holy place: to shelter him would not be an
honour, but a desecration to the shrine (xxi. 12,
14). According to this provision Joab and
Adonijah suffered. For the slayer by accident
or in hasty quarrel, " a place whither he shall
flee " would be provided, and the vague phrase
indicates the antiquity of the edict (ver. 13).
This arrangement at once respected his life, .
which did not merit forfeiture, and provided a
penalty for his rashness or his passion.
It is because the question in hand is the sanc-
tity of man, that the capital punishment of a son
who strikes or curses a parent, the vicegerent of
God, and of a kidnapper, is interposed between
these provisions and minor offences against the
person (15-17).
Of these latter, the first is when lingering ill-
ness results from a blow received in a quarrel.
This was not a case for the stern rule, eye for
eye and tooth for tooth, — for how could that
rule be applied to it? — but the violent man should
pay for his victim's loss of time, and for medical
treatment until he was thoroughly recovered
(18, 19).
But what is to be said to the general law of
retribution in kind? Our Lord has forbidden a
Christian, in his own case, to exact it. But it
does not follow that it was unjust, since Christ
plainly means to instruct private persons not to
exact their rights, whereas the magistrate con-
tinues to be " a revenger to execute justice."
And, as St. Augustine argued shrewdly, " this
command was not given for exciting the fires of
hatred, but to restrain them. For who would
easily be satisfied with repaying as much injury
as he received? Do we not see men slisyhtly
hurt athirst for slaughter and blood? . . . Upon
this immoderate and unjust vengeance, the law
imposed a just limit, not that what was quenched
might be kindled, but that what was burning
might not spread." (Cont. Faust., xix. 25.)
It is also to be observed that by no other pre-
cept were the Jews more clearly led to a morality
still higher than it prescribed. Their attention
was first drawn to the fact that a compensation
in money was nowhere forbidden, as in the case
of murder (Num. xxxv. 31). Then they went
on to argue that such compensation must have
been intended, because its literal observance
teemed with difficulties. If an eye were injured
but not destroyed, who would undertake to in-
flict an equivalent hurt? What if a blind man
destroyed an eye? Would it be reasonable to
quench utterly the sight of a one-eyed man who
had only destroyed one-half of the vision of his
neighbour? Should the right hand of a painter,
by which he maintains his family, be forfeited for
that of a singer who lives by his voice? Would
not the cold and premeditated operation inflict
far greater mental and even physical suffering
than a sudden wound received in a moment of
excitement? By all these considerations, drawn
from the very principle which underlay the pre-
cept, they learned to relax its pressure in actual
life. The law was already their schoolmaster,
to lead them beyond itself (7>ide Kalisch in loco).
Lastly, there is the question of injury to the
person, wrought by cattle.
It is clearly to deepen the sense of reverence
for human life, that not only must the ox which
kills a man be slain, but his flesh may not be
eaten: thus carrying further the early aphorism
" at the hand of every beast will I require . . .
your blood " (Gen. ix. 5). This motive, how-
ever, does not betray the lawgiver into injustice:
" the owner of the ox shall be quit "; the loss of
his beast is his sufficient penalty.
But if its evil temper has been previously ob-
served, and he has been warned, then his reck-
lessness amounts to blood-guiltiness, and he
must die, or else pay whatever ransom is laid
upon him. This last clause recognises the dis-
tinction between his guilt and that of a deliberate
manslayer, for whose crime the law distinctly
prohibited a composition (Num. xxxv. 31).
And it is expressly provided, according to the
honourable position of woman in the Hebrew
state, that the penalty for a daughter's life shall
be the same as for that of a son.
As a slave was exposed to especial risk, and
his position was an ignoble one, a fixed compo-
sition was appointed, and the amount was mem-
orable. The ransom of a common slave, killed
by the horns of the wild oxen, was thirty pieces
of silver, the goodly price that Messiah was
prized at of them (Zech. xi. 13).
Part III. — Rights of Property.
Exodus xxi. 3s — xxii. 15.
The vital and quickening principle in this sec-
tion is the stress it lays upon man's responsibility
for negligence, and the indirect consequences of
his deed. All sin is selfish, and all selfishness
ignores the right of others. Am I my brother's
keeper? Let him guard his own property or paj'-
the forfeit. But this sentiment would quickly
prove a disintegrating force in the communitj-,
able to overthrow a state. It is the ignoble
negative of public spirit, patriotism, all by which
nations prosper. And this early legislation is
well devised to check it in detail. If an ox fall
into a pit or cistern, from which I have removed
the cover. I must pay the value of the beast, and
take the carcase for what it may be worth. I
208
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
ought to have considered the public interest
(xxi. 33). If I let my cattle stray into my neigh-
bour's field or vineyard, there must be no
wrangling about the quality of what he has con-
sumed: I must forfeit an equal quantity of the
best of my own field or vineyard (xxii. 5). If a
fire of my kindling burn his grain, standing or
piled,"I must make restitution: I had no right to
kindle it where he was brought into hazard
(xxii. 6). This is the same principle which had
already pronounced it murder to let a vicious ox
go loose. And it has to do with graver things
than oxen and fires, — with the teachers of prin-
ciples rightly called incendiary, the ingenious
theorists who let loose abstract speculations per-
nicious when put into practice, the well-behaved
questioners of morality, and the law-abiding
assailants of the foundations which uphold law.
It is quite in the same spirit that I am account-
able for what I borrow or hire, and even for its
accidental death (since for the time being it was
mine, and so should the loss be); but if I hired
the owner with his beast, it clearly continued to
be in his charge (14, 15). But again, my respon-
sibility may not be pressed too far. If I have
not borrowed property, but consented to keep it
for the owner, the risk is fairly his, and if it be
stolen, the presumption is not against my in-
tegrity, although I may be required to clear
myself on oath before the judges (7, 8). But I
am accountable in such a case for cattle, because
it was certainly understood that I should watch
them; and if a wild beast have torn any, I must
prove my courage and vigilance by rescuing the
carcase and producing it (10-13).
But I must not be plunged into litigation with-
out a compensating hazard on the other side:
he whom God shall condemn shall pay double
unto his neighbour (9).
It only remains to be observed, with regard to
theft, that when cattle were recovered yet alive,
the thief restored double, but when his act was
consummated by slaughtering what he had taken,
then he restored a sheep fourfold, and for an ox
five oxen, because his villainy was more high-
handed. And we still retain the law which
allows the blood of a robber at night to be shed,
but forbids it in the day, when help can more
easily be had.
All this is reasonable and enlightened law;
founded, like all good legislation, upon clear and
satisfactory principles, and well calculated to
elevate the tone of the public feeling, to be not
only so many specific enactments, but also the
germinant seeds of good.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE LESSER LAW {continued).
Part IV.
Exodus xxii. 16 — xxiii. 19.
The Fourth section of this law within the law
consists of enactments, curiously disconnected,
many of them without a penalty, varying greatly
in importance, but all of a moral nature, and
connected with the well-being of the state. It
is hard to conceive how the systematic revision
of which we hear so much could have left them
in the condition in which they stand.
It is enacted that a seducer must marry the
woman he has betrayed, and if her father refuse
to give her to him, then he must pay the same
dower as a bridegroom would have done (xxii.
16,17). And presently the sentence of death is
launched against a blacker sensual crime (19).
But between the two is interposed the celebrated
mandate which doomed the sorceress to death,
remarkable as the first mention of witchcraft in
Scripture, and the only passage in all the Bible
where the word is in the feminine form — a witch,
or sorceress; remarkable also for a far graver
reason, which makes it necessary to linger over
the subject at some length.
SORCERY.
" Thou Shalt not suffer a sorceress to live." — xxii. 18.
The world knows only too well what sad and
shameful inferences have been drawn from these
words. Unspeakable terrors, estrangement of
natural sympathy, tortures and cruel deaths,
have been inflicted on many thousands of the
most forlorn creatures upon earth (creatures
who were sustained in their sufferings by no
high ardour of conviction or fanaticism, not
being martyrs but simply victims), because it
was held that Moses, in declaring that witches
should not live, afifirmed the reality of witchcraft.
No sooner did the argument cease to be dan-
gerous to old women than it became formidable
to religion; for now it was urged that, since
Moses was in error about the reality of witch-
craft, his legislation could not have been inspired.
What are we to say to this?
In the first place it must be observed that the
existence of a sorcerer is one thing, and the
reality of his powers is quite another. What was
most sad and shameful in the mediaeval frenzy
was the burning to ashes of multitudes who
made no pretensions to traffic with the invisible
world, who frequently held fast their innocence
while enduring the agonies of torture, who were
only aged and ugly and alone. Upon any
theory, the prohibition of sorcery by the Penta-
teuch was no more answerable for these iniqui-
ties than its other prohibitions for the lynch law
of the backwoods.
On the other hand, there were real professors
of the black art: men did pretend to hold inter-
course with spirits, and extorted great sums from
their dupes in return for bringing them also into
communion with superhuman beings. These it
is reasonable to call sorcerers, whether we accept
their professions or not, just as we speak of
thought-readers and of mediums without being
understood to commit ourselves to the preten-
sions of either one or other. In point of fact,
the existence, in this nineteenth century after
Christ, of sorcerers calling themselves mediums,
is much more surprising than the existence of
other sorcerers in the time of Moses or of Saul;
and it bears startling witness to the depth in hu-
man nature of that craving for traffic with in-
visible powers which the law prohibited so
sternly, but the roots of which neither religion
nor education nor scepticism has been able
wholly to pluck up.
Again, from the point of view which Moses
occupied, it is plain that such professors should
be punished. They are virtually punished still,
whenever they obtain money under pretence of
granting interviews with the departed. If we
now rely chiefly upon educated public opinion to
Exodus xxii. 21-xxiii. 9.]
THE LESSER LAW.
209
stamp out such impositions, that is because we
have decided that a struggle between truth and
falsehood upon equal terms will be advantageous
to the former. It is a subdivision of the debate
between intolerance and free thought. Our
theory works well, but not universally well, even
under modern conditions and in Christian lands.
And assuredly Moses could not proclaim free-
dom of opinion, among uneducated slaves, amid
the pressure of splendid and of seductive idola-
tries, and before the Holy Ghost was given. To
complain of Moses for proscribing false religions
would be to denounce the use of glass for seed-
lings because the full-grown plant flourishes in
the open air.
Now, it would have been preposterous to pro-
scribe false religions and yet to tolerate the sor-
cerer and the sorceress. For these were the
active practitioners of Another worship than that
of God. They might not profess idolatry; but
they offered help and guidance from sources
which Jehovah frowned upon, rival sources of
defence or knowledge.
The holy people was meant to grow up under
the most elevating of all influences, reliance
upon a protecting God, Who had bidden His
children to subdue the world as well as to re-
plenish it, and of Whom one of their own poets
sang that He had put all things under the feet of
man. Their true heritage was not bounded by
the strip of land which Joshua and his followers
slowly conquered; to them belonged all the re-
sources of nature which science, ever since, has
wrested from the Philistine hands of barbarism
and ignorance. And this nobler conquest de-
pended upon the depth and sincerity of man's
feeling that the world is well-ordered and stable
and the heritage of man, not a chaos of various
and capricious powers, where Pallas inspires
Diomed to hunt Venus bleeding off the field, or
where the incantations of Canidia may disturb
the orderly movements of the skies. Who could
hope to discover by inductive science the secrets
of such a world as this?
The devices of magic cut the links between
cause and effect, between studious labour and
the fruits which sorcery bade men to steal rather
than to cultivate. What gambling was' to com-
merce, that was witchcraft to philosophy, and
the mischief no more depended on the validity
of its methods than upon the soundness of the
last device for breaking the bank at Monte Carlo.
If one could actually extort their secrets from
the dead, or win for luxury and sloth a longer
life than is bestowed upon temperance and
labour, he would succeed in his revolt against the
God of nature. But the revolt was the en-
deavour; and the sorcerer, however falsely, pro-
fessed to have succeeded; and preached the same
revolt to others. In religion he was therefore an
apostate, and in the theocracy a traitor against
the King, one whose life was forfeited if it was
prudent to exact the penalty.
And when we consider the fascination wielded
by such pretensions, even in ages when the sta-
bility of nature is an axiom, the dread which
false religions all around and their terrible
rituals must have inspired, the superstitious tend-
encies of the people and their readiness to be
misled, we shall see ample reasons for treading
out the first sparks of so dangerous a fire.
Beyond this it is vain to pretend that the
law of Moses goes. It was right in declaring
the sorcerer and the sorceress to be real and
dangerous phenomena. It never declared their
pretensions to be valid though illegitimate. And
in one noteworthy passage it proclaims that a
real sign or a wonder could only proceed from
God, and when it accompanied false teaching
was still a. sign, though an ominous one, imply-
ing that the Lord would prove them (Deut. xiii.
1-3). This does not look very like an admission
of the existence of rival powers, inferior though
they might be, who could interfere with the
order of His world.
Sorcery in all its forms will die when men
realise indeed that the world is His, that there is
no short or crooked way to the prizes which He
offers to wisdom and to labour, that these re-
wards are infinitely richer and more splendid
than the wildest dreams of magic, and that it is
literally true that all power, in earth as well as
heaven, is committed into the Hands which
were pierced for us. In such a conception of
the universe, incantations give place to prayers,
and prayer does not seek to disturb, but to
carry forward and to consummate, the orderly
rule of Love.
The denunciation of witchcraft is quite natu-
rally followed, as we now perceive, by the
reiteration of the command that no sacrifice may
be offered to any god except Jehovah (20).
Strange and hateful offerings were an integral
part of witchcraft, long before the hags of Mac-
beth brewed their charm, or the child in Horace
famished to yield a spell.
THE STRANGER.
Exodus xxii. 21, xxiii. 9.
Immediately after this, a ray of sunlight falls
upon the sombre page.
We read an exhortation rather than a statute,
which is repeated almost literally in the next
chapter, and in both is supported by a beautiful
and touching reason. " A stranger shalt thou
not wrong, neither shall ye oppress him: for ye
were strangers in the land of Egypt." " A
stranger shall ye not oppress, for ye know the
heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in
the land of Egypt " (xxii. 21, xxiii. g).
The " stranger " of these verses is probably
the settler among them, as distinguished from
the traveller passing through the land. His
want of friends and ignorance of their social
order would place him at a disadvantage, of
which they are forbidden to avail themselves,
either by legal process (for the first passage is
connected with jurisprudence), or in the afifairs
of common life. But the spirit of the command-
ment could not fail to influence their treatment
of all foreigners; and simple and commonplace
though it appear to us, it would have startled
many of the wisest and greatest peoples of an-
tiquity, and would have fallen as strangely upon
the ears of the Greeks of Pericles, as of the
modern Bedouin, with whom Israel had kinship.
A foreigner, as such, was a foe: to wrong him
was a paradox, because he had no rights: kin-
ship, or else alliance or treaty was required to
entitle the weaker to any better treatment than
it suited the stronger to allow.
Yet we find a precept reiterated in this Jewish
code which involves, in its inevitable though
slow development, the abolition of nea^ro
slavery, the respect by powerful and civilised
2IO
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
nations of the rights of indigenous tribes, the
most boundless advance of philanthropy, through
the most generous recognition of the fraternity
of man.
However sternly the sword of Joshua might
fall, it struck not at the foreigner, as such, but
at those tribes, guilty and therefore accursed of
God, the cup of whose iniquity was full. And
yet there was enough of carnage to prove that
so gracious a commandment as this could not
have risen spontaneously in the heart of early
Judaism. Does it seem to be made more natural,
by any proposed shifting of the date?
The reason of the precept is beautifully human.
It rests upon no abstract basis of common rights,
nor prudential consideration of mutual ad-
vantage.
In our time it is sometimes proposed to build
all morality upon such foundations; and strange
consequences have already been deduced in
cases where the proposed sanction has not
seemed to apply. But, in fact, no advance in
virtue has ever been traced to self-interest, al-
though, after the advance took place, self-
interest has always found its account in it. A
progressive community is made of good men,
and the motive to which Moses appeals is com-
passion fed by memory: " For ye were strangers
in the land of Egypt " (xxii. 21); " For ye know
the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers
in the land of Egypt " (xxiii. 9).
The point is not that they may again be carried
into captivity: it is that they have felt its bitter-
ness, and ought to recoil from inflicting what
they writhed under.
Now, this appeal is a master-stroke of wisdom.
Much cruelty, and almost all the cruelty of the
young, springs from ignorance, and that slow-
ness of the imagination which cannot realise that
the pains of others are like our own. Feeling
them to be so, the charities of the poor toward
one another frequently rise almost to sublimity.
And thus, when suffering does not ulcerate the
heart and make it savage, it is the most softening
of all influences. In one of the most threadbare
lines in the classics, the queen of Carthage boasts
that
" I, not ignorant of woe.
To pity the distressful kno\y."
And the boldest assertion in Scripture of the
natural development of our Saviour's human
powers, is that which declares that " In that He
Himself hath suffered, being tempted. He is able
to succour them that are tempted " (Heb. ii. 18).
To this principle, then. Moses appeals, and by
the appeal he educates the heart. He bids the
people reflect on their own cruel hardships, on
the hateful character of theif tyrants, on their
own greater hatefulness if they follow the vile
example, after such bitter experience of its char-
acter. He does not yet rise to the grand level
of the New Testament morality. Do all to thy
neighbour which it is not servile and dependent
to will that he should do for thee. But he at-
tains to "the level of that precept of Confucius
and Zoroaster which has been so unworthily
compared with it: Do not unto thy neighbour
what thou wouldest not that he should do to
thee — a precept which mere indifiference obeys.
Nay, he excels it; for the mental and spiritual
attitude of one who respects his helpless neigh-
bour because he so much resembles himself, will
surely not be content without relieving the griefs
that have so closely touched him. Thus again
the legislation of Moses looks beyond itself.
Now, if the Jew should be merciful because he
had himself known calamity, what implicit con-
fidence may we repose upon the Man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief?
In the same spirit they are warned against
afflicting the widow or the orphan. And the
threat which is added joins hands with the exhor-
tation which preceded. They should not oppress
the stranger, because they had been strangers
and oppressed. Now the argument advances.
The same God Who then heard their cry will
hear the cry of the forlorn, and avenge them,
according to the judicial fate which He had just
announced, in kind, by bringing their own wives
to widowhood and their children to orphanage
(xxii. 22-4).
To their brethren they should not lend money
upon usury; but loans are no more recommended
than afterwards by Solomon: the words are "if
thou lend " (ver. 25). And if the raiment of the
borrower were taken for a pledge, it must be re-
turned for him to use at night, or else God will
hear his cry, because, it is added very signifi-
cantly and briefly, " I am gracious " (ver. 27).
It is the most exalting of all motives: Be merci-
ful, for I am merciful: ye shall be the children of
your Father.
Again is to be observed the influence reach-
ing beyond the prescription — the motive which
cannot be felt without many other and larger
consequences than the restoration of pledges at
sunset.
How comes this precept to be followed by the
words, " Thou shalt not curse God nor blas-
pheme a ruler " (ver. 28) ? and is not this again
somewhat strangely followed by the order not to
delay to offer the firstfruits of the soil, to conse-
crate the firstborn son, and to devote the first-
born of cattle at the same age when a son ought
to be circumcised? (vers. 29, 30).
If any link can be discovered, it is in the sense
of communion with God, suggested by the recent
appeal to His character as a motive that should
weigh with man. Therefore they must not blas-
pheme Him, either directly or through His
agents, nor tardily yield Him what He claims.
Therefore it is added. " Ye shall be holy men
unto Me," and from the sense of dignity which
religion thus inspires, a homely corollary is de-
duced— " Ye shall not eat any flesh that is torn
of beasts in the field " (ver. 31). The bondmen
of Egypt must learn a high-minded self-respect.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LESSER LAW {continued).
Exodus xxiii. 1-19.
The twenty-third chapter begins with a series
of commands bearing upon the course of justice;
but among these there is interjected very curi-
ously a command to bring back the stray ox or
ass of an enemy, and to help under a burden the
over-weighted ass of him that hateth thee, even
" if thou wouldest forbear to help him." It is
just possible that the lawgiver, urging justice in
the bearing of testimony, interrupts himself to
speak of a very different manner in which the
action may be warped by prejudice, but in which
(unlike the other) it is lawful to show not only-
impartiality but kindness. The help of the cattle
Exodus xxiii. 20-33.]
THE LESSER LAW.
211
of one's enemy shows that in the bearing of
testimony we should not merely abstain from
downright wrong. And it is a fine example of
the spirit of the New Testament, in the Old.
" Thou shalt not take up a false report " (ver.
i) is a precept which reaches far. How many
heedless whispers, conjectures lightly spoken
because they were amusing, yet influencing the
course of lives, and inferences uncharitably
drawn, would have been stillborn if this had
been remembered!
But when the scandal is already abroad, the
temptation to aid its progress is still greater.
Therefore it is added, " Put not thine hand with
the wicked to be an unrighteous witness."
Whatever be the menace or the bribe, however
the course of opinion seem to be decided, and
the assent of an individual to be harmless be-
cause the result is sure, or blameless because the
responsibility lies elsewhere, still each man is a
unit, not an " item," and must act for himself,
as hereafter he must give account. Hence it re-
sults inevitably that " Thou shalt not follow a
multitude to do evil, neither shalt thou speak in
a cause to turn aside after a multitude to wrest
judgment" (ver. 2). The blind impulses of a
multitude are often as misleading as the solicita-
tions of the bad, and to aspiring temperaments
much more seductive. There is indeed a strange
magnetism in the voice of the public. Every
orator knows that a great assembly acts upon
the speaker as really as he acts upon it: its emo-
tions are like a rush of waters to sweep him
away, beyond his intentions or his ordinary
powers. Yet he is the strongest individual there;
no other has at all the same opportunity for self-
assertion, and therefore its power over others
must be more complete than over him.
This is one reason for the institution of public
worship. Men neglect the house of God be-
cause they can pray as well at home, and encour-
age wanton subdivisions of the Church because
they think there is no very palpable difference
between competing denominations, or even be-
cause competition may be as useful in religion
as in trade, as if our cornpetition with the world
and the devil for souls would not sufficiently ani-
mate us, without competing with one another.
But in acting thus they weaken the effect for
good of one of the mightiest influences which
work evil among us, the influence of association.
Men are always persuading themselves that they
need not be better than their neighbours, nor
ashamed of doing what every one does. And
yet no voice joins in a cry without deepening it:
every one who rushes with a crowd makes its
impulse more difficult to stem; his individuality
is not lost by its partnership with a thousand
more; and he is accountable for what he con-
tributes to the result. He has parted with his
self-control, but not with the inner forces which
he ought to have controlled.
Against this dangerous influence of the world,
Christ has set the contagion of godliness within
His Church, and every avoidable subdivision en-
feebles this salutary counter-influence.
Moses warns us, therefore, of the danger of
being drawn away by a multitude to do evil; but
he is thinking especially of the peril of being
tempted to " speak " amiss. Who does not
know it? From the statesman who outruns his
convictions rather than break with his party,
and who cannot, amid deafening cheers, any
longer hear his conscience speak, down to the
humblest who fails to confess Christ before
hostile men, and therefore by-and-by denies
Him, there is not one whose speech and silence
have never been in danger of being set to the
sympathies of his own little public like a song to
music.
That Moses was really thinking of this tend-
ency to court popularity, is plain from the next
clause — " Neither shalt thou favour a poor man
in his cause " (ver. 3).
It is an admirable caution. Men there are
who would scorn the opposite injustice, and
from whom no rich man could buy a wrongful
decision with gold or favour, but who are ha-
bitually unjust, because they load the other scale.
The beam ought to hang straight. When jus-
tice is concerned, the poor man's friend is al-
most as contemptible as his foe, and he has taken
a bribe, if not in the mean enjoyment of demo-
cratic popularity, yet in his own pride — the
fancy that he has done a magnanimous act, the
attitude in which he poses.
As in law so in literature. There once was a
tendency to describe magnanimous persons of
quality, and repulsive clodhoppers and villagers.
Times have changed, and now we think it much
more ingenious and high-toned to be quite as
partial and disingenuous, reversing the cases.
Neither is true, and therefore neither is artistic.
No class in society is deficient in noble qualities,
or in base ones. Nor is the man of letters at all
more independent, who flatters the democracy jn
a democratic age, than he who flattered the aris-
tocracy when they had all the prizes to bestow.
Other precepts forbid bribery, command that
the soil shall rest in the seventh year, when its
spontaneous produce shall be for the poor, and
further recognise and consecrate relaxation, by
instituting (or more probably adopting into the
code) the three feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and
Tabernacles. The section closes with the words
" Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's
milk " (ver. 19). Upon this clause much inge-
nuity has been expended. It makes occult
reference to some superstitious rite. It is the
name for some unduly stimulating compound.
But when we remember that, just before, the
sabbatical fruit which the poor left ungleaned
was expressly reserved for the beasts of the field,
that men were bidden to help the overladen ass
of their enemies, and that care is taken elsewhere
that the ox should not be muzzled when tread-
ing out grain, that the birdnester should not take
the dam with the young, and that neither cow
nor ewe should be slain on the same day with
its young (Deut. xxv. 4, xxii. 6; Lev. xxii. 28),
the simplest meaning seems also the most prob-
able. Men, who have been taught respect for
their fellow-men, are also to learn a fine sensi-
bility even in respect to the inferior animals.
Throughout all this code there is an exquisite
tendency to form a considerate, humane, delicate
and high-minded nation.
It remained, to stamp upon the human con-
science a deep sense of responsibility.
Part V. — Its Sanctions.
Exodus xxiii. 20-33.
This summary of Judaism being now complete,
the people have to learn what mighty issues are
at stake upon their obedience. And the transi-
tion is very striking from the simplest duty to
2 12
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
the loftiest privilege: "Thou shalt not seethe a
kid in his mother's milk. Behold, I send an An-
gel before thee. . . Beware of him: for My
Name is in him " (19-21).
We have now to ask how much this mys-
terious phrase involves: who was the Angel of
whom it speaks?
The question is not, How much did Israel at
that moment comprehend? For we are dis-
tinctly told that prophets were conscious of
speaking more than they understood, and
searched diligently, but in vain, what the spirit
that was in them did signify (i Peter i. 11).
It would, in fact, be absurd to seek the New
Testament doctrine of the Logos full-blown in
the Pentateuch. But it is mere prejudice, un-
philosophical and presumptuous, to shut one's
eyes against any evidence which may be forth-
coming that the earliest books of Scripture were
tending towards the last conclusions of theology;
that the slender overture to the Divine oratorio
indicates already the same theme which thunders
from all the chorus at the close.
It is scarcely necessary to refute the position
that a mere " messenger " is intended, because
angels have not yet " appeared as personal agents
separate from God." Kalisch himself has amply
refuted his own theory. For, he says, " we are
compelled ... to refer it to Moses and his suc-
cessor Joshua" {in loco). So then He Who will
not forgive their transgressions is he who prayed
that if God would not pardon them, his own
name might be blotted from the book of life.
He, to whom afterwards God said " I will pro-
claim the name of the Lord before thee " (xxxiii.
19), is the same of Whom God said " My name
is in Him." This position needs no examina-
tion; but the perplexities of those who reject
the deeper interpretation is a strong confirma-
tion of its soundness. We have still to choose
between the promise of a created angel, and
some manifestation and interposition of God,
distinguished from Jehovah and yet one with
Him. This latter view is an evident preparation
for clearer knowledge yet to come. It is enough
to stamp the dispensation which puts it forth as
but provisional, and therefore bears witness to
that other dispensation which has the key to it.
And it is exactly what a Christian would expect
to find somewhere in this summary of the law.
What, then, do we read elsewhere about the
Angel of Jehovah? What do we find, especially,
in these early books?
A difficulty has to be met at the very outset.
The issue would be decided offhand, if it could
be shown that the Angel of this verse is the same
who is offered, as a poor substitute for their Di-
vine protector, in the thirty-third chapter. But
no contrast can be clearer than between the en-
couraging promise before us, and the sharp
menace which then plunged Israel into mourn-
ing. Here is an Angel who must not be pro-
voked, who will not pardon you, because " My
Name is in Him." There is an angel who will
be sent because God will not go up, . . . lest He
consume them (vers. 2, 3). He is not the Angel
of God's presence, but of His absence. When
the intercession of Moses won from God a re-
versal of the sentence. He then said " My Pres-
ence (My Face) shall go with thee, and I will
give thee rest," * but Moses answers, not yet re-
assured, " If Thy Presence (Thy Face) go not up
* Even if the rendering were accepted. " Must My Pres-
ence (My Face) go with thee?" (Can I not be trusted
with us, carry us not up hence. For wherein
shall it be known that I have found grace in Thy
sight? ... Is it not that Thou goest with us?
And the Lord said, I will do this thing also that
thou hast spoken " (14-17).
Moreover, Isaiah, speaking of this time, says
that " In all their affliction He was afflicted, and
the Angel of His Presence (His Face) saved
them " (Isa. Ixiii. 9).
Thus we find that some angel is to be sent be-
cause God will not go up: that thereupon the
nation mourns, although in this twenty-third
chapter they had received as a gladdening
promise, the assurance of an Angel escort in
Whom is the name of God; that in response to
prayer God promises that His Face shall ac-
company them, so that it may be known that He
Himself goes with them; and finally that His
Face in Exodus is the Angel of His Face in
Isaiah. The prophet at least had no doubt
whether the gracious promise in the twenty-third
chapter answered, in the thirty-third chapter, to
the third verse or the fourteenth — to the menace,
or to the restored favour.
This difficulty being now converted into an
evidence, we turn back to examine other
passages.
When the Angel of the Lord spoke to Hagar,
" she called the name of Jehovah that spake unto
her El Roi " (Gen. xvi. 11, 13). When God
tempted Abraham, " the Angel of Jehovah called
unto him out of heaven, and said, ... I know
that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not with-
held thy son . . . from Me" (Gen. xxii. il, 12V
When a man wrestled with Jacob, he thereupon
claimed to have seen God face to face, and called
the place Peniel, the Face (Presence) of God
(Gen. xxxii. 4, 30). But Hosea tells us that
" He had power with God: yea, he had power
over the Angel, . . . and there He spake with
us, even Jehovah, the God of hosts " (Hos. xii.
3, 5). Even earlier, in his exile, the Angel of the
Lord had appeared unto him and said, " I am
the God of Bethel . . . where thou vowedst a
vow unto Me." But the vow was distinctly
made to God Himself:- " I will surely give the
tenth to Thee" (xxxi. 11, 13; xxviii. 20, 22). Is
it any wonder that when this patriarch blessed
Joseph, he said. " The God before whom my
fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God
which hath fed me all my life long unto this
day, the Angel which hath redeemed me from all
evil, (may He) bless the lads" (xlviii. 15, 16)?
In Exodus iii. 2 the Angel of the Lord ap-
peared out of the bush. But presently He
changes into Jehovah Himself, and announces
Himself to be Jehovah the God of their fathers
(iii. 2, 4, 15). In Exodus xiii. 21 Jehovah went
before Israel, but the next chapter tells how
" the Angel of the Lord which went before Israel
removed and went behind" (xiv. 19); while
Numbers (xx. 16) says expressly that " He sent
an Angel and brought us out of Egypt."
By the comparison of these and many later
passages (which is nothing but the scientific
process of induction, leaning not on the weight
of any single verse, but on the drift and tendency
of all the phenomena) we learn that God was
already revealing Himself through a Medium, a
distinct personality whom He could send, yet
not so distinct but that His name was in Him.
without a direct Presence?) the argument would not be
affected, because Moses presses for the favour and ob-
tains it.
Exodus xxiv.]
THE COVENANT RATIFIED.
813
and He Himself was the Author of what He
did.
If Israel obeyed Him, He would bring them
into the promised land (ver. 23); and if there
they continued unseduced by false worships, He
would bless their provisions, their bodily frame,
their children; He would bring terror and a hor-
net against their foes; He would clear the land
before them as fast as their population could en-
joy it; He would extend their boundaries yet
farther, from the Red Sea, where Solomon held
Ezion Geber (i Kings ix. 26), to the Mediterra-
nean, and from the desert where they stood to
the Euphrates, where Solomon actually pos-
sessed Palmyra and Thiphsah (2 Chron. viii. 4,
I Kings iv. 24).
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE COVENANT RATIFIED. THE VISION
OF GOD.
Exodus xxiv.
The opening words of this chapter (" Come
up unto the Lord ") imply, without explicitly
asserting, that Moses was first sent down to con-
vey to Israel the laws which had just been en-
acted.
This code they unanimously accepted, and he
wrote it down. It is a memorable statement,
recording the origin of the first portion of Holy
Scripture that ever existed as such, whatever
earlier writings may now or afterwards have
been incorporated in the Pentateuch. He then
built an altar for God, and twelve pillars for the
tribes, and sacrificed burnt-offerings and peace-
offerings unto the Lord. Sin-offerings, it will be
observed, were not yet instituted; and neither
was the priesthood, so that young men slew the
offerings. Half of the blood was poured upon
the altar, because God had perfected His share
in the covenant. The remainder was not used
until the law had been read aloud, and the people
had answered with one voice, " All that the
Lord hath commanded will we do, and will be
obedient." Thereupon they too were sprinkled
with the blood, and the solemn words were
spoken, " Behold the blood of the covenant
which the Lord hath made with you concerning
all these words." The people were now finally
bound: no later covenant of the same kind will
be found in the Old Testament.
And now the principle began to work which
was afterwards embodied in the priesthood.
That principle, stated broadly, was exclusion
from the presence of God, relieved and made
hopeful by the admission of representatives.
The people were still forbidden to approach,
under pain of death. But Moses and Aaron were
no longer the only ones to cross the appointed
boundaries. With them came the two sons of
Aaron, (afterwards, despite their privilege, to
meet a dreadful doom,) and also seventy repre-
sentatives of all the newly covenanted people.
Joshua, too, as the servant of Moses, was free to
come, although unspecified in the summons
(vers. I, 13).
" They saw the God of Israel," arid under His
feet the blueness of the sky like intense sapphire.
And they were secure: they beheld God, and ate
and drank.
But in privilege itself there are degrees: Moses
was called up still higher, and left Aaron and
Hur to govern the people while he communed
with his God. For six days the nation saw the
flanks of the mountain swathed in cloud, and its
summit crowned with the glory of Jehovah like
devouring fire. Then Moses entered the cloud,
and during forty days they knew not what had
become of him. Was it time lost? Say rather
that all time is wasted except what is spent in
communion, direct or indirect, with the Eternal.
The narrative is at once simple and sublime.
We are sometimes told that other religions be-
sides our own rely for sanction upon their super-
natural origin. " Zarathustra, Sakya-Mooni and
Mahomed pass among their followers for envoys
of the Godhead; and in the estimation of the
Brahmin the Vedas and the laws of Manou are
holy, divine books " (Kuenen, Religion of Israel,
i. 6). This is true. But there is a wide differ-
ence between nations which assert that God pri-
vately appeared to their teachers, and a nation
which asserts that God appeared to the public.
It is not upon the word of Moses that Israel is
said to have believed; and even those who reject
the narrative are not entitled to confound it with
narratives utterly dissimilar. There is not to be
found anywhere a parallel for this majestic story.
But what are we to think of the assertion that
God was seen to stand upon a burning moun-
tain?
He it is Whom no man hath seen or'can see,
and in His presence the seraphim veil their faces.
It will not suffice to answer that Moses " en-
dured as seeing Him that is invisible " (Heb. xi.
27), for the paraphrase is many centuries later
and hostile critics will rule it out of court as an
after-thought. At least, however, it proves that
the problem was faced long ago, and tells us
what solution satisfied the early Church.
With this clue before us, we ask what notion
did the narrative really convey to its ancient
readers? If our defence is to be thoroughly
satisfactory, it must show an escape from heret-
ical and carnal notions of deity, not only for
ourselves, but also for careful readers from the
very first.
Now it is certain that no such reader could for
one moment think o^ a manifestation thorough,
exhaustive, such as the eye receives of colour
and of form. Because the effect produced is not
satisfaction, but desire. Each new vision
deepens the sense of the unseen. Thus we read
first that Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu
and the seventy elders, saw God, from which
revelation the people felt and knew themselves
to be excluded. And yet the multitude also had
a vision according to its power to see; and in-
deed it was more satisfying to them than was
the most profound insight enjoyed by Moses.
To see God is to sail to the horizon: when you
arrive, the horizon is as far in front as ever; but
you have gained a new consciousness of infini-
tude. " The appearance of the glory of the
Lord was seen like devouring fire in the eyes of
the children of Israel " (ver. 17). But Moses
was aware of a glory far greater and more
spiritual than any material splendour. When
theophanies had done their utmost, his longing
was still unslaked, and he cried out, " Show me,
I pray Thee, Thy glory " (xxxiii. 18). To his
consciousness that glory was still veiled, which
the multitude sufficiently beheld in the flaming
mountain. And the answer which he received
ought to put the question at rest for ever, since,
214
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
along with the promise " All My goodness shall
pass before thee," came the assertion " Thou
shalt not see My face, for no man shall see Me
and live."
So, then, it is not our modern theology, but
this noble book of Exodus itself, which tells us
that Moses did not and could not adequately see
God, however great and sacred the vision which
he beheld. From this book we learn that, side
by side with the most intimate communion and
the clearest possible unveiling of God, grew up
the profound consciousness that only some attri-
butes and not the essence of deity had been
displayed.
It is very instructive also to observe the steps
by which Moses is led upward. From the burn-
ing bush to the fiery cloud, and thence to the
blazing mountain, there was an ever-deepening
lesson of majesty and awe. But in answer to
the prayer that he might really see the very glory
of his Lord, his mind is led away upon entirely
another pathway: it is "All My goodness"
which is now to " pass before " him, and the
proclamation is of " a God full of compassion
and gracious," yet retaining His moral firmness,
so that He " will by no means clear the guilty."
What can cloud and fire avail, toward the
manifesting of a God Whose essence is His
love? It is from the Old Testament narrative
that the New Testament inferred that Moses en-
dured as seeing indeed, yet as seeing Him Who
is inevitably and for ever invisible to eyes of
flesh: he learned most, not when he beheld some
form of awe, standing on a paved work of sap-
phire stone and as it were the very heaven for
clearness, but when hidden in a cleft of the rock
and covered by the hand of God while He passed
by.
On one hand the people saw the glory of God:
on the other hand it was the best lesson taught
by a far closer access, still to pray and yearn to
see that glory. The seventy beheld the God of
Israel: for their leader was reserved the more
exalting knowledge, that beyond all vision is
the mystic overshadowing of the Divine, and a
voice which says " No man shall see Me and
live." The difiference in heart is well typified in
this difYerence in their conduct, that they saw
God and ate and drank, but he, for forty days,
ate not. Satisfaction and assurance are a poor
ideal compared with rapt aspiration and desire.
Thus we see that no conflict exists between
this declaration and our belief in the spirituality
of God.
We have still to ask what is the real force of
the assertion that God was in some lesser sense
seen of Israel, and again, more especially, of its
leaders.
What do we mean even by saying that we see
each other? — that, observing keenly, we see upon
one face cunning, upon another sorrow, upon a
third the peace of God? Are not these emo-
tions immaterial and invisible as the essence of
God Himself? Nay, so invisible is the reality
within each bosom, that some day all that eye
hath seen shall fall away from us, and yet the
true man shall remain intact.
Man has never seen more than a hint, an out-
come, a partial self-revelation or self-betrayal of
his fellowman.
"Yes, in the sea of life in-isled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
God bade betwixt ' our ' shores to be
The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea."
And yet, incredible as the paradox would seem,
if it were not too common to be strange, the play
of muscles and rush of blood, visible through
the skin, do reveal the most spiritual and imma-
terial changes. Even so the heavens declare
that very glory of God which baffled the un-
dimmed eyes of Moses. So it was, also, that
when rended rocks and burning skies revealed
a more imminent action of Him Who moves
through all nature always, when convulsions
hitherto undreamed of by those dwellers in
Egyptian plains overwhelmed them with a new
sense of their own smallness and a supreme
Presence, God was manifested there.
Not unlike this is the explanation of St. Au-
gustine, " We need not be surprised that God,
invisible as He is, appeared visibly to the pa-
triarchs. For, as the sound which communicates
the thought conceived in the silence of the mind
is not the thought itself, so the form by which
God, invisible in His own nature, became visible,
was not God Himself. Nevertheless it was He
Himself Who was seen under that form, as the
thought itself is heard in the sound of the voice:
and the patriarchs recognised that, although the
bodily form was not God, they saw the invisible
God. For, though Moses was conversing with
God, yet he said. " If I have found grace in Thy
sight, show me Thyself" {De Civ. Dei, x. 13).
And again: " He knew that he saw corporeally,
but he sought the true vision of God spiritually "'
{De Trin., ii. 27).
It has still to be added that His manifestation
is exactly suited to the stage now reached in the
education of Israel. Their fathers had already
"seen God" in the likeness of man: Abraham
had entertained Him; Jacob had wrestled with
Him. And so Joshua before Ai, and Manoah
by the rock at Zorah, and Ezekiel by the river
Chebar, should see the likeness of a man. We
who believe the doctrine of a real Incarnation
can well perceive that in these passing and mys-
terious glimpses God was not only revealing
Himself in the way which would best prepare
humanity for His future coming in actual man-
hood, but also in the way by which, meanwhile,
the truest and deepest light could be thrown
upon His nature, a nature which could hereafter
perfectly manifest itself in flesh. Why. then, do
not the records of the Exodus hint at a human
likeness? Why did they "behold no simili-
tude" ? Clearly because the masses of Israel were
utterly unprepared to receive rightly such a
vision. To them the likeness of man would have
meant no more than the likeness of a flying eagle
or a calf. Idolatry would have followed, but no
sense of sympathy, no consciousness of the
grandeur and responsibility of being made in
the likeness of God. Anthropomorphism is a
heresy, although the Incarnation is the crowning
doctrine of the faith.
But it is hard to see why the human likeness
of God should exist in Genesis and Joshua, but
not in the history of the Exodys, if that story be
a post-Exilian forgery.
This is not all. The revelations of God in
the desert were connected with threats and pro-
hibitions: tlie law was given by Moses; grace
and truth came by Jesus Christ. And with the
different tone of the message a different aspect
of the speaker was to be expected. From the
blazing crags of Sinai, fenced around, the voice
Exodus XXV. 1-40.]
THE SHRINE AND ITS FURNITURE.
2'5
of a trumpet waxing louder and louder, said
"Thou shalt not!" On the green hill by the
Galilean lake Jesus sat down, and His disciples
came unto Him, and He opened His mouth and
said " Blessed."
Now, the conscience of every sinner knows
that the God of the commandments is dreadful.
It is of Him, not of hell, that Isaiah said " The
sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling hath sur-
prised the godless ones. Who among us shall
dwell with the devouring fire? who among us
shall dwell with everlasting burnings? " (Isa.
xxxiii. 14).
For him who rejects the light yoke of the Lord
of Love, the fires of Sinai are still the truest
revelation of deity; and we must not deny Sinai
because we know Bethlehem. We must choose
between the two.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE SHRINE AND ITS FURNITURE.
Exodus xxv. 1-40.
The first direction given to Moses on the
mountain is to prepare for the making of a
tabernacle wherein God may dwell with man.
For this he must invite offerings of various
kinds, metals and gems, skins and fabrics, oil
and spices; and the humblest man whose heart
is willing may contribute toward an abode for
Him Whom the heaven of heavens cannot
contain.
Strange indeed is the contrast between the
mountain burning up to heaven, and the lowly
structure of the wood of the desert, which was
now to be erected by subscription.
And yet the change marks not a lower concep-
tion of deity, but an advance, just as the quiet
and serene communion of a saint with God is
loftier than the most agitating experience of the
convert.
This is the first announcement of a fixed abid-
ing presence of God in the midst of men, and it
is therefore the precursor of much. St. John
certainly alluded to this earliest dwelling of God
on earth when he wrote, " The Word was made
flesh, and tabernacled among us " (John i. 14).
A little later it was said, " Ye also are builded
together for an habitation of God" (Eph. ii.
22) ; and again the very words used at first of the
tabernacle are applied to faithful souls: " We are
a temple of the living God. as God said, I will
dwell in them and walk in them " (2 Cor. vi. 16;
Lev. xxvi. 11). For God dwelt on earth in the
Messiah hidden by the veil, that is to say His
flesh (Heb. x. 20), and also in the hearts of all
the faithful. And a yet fuller communion is to
come, of which the tabernacle in the wilderness
was a type, even the descent of the Holy City,
when the triie tabernacle of God shall be with
men, and He shall tabernacle with them (Rev.
xxi. 3).
It may seem strange that after the command-
Tient " Let them make Me a sanctuary " the
whole chapter is devoted to instructions, not for
the tabernacle but for its furniture. But indeed
the four articles enumerated in this chapter pre-
sent a wonderfully graphic picture af the nature
and terms of the intercourse of God with man.
On one side is His revelation of righteousness,
but righteousness propitiated and become gra-
cious, and this is symbolised by the ark of the
testimony and the mercy-seat. On the other
side the consecration both of secular and sacred
life is typified by the table with bread and wine,
and by the golden candlestick. Except thus, no
tabernacle could have been the dwelling of the
Lord, nor ever shall be.
And this is the true reason why the altar of in-
cense is not even mentioned until a later chapter
(xxx.). We do homage to God because He is
present: it is rather the consequence than the
condition of His abode with us.
The first step towards the preparation of a
shrine for God on earth is the enshrining of His
will: Moses should therefore make first of all an
ark, wherein to treasure up " the testimony
which I shall give thee," the two tables of the
law (xxv. 16). In it were also the pot of manna
and Aaron's rod which budded (Heb. ix.. 4),
and beside it was laid the whole book of the
law, for a testimony, alas! against them (Deut.
x.xxi. 26).
Thus the ark was to treasure up the expression
of the will of God, and the relics which told by
what mercies and deliverances He claimed obe-
dience. It was a precious thing, but not the
most precious, as we shall presently learn; and
therefore it was not made of pure gold, but over-
laid with it. That it might be reverently carried,
four rings were cast and fastened to it at the
lower corners, and in these four staves, also
overlaid with gold, were permanently inserted.
The next article mentioned is the most impor-
tant of all.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that the
mercy-seat was a mere lid, an ordinary portion
of the ark itself. It was made of a different and
more costly material, of pure gold, with which
the ark was only overlaid. There is separate
mention that Bezaleel " made the ark, . . . and
he made the mercy-seat" (xxxvii. i, 6), and
the special presence of God in the Most
Holy Place is connected much more intimately
with the mercy-seat than with the remainder
of the structure. Thus He promises to " ap-
pear in the cloud above the mercy-seat " (Lev.
xvi. 2). And when it is written that " Moses
heard the voice speaking unto him from
above the mercy-seat which is upon the ark of
the testimony" (Num. vii. 89), it would have
been more natural to say directly " from above
the ark " unless some stress were to be laid upon
the interposing slab of gold. In reality no dis-
tinction could be sharper than between the ark
and its cover, from whence to hear the voice of
God. And so thoroughly did all the symbolism
of the Most Holy Place gather around this su-
preme object, that in one place it is actually
called "the house of the mercy-seat" (i Chron.
xxviii. 11).
Let us, then, put ourselves into the place of an
ancient worshipper. Excluded though he is
from the Holy Place, and conscious that even
the priests are shut out from the inner shrine,
yet the high priest who enters is his brother: he
goes on his behalf: the barrier is a curtain, not
a wall.
But while the Israelite mused upon what was
beyond, the ark, as we have seen, suggests the
depth of his obligation; for there is the rod of
his deliverance and the bread from heaven which
fed him; and there also are the commandments
which he ought to have kept. And his con-
science tells him of ingratitude and a broken
2l6
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
covenant; by the law is the knowledge of
sin.
It is therefore a sinister and menacing thought
that immediately above this ark of the violated
covenant burns the visible manifestation of God,
his injured Benefactor.
And hence arises the golden value of that
which interposes, beneath which the accusing
law is buried, by means of which God " hides
His face from our sins."
The worshipper knows this cover to be pro-
vided by a separate ordinance of God, after the
ark and its contents had been arranged for, and
finds in it a vivid concrete representation of the
idea " Thou hast cast all my sins behind Thy
back" (Isa. xxxviii. 17). That this was its
true intention becomes more evident when we
ascertain exactly the meaning of the term which
we have, not too precisely, rendered " mercy-
seat."
The word " seat" has no part in the original;
and we are not to think of God as reposing on
it, but as revealing Himself above. The er-
roneous notion has probably transferred itself
to the type from the heavenly antitype, which is
" the throne of grace," but it has no counte-
nance either in the Greek or the Hebrew name
of the Mosaic institution. Nor is the notion ex-
pressed that of gratuitous and unbought
" mercy." When Jehovah showeth mercy unto
thousands, the word is different. It is true that
the root means " to cover," and is once em-
ployed in Scripture in that sense (Gen. vi. 14);
but its ethical use is generally connected with
sacrifice; and when we read of a " sin-ofifering
for atonement," of the half-shekel being an
" atonement-money," and of " the day of atone-
ment," the word is a simple and very similar de-
velopment from the same root with this which
we render mercy-seat (Exod. xxx. 10, 16; Lev.
xxiii. 27, etc.).
The Greek word is found twice in the New
Testament: once when the cherubim of glory
overshadow the mercy-seat, and again when God
hath set forth Christ to be a propitiation (Heb. ix.
5; Rom. iii. 25). The mercy-seat is therefore to
be thought of in connection with sin, but sin
expiated and thus covered and put away.
We know mysteries which the Israelite could
not guess of the means by which this was
brought to pass. But as he watched the high
priest disappearing into that awful solitude, with
God, as he listened to the chime of bells, swung
by his movements, and announcing that still he
lived, two conditions stood out broadly before
his mind. One was the bringing in of incense:
" Thou shalt bring a censer full of burning coals
of fire from before the altar, that the cloud of the
incense may cover the mercy-seat " (Lev. xvi.
13). Now, the connection between prayer and
incense was quite familiar to the Jew; and he
could not but understand that the blessing of
atonement was to be sought and won by intense
and burning supplication. And the other was
that invariable demand, the oflfering of a victim's
blood. All the sacrifices of Judaism culminated
in the great act when the high priest, standing
in the most holy and the most occult spot in all
the world, sprinkled " blood upon the mercy-
seat eastwards, and before the mercy-seat
sprinkled of the blood with his finger seven
times " (Lev. xvi. 14).
Thus the crowning height of the Jewish ritual
was attained when the blood of the great
national sacrifice was offered not only before
God, but, with special reference to the covering
up of the broken and accusing law, before the
mercy-seat.
No wonder that on either side of it, and
moulded of the same mass of metal, were the
cherubim in an attitude of adoration, their out-
spread wings covering it, their faces bent, not
only as bowing in reverence before the Divine
presence, but, as we expressly read, " toward
the mercy-seat shall the faces of the cherubim
be." For the meaning of this great symbol was
among the things which " the angels desire to
look into."
We now understand how much was gained
when God said " There will I meet thee, and I
will commune with thee from above the mercy-
seat " (ver. 22). It was an assurance, not only
of the love which desires obedience, but of the
mercy which passes over failure.*
Thus far, there has been symbolised the mind
of God, His righteousness and His grace.
The next articles have to do with man, his
homage to God and his witness for Him.
There is first the table of the shewbread (vers.
23-30), overlaid with pure gold, surrounded, like
the ark, with " a crown " or moulding of gold,
for ornament and the greater security of the
loaves, and strengthened by a border of pure
gold carried around the base, which was also
ornamented with a crown, or moulding. Close
to this border were rings for staves, like those
by which the ark was borne. The table was fur-
nished with dishes upon which, every Sabbath
day, new shewbread might be conveyed into the
tabernacle, and the old might be removed for
the priests to eat. There were spoons also, by
which to place frankincense upon each pile of
bread; and "flagons and bowls to pour out
withal." What was thus to be poured we ao
not read, but there is no doubt that it was wine»
second only to bread as a requisite of Jewish
life, and forming, like the frankincense, a link
between this weekly presentation and the meal-
ofiferings. But all these were subordinate to
the twelve loaves, one for each tribe, which were
laid in two piles upon the table. It is clear that
their presentation was the essence of the rite,
and not their consumption by the priests, which
was possibly little more than a safeguard against
irreverent treatment. For the word shewbread
is literally bread of the face or presence, which
word is used of the presence of God, in the fa-
mous prayer " If Thy presence go not with me,
carry us not up hence " (xxxiii. 15). And of
whom, other than God, can it here be reasonably
understood? Now Jacob, long before, had
vowed " Of all that Thou givest me. I will surely
give the tenth to Thee " (Gen. xxviii. 22). And
it was an edifying ordinance that a regular offer-
ing should be made to God of the staple neces-
saries of existence, as a confession that all came
from Him, and an appeal, clearly expressed by
covering it with frankincense, which typified
prayer (Lev. xxiv. 7) that He would continue
to supply their need.
Nor is it overstrained to add, that when this
*This investigation offers a fine example of the folly of
that kind of interpretation which looks about for some
sort of external and arbitrary resemblance, and fastens
upon that as the true meaning. Nothing is more common
among these expounders than to declare that the wood
and gold of the ark are types of the human and Divine
natures of our Lord. If either ark or mercy-seat should
be compared to Him, it is obviously the latter, which
speaks of mercy. But this was of pure gold.
/
Exodus XXV. 9, 40.]
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT.
217
bread was given to their priestly representatives
to eat, with all reverence and in a holy place,
God responded, and gave back to His people
that which represented the necessary mainte-
nance of the tribes. Thus it was, " on the behalf
of the children of Israel, an everlasting cove-
nant " (Lev. xxiv. 8).
The form has perished. But as long as we
confess in the Lord's Prayer that the wealthiest
does not possess one day's bread ungiven — as
long, also, as Christian families connect every
meal with a due acknowledgment of dependence
and of gratitude — so long will the Church of
Christ continue to make the same confession and
appeal which were offered in the shewbread upon
the table.
The next article of furniture was the golden
candlestick (vers. 31-40). And this presents the
curious phenomenon that it is extremely clear in
its typical import, and in its material outline;
but the details of the description are most ob-
scure, and impossible to be gathered from the
Authorised Version. Strictly speaking, it was not
a lamp, but only a gorgeous lampstand, with one
perpendicular shaft, and six branches, three
springing, one above another, from each side of
the shaft, ^nd all curving up to the same height.
Upon these were laid the seven lamps, which
were altogether separate in their construction
(ver. 37). It was of pure gold, the base and the
main shaft being of one piece of beaten metal.
Each of the six branches was ornamented with
three cups, made like almond blossoms;, above
these a " knop," variously compared by Jewish
writers to an apple and a pomegranate, and still
higher, a flower or bud. It is believed that there
was a fruit and flower above each of the cups,
making nine ornaments on each branch. The
" candlestick " in ver. 34 can only mean the
central shaft, and upon this there were " four
cups with their knops and flowers " instead of
three. With the lamp were tongs, and snufif-
dishes in which to remove the charred wick from
the temple.
As we are told that when the Lord called the
child Samuel, " the lamp of God was not yet
gone out " (i Sam. iii. 3), it follows that the
lights were kept burning only during the night.
We have now to ascertain the spiritual mean-
ing of this stately symbol. There are two other
passages in Scripture which take up the figure
and carry it forward. In Zechariah (iv. 2-12)
we are taught that the separation of the lamps is
a mere incident; they are to be conceived of as
organically one, and moreover as fed by secret
ducts with oil from no limited supply, but from
living olive trees, vital, rooted in the system of
the universe. Whatever obscurity may veil
those " two sons of oil " (and this is not the
place to discuss the subject), we are distinctly
told that the main lesson is that of lustre derived
from supernatural, invisible sources. Zerub-
babel is confronted by a great mountain of hin-
drance, but it shall become a plain before him,
because the lesson of the vision of the candle-
stick is this — " Not by might, nor by power, but
by My Spirit, saith the Lord." A lamp gives
light not because the gold shines, but because
the oil burns; and yet the oil is the one thing
which the eye sees not. And so the Church is a
witness for her Lord, a light shining in a dark
place, not because of its learning or culture, its
noble ritual, its state'y buiHings or its amole
revenues. All these things her children, having
the power, ought to dedicate. The ancient sym-
bol put art and preciousness in an honourable
place, worthily upholding the lamp itself: and
in the New Testament the seven lamps of the
Apocalypse were still of gold. But the true
function of a lamp is to be luminous, and for this
the Church depends wholly upon its supply of
grace from God the Holy Ghost. It is " not by
might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the
Lord."
Again, in the Revelation, we find the New
Testament Churches described as lamps, among
which their Lord habitually walks. And no
sooner have the seven churches on earth been
warned and cheered, than we are shown before
the throne of God seven torches (burning by
their own incandescence — vide Trench, A^. T.
Synonyms, p. 162), which are the seven spirits of
God, answering to His seven light-bearers upon
the earth (Rev. iv. 5).
Lastly, the perfect and mystic number, seven,
declares that the light of the Church, shining in
a dark place, ought to be full and clear, no im-
perfect presentation of the truth: "they shall
light the lamps, to give light over against it."
Because this lamp shines with the light of the
Church, exhibiting the graces of her Lord, there-
fore a special command is addressed to the
people, besides the call for contributions to the
work in general, that they shall bring pure olive
oil, not obtained by heat and pressure, but
simply beaten, and therefore of the best quality,
to feed its flame.
It is to burn, as the Church ought to shine in
all darkness of the conscience or the heart of
man, from evening to morning for ever. And
the care of the ministers of God is to be the
continual tending of this blessed and sacred
flame.
THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT.
Exodus xxv. 9, 40.
Twice over (vers. 9, 40, and cf. xxvi. 30, xxvii.
8, etc.) Moses was reminded to be careful to
make all things after the pattern shown him in
the mount. And these words have sometimes
been so strained as to convey the meaning that
there really exists in heaven a tabernacle and its
furniture, the grand original from which the
Mosaic copy was derived.
That is plainly not what the Epistle to the
Hebrews understands (Heb. viii. 5). For it
urges this admonition as a proof that the old
dispensation was a 'shadow of ours, in which
Christ enters into heaven itself, and our con-
sciences are cleansed from dead works to serve
the living God. The citation is bound indis-
solubly with all the demonstration which fol-
lows it.
We are not, then, to think of a heavenly taber-
nacle, exhibited to the material senses of Moses,
with which all the details of his own work must
be identical.
Rather we are to conceive of an inspiration,
an ideal, a vision of spiritual truths, to which all
this work in gold and acacia-wood should cor-
respond. It was thus that Socrates told Glau-
con, incredulous of his republic, that in heaven
there is laid up a pattern, for him that wishes to
behold it. Nothing short of this would satisfy
the inspired application of the words in the
2l8
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
Epistle to the Hebrews, where the readers, who
were Jewish converts, are asked to recognise in
this verse evidence that the light of the new dis-
pensation illuminated the institutions of the
old.
Without this pervading sentiment, the most
elaborate specifications of weight and measure-
ment, of cup and pomegranate and flower, could
never have produced the required effect. An
ideal there was, a divinely designed suggestive-
ness, which must be always present to his super-
intending vigilance, as once it shone upon his
soul in sacred vision or trance; a suggestiveness
which might possibly be lost amid correct
elaborations, like the soul of a poem or a song,
evaporating through a rendering which is correct
enough, yet in which the spirit, even if that
alone, has been forgotten.
It is surely a striking thing to find this need
of a pervading sentiment impressed upon the
author of the first piece of religious art that ever
was recognised by heaven.
For it is the mysterious all-pervading charm of
such a dominant sentiment which marks the im-
passable difference between the lowliest work of
art, and the highest piece of art-manufacture
which is only a manufactured article.
And assuredly the recognition of this principle
among a people whose ancient history shows but
little interest in art, calls for some attention from
those who regard the tabernacle itself as a fic-
tion, and its details as elaborated in Babylonia,
in the priestly interest (Kuenen, Relig. of Israel,
ii. 148).
The problem of problems for all who deny the
divinity of the Old Testament is to explain the
curious position which its institutions are con-
sistent in accepting. They rest on the authority
of heaven, and yet they are not definitive, but
provisional. They are always looking forward
to another prophet like their founder, a new
covenant better than the present one, a high
priest after the order of a Canaanite enthroned
at the right hand of Jehovah, a consecration for
every pot in the city like that of the vessels in
the temple (Deut. xviii. 15; Jer. xxxi. 31; Ps. ex.
I, 4; Zech. xiv. 20). And here, " in the priestly
interest," is an avowal that the Divine habita-
tion which they boast of is but the likeness and
shadow of some Divine reality concealed. And
these strange expectations have proved to be
the most fruitful and energetic principles in their
religion.
This very presence of the ideal is what will for
ever make the highest natures quite certain that
the visible universe is no mere resultant of clash-
ing forces without a soul, b&t the genuine work
of a Creator. The imiverse is charged through-
out with the most powerful appeals to all that is
artistic and vital within us; so that a cataract 13
more than water falling noisily, and the silence
of midnight more than the absence of disturb-
ance, and a snow mountain more than a store-
house to feed the torrents in summer, being also
poems, appeals, revelations, whispers from a
spirit, heard in the depth of ours.
Does any one, listening to Beethoven's funeral
march, doubt the utterance of a soul, as distinct
frorti clanging metal and vibrating chords? And
the world has in it this mysterious witness to
something more than heat and cold, moisture
and drought: something which makes the dif-
ference between a well-filled granary and a field
of grain rippling golden in the breeze. This is
not a coercive argument for the hostile logic-
monger: it is an appeal for the open heart. " He
that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
To fill the tabernacle of Moses with spiritual
meaning, the ideal tabernacle was revealed to
him in the Mount of God.
Let us apply the same principle to human life.
There also harmony and unity, a pervading sense
of beauty and of soul, are not to be won by mere
obedience to a mandate here and a prohibition
there. Like Moses, it is not by labour accord-
ing to specification that we may erect a shrine
for deity. Those parables which tell of obedient
toil would be sadly defective, therefore, without
those which speak of love and joy, a supper, a
Shepherd bearing home His sheep, a prodigal
whose dull expectation of hired service is
changed for investiture with the best robe and
the gold ring, and welcome of dance and music.
How shall our lives be made thus harmonious,
a spiritual poem and not a task, a chord vibrat-
ing under the musician's hand? How shall
thought and word, desire and deed, become like
the blended voices of river and wind and wood,
a witness for the divine? Not by mere elabora-
tion of detail (though correctness is a condition
of all true art), but by a vision before us of the
divine life, the Ideal, the pattern shown to all,
and equally to be imitated (strange though it
may seem) by peasant and prince, by woman and
sage and child.
CHAPTER XXVL
THE TABERNACLE.
Exodus xxvi.
We now come to examine the structure of the
tabernacle for which the most essential furniture
has been prepared.
Some confusion of thought exists, even among
educated laymen, with regard to the arrange-
ments of the temple; and this has led to similar
confusion (to a less extent) concerning the cor-
responding parts of the tabernacle. " The
temple " in which the Child Jesus was found, and
into which Peter and John went up to pray,
ought not to be confounded with that inner
shrine, " the temple," in which it was the lot of
the priest Zacharias to burn incense, and into
which Judas, forgetful of all its sacredness in his
anguish, hurled his money to the priests (Luke
ii. 46; Acts iii. 3; Luke i. 9; Matt, xxvii. 5).
Now, the former of these corresponded to " the
court of the tabernacle," an enclosure open to
the skies, and containing two important articles,
the altar of burnt sacrifices and the laver. This
was accessible to the nation, so that the sinner
could lay his hand upon the head of his offering,
and the priests could purify themselves before
entering their own sacred place, the tabernacle
proper, the shrine. But when we come to the
structure itself, some attention is still necessary,,
in order to derive any clear notion from the de-
scription; nor can this easily be done by an
English reader without substituting the Revised
Version for the Authorised. He will then dis-
cover that we have a description, first of the
"curtains of the tabernacle" (vers. 1-6), and
then of other curtains which are not considered
to belong to the tabernacle proper, but to " the
tent over the tabernacle " (7-13), being no part
Exodus xxvi.J
THE TABERNACLE.
219
of the rich ornamental interior, but only a pro-
tection spread above it; and over this again were
two further screens from the weather (14), and
finally, inside all, are " the boards of the taber-
nacle " — of which boards the two actual apart-
ments were constructed (15-30) — and the veil
which divided the Holy from the Most Holy
Place (31-3)-
" The curtains of the tabernacle " were ten,
made of linen, of which every thread consisted
of fine strands twisted together, " and blue and
purple and scarlet," with cherubim not embroi-
dered but woven into the fabric (i).
These curtains were sewn together, five and
five, so as to make two great curtains, each
slightly larger than forty-two feet by thirty,
being twenty-eight cubits long by five times four
cubits broad (2, 3). Finally these two were
linked together, each having fifty loops for that
purpose at corresponding places at the edge,
which loops were bound together by fifty golden
clasps (4-6). Thus, when the nation was about
to march, they could easily be divided in the
middle and then folded in the seams.
This costly fabric was regarded as part of the
true tabernacle: why, then, do we find the outer
curtains mentioned before the rest of the taber-
nacle proper is described?
Certainly because these rich curtains lie im-
mediately underneath the coarser ones, and are
to be considered along with " the tent " which
covered all (7). This consisted of curtains of
goats' hair, of the same size, and arranged in all
respects like the others, except that their clasps
were only bronze, and that the curtains were
eleven in number, instead of ten. so that half a
curtain was available to hang down over the
back, and half was to be doubled back upon itself
at the front of " the tabernacle," that is to say.
the richer curtains underneath. The object of
this is obvious: it was to bring the centre of the
goatskin curtains over the edge of the linen
ones, as tiles overlap each other, to shut out the
rain at the joints. But this implies, what has
been said already, that the curtains of the taber-
nacle should lie close to the curtains of the tent.
Over these again was an outer covering of
rams' skins dyed red, and a covering of sealskins
above all (14). This last, it is generally agreed,
ran only along fhe top, like a ridge tile, to pro-
tect the vulnerable part of the roof. And now it
has to be remembered that we are speaking of a
real tent with sloping sides, not a flat cover laid
upon the flat inner structure of boards, and cer-
tain to admit the rain. By calling attention to
this fact, Mr. Fergusson succeeded in solving all
the problems connected with the measurements
of the tabernacle, and bringing order into what
was little more than chaos before (Smith's Bible
Diet., " Temple ").
The inner tabernacle was of acacia wood,
which was the only timber of the sanctuary.
Each board stood ten cubits high, and was fitted
by tenons into two silver sockets, which probably
formed a continuous base. Each of these con-
tained a talent of silver, and was therefore more
than eighty pounds weight; and they were prob-
ably to some extent sunk into the ground for a
foundation (xxxviii. 27). There were twenty
boards on each side; and as they were a cubit
and a half broad, the length of the tabernacle was
about forty-five feet (16-18). At the west end
there were six boards (22). which, with the
breadth of the two posts or boards for the cor-
ners (23-4) just gives ten cubits, or fifteen feet,
for the width of it. Thus the length of the
tabernacle was three times its breadth; and we
know that in the Temple (where all the propor-
tions were the same, the figures being doubled
throughout) the subdividing veil was so hung
as to make the inner shrine a perfect square,
leaving the holy place twice as long as it was
broad.
The posts were held in their places by wooden
bars, which were overlaid with gold (as the
boards also were, ver. 29) and fitted into golden
rings. Four such bars, or bolts, ran along a
portion of each side, and there was a fifth great
bar which stretched along the whole forty-five
feet from end to end. Thus the edifice was
firmly held together; and the wealth of the ma-
terial makes it likely that they were fixed on the
inside, and formed a part of the ornament of the
edifice (26-9).
When the two curtains were fastened together
with clasps, they gave a length of sixty feet.
But we have seen that the length of the boards
when jointed together was only forty-five feet.
This gives a projection of seven feet and a half
(five cubits) for the front and rear of the tent
beyond the tabernacle of boards; and when the
great curtains were drawn tight, sloping from
the ridge-pole fourteen cubits on each side, it has
been shown (assuming a right-angle at the top)
that they reached within five cubits of the
ground, and extended five cubits beyond the
sides, the same distance as at the front and rear.
The next instructions concern the veil which
divided the two chambers of the sanctuary. This
was in all respects like " the curtain of the taber-
nacle," and similarly woven with cherubim. It
was hung upon four pillars; and the even num-
ber seems to prove that there was no higher one
in the centre, reaching to the roof — which seems
to imply that there was a triangular opening
above the veil, between the Holy and the Most
Holy Place (31, 32).
But here a difficult question arises. There is
no specific measurement of the point at which
this subdividing veil was to stretch across the
tent. The analogy of the Temple inclines us to
believe that the Most Holy Place was a perfect
cube, and the Holy Place twice as long as it was
broad and high. There is evident allusion to
this final shape of the Most Holy Place in the
description of the New Jerusalem, of which the
length and breadth and height were equal. And
yet there is strong reason to suspect that this
arrangement was not the primitive one. For
Moses was ordered to stretch the veil underneath
the golden clasps which bound together the two
great curtains of the tabernacle (ver. 33). But
these were certainly in the middle. How, then,
could the veil make an unequal division below?
Possibly fifteen feet square would have been too
mean a space for the dimensions of the Most
Holy Place, although the perfect cube became
desirable, when the size was doubled.
A screen of the same rich material, but appar-
ently not embroidered with cherubim, was to
stretch across the door of the tent; but this was
supported on five pillars instead of four, clearly
that the central one might support the ridge-
l3ar of the roof. And their sockets were of brass
(vers. 36. 37). .
The tabernacle, like the Temple, had its en-
trance on the east (ver. 22) ; and in the case of
the Temple this was the more remarkable, be-
220
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
cause the city lay at the other side, and the wor-
shippers had to pass round the shrine before
they reached the front of it. The object was ap-
parently to catch the warmth of the sun. For a
somewhat similar reason, every pagan temple in
the ancient world, with a few well-defined ex-
ceptions which are easily explained, also faced
the east; and the worshippers, with their backs
to the dawn, saw the first beams of the sun
kindling their idol's face. The orientation of
Christian churches is due to the custom which
made the neophyte, standing at first in his fa-
miliar position westward, renounce the devil and
all his works, and then, turning his back upon
his idols, recite the creed with his face eastward.
What ideas would be suggested by this edifice
to the worshipper will better be examined when
we have examined also the external court.
CHAPTER XXVH.
THE OUTER COURT.
Exodus xxvii.
Before describing the tabernacle, its furni-
ture was specified. And so, when giving instruc-
tions for the court of the tabernacle the altar has
to be described: "Thou shalt make the altar of
acacia wood." The definite article either im-
plies that an altar was taken for granted, a thing
of course; or else it points back to chap. xx. 24,
which said " An altar of earth shalt thou make."
Nor is the acacia wood of this altar at all in-
consistent with that precept, it being really not an
altar but an altar-case, and " hollow " (ver. 8) —
an arrangement for holding the earth together,
and preventing the feet of the priests from dese-
crating it. At each corner was a horn, of one
piece with the framework, typical of the power
which was there invoked, and practically useful,
both to bind the sacrifice with cords, and also for
the grasp of the fugitive, seeking sanctuary (Ps.
cxviii. 27; I Kings i. 50). This arrangement is
said to have been peculiar to Judaism. And as
the altar was outside the tabernacle, and both
symbolism and art prescribed simpler materials,
it was overlaid with brass (vers, i, 2). Of the
same material were the vessels necessary for
the treatment of the fire and blood (ver. 3). A
network of brass protected the lower part of
the altar; and at half the height a ledge pro-
jected, supported by this network, and probably
wide enough to allow the priests to stand upon
it when they ministered (vers. 4, 5). Hence we
read that Aaron " came down from oflfering "
(Lev. ix. 22). Lastly, there was the same ar-
rangement of rings and staves to carry it as for
the ark and the table (vers. 6, 7).
It will be noticed that the laver in this court,
like the altar of incense within, is reserved for
mention in a later chapter (xxx. 18) as being a
subordinate feature in the arrangements.
The enclosure was a quadrangle of one hun-
dred cubits by fifty; it was five cubits high, and
each cubit may be taken as a foot and a half.
The linen which enclosed it was upheld by pillars
with sockets of brass; and one of the few addi-
tional facts to be gleaned from the detailed state-
ment that all these directions were accurately
carried out is that the heads of all the pillars
were overlaid with silver (xxxviii. 17). The
pillars were connected by rods (fillets) of silver,
and a hanging of fine-twined linen was stretched
by means of silver hooks (9-13). The entrance
was twenty cubits wide, corresponding accu-
rately to the width, not of the tabernacle, but of
" the tent " as it has been described (reaching
out five cubits farther on each side than the
tabernacle), and it was closed by an embroidered
curtain (14-17). This fence was drawn firmly
into position and held there by brazen tent-pins;
and we here incidentally learn that so was the
tent itself (19).
[For verses 20, 21, see page 227.]
We are now in a position to ask what senti-
ment all these arrangements would inspire in the
mind of the simple and somewhat superstitious
worshippers.
Approaching it from outside, the linen en-
closure (being seven feet and a half high) would
conceal everything but the great roof of the
tent, one uniform red, except for the sealskin
covering along the summit. A gloomy and
menacing prospect, broken possibly by some
gleams, if the curtain of the gable were drawn
back, from the gold with which every portion
of the shrine within was plated.
So does the world outside look askance upon
the Church, discerning a mysterious suggestion
everywhere of sternness and awe, yet with flashes
of strange splendour and afifluence underneath
the gloom.
In this place God is known to be: it is a tent,
not really " of the congregation," but " of meet-
ing " between Jehovah and His people: "the
tent of meeting before the Lord, where I will
meet with you, . . . and there I will meet with
the children of Israel " (xxix. 42-3). And so
the Israelite, though troubled by sin and fear, is
attracted to the gate, and enters. Right in front
stands the altar: this obtrudes itself before all
else upon his attention: he must learn its lesson
first of all. Especially will he feel that this is so
if a sacrifice is now to be offered, since the offi-
cial must go farther into the court to wash at the
laver, and then return; so that a loss of gradu-
ated arrangement has been accepted in order to
force the altar to the front. And he will soon
learn that not only must every approach to the
sacred things within be heralded by sacrifice
upon this altar, but the blood of the victim must
be carried as a passport into the shrine. Surely
he remembers how the blood of the lamb saved
his own life when the firstborn of Egypt died:
he knows that it is written " The life (or soul)
of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it
to you upon the altar to make atonement for
your souls (or lives) : for it is the blood that
maketh atonement by reason of the life (or
soul) " (Lev. xvii. 11).
No Hebrew could watch his fellow-sinner lay
his hand on a victim's head, and confess his sin
before the blow fell on it, without feeling that sin
was being, in some mysterious sense, " borne "
for him. The intricacies of our modern theology
would not disturb him, but this is the sentiment
by which the institutions of the tabernacle assur-
edly ministered comfort and hope to him.
Strong would be his hope as he remembered that
the service and its solace were not of human de-
vising, that God had " given it to him upon the
altar to make atonement for his soul."
Taking courage, therefore, the worshipper
dares to lift up his eyes. And beyond the altar
Exodus xxviii.]
'♦THE HOLY GARMENTS.
221
he sees a vision of dazzling magnificence. The
inner roof, most unlike the sullen red of the ex-
terior, is blazing with various colours, and em-
broidered with emblems of the mysterious crea-
tures of the sky, winged, yet not utterly afar
from human in their suggestiveness. En-
compassed and looked down into by these is the
tabernacle, all of gold. If the curtain is raised
he sees a chamber which tells what the earth
should be — a place of consecrated energies and
resources, and of sacred illumination, the oil of
God burning in the sevenfold vessel of the
Church. Is this blessed place for him, and may
he enter? Ah, no! and surely his heart would
grow heavy with consciousness that reconcilia-
tion was not yet made perfect, when he learned
that he must never approach the place where
God had promised to meet with him.
Much less might he penetrate the awful cham-
ber within, the true home of deity. There, he
knows, is the record of the mind of God, the
concentrated expression of what is compara-
tively easy to obey in act, but difficult beyond
hope to love, to accept and to be conformed to.
That record is therefore at once the revelation of
God and the condemnation of His creature.
Yet over this, he knows well, there is poised no
dead image such as were then adored in Baby-
lonian and Egyptian fanes, but a spiritual Pres-
ence, the glory of the invisible God. Nor was
He to be thought of as in solitude, loveless, or
else needing human love: above Him were the
woven seraphim of the curtain, and on either
side a seraph of beaten gold — types, it may be,
of all the created life which He inhabits, or else
pictures of His sinless creatures of the upper
world. And yet this pure Being, by Whom the
companionship of sinful man is so little needed,
is there to meet with man; and is pleased not to
look upon His violated law, but to command
that a slab, inestimably precious, shall interpose
between it and its Avenger. By whom, then,
shall this most holy floor be trodden? By the
official representative of him who gazes, and
longs, and is excluded. He enters not without
blood, which he is careful to sprinkle upon all
the furniture, but chiefly and seven times upon
the mercy-seat.
Thus every worshipper carries away a pro-
found consciousness that he is utterly unworthy,
and yet that his unworthiness has been expiated;
that he is excluded, and yet that his priest, his
representative, has been admitted, and therefore
that he may hope. The Holy Ghost did not de-
clare by sign that no way into the Holiest
existed, but only that it was not yet made mani-
fest. Not yet.
This leads us to think of the priest.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
•• THE HOLY GARMENTS."
Exodus xxviii.
The tabernacle being complete, the priesthood
has to be provided for. Its dignity is intimated
by the command to Moses to bring his brother
Aaron and his sons near to himself (clearly in
lank, because the object is defined, " that he may
minister unto Me "), and also by the direction
to make " holy garments for glory and for
beauty." But just as the furniture is treated be-
15— Vol. I
fore the shrine, and again before the court-yard,
so the vestments are provided before the priest-
hood is itself discussed.
The holiness of the raiment implies that sepa-
ration to office can be expressed by official robes
in the Church as well as in the state; and their
glory and beauty show that God, Who has
clothed His creation with splendour and with
loveliness, does not dissever religious feeling
from artistic expression.
All that are wise-hearted in such work, being
inspired by God as really, though not as pro-
foundly, as if their task were to foretell the ad-
vent of Messiah, are to unite their labours upon
these garments.
The order in the twenty-eighth chapter is per-
haps that of their visible importance. But it will
be clearer to describe them in the order in which
they were put on.
Next the flesh all the priests were clad from
the loins to the thighs in close-fitting linen: the
indecency of many pagan rituals must be far
from them, and this was a perpetual ordinance,
" that they bear not iniquity and die " (xxviii.
42-3)-
Over this was a tight-fitting " coat " (a shirt
rather"* of fine linen, white, but woven in a
chequered pattern, without seam, like the robe
of Jesus, and bound together with a girdle (39-
43)- „ .
These garments were common to all the
priests; but their " head-tires " differed from the
impressive mitre of the high priest. The rest of
the vestments in this chapter belong to him
alone.
Over the " coat " he wore the flowing " robe
of the ephod," all blue, little seen from the waist
up. but uncovered thence to the feet, and sur-
rounded at the hem with golden pomegranates,
the emblem of fruitfulness, and with bells to
enable the worshippers outside to follow the
movements of their representative. He should
die if this expression of his vicarious function
were neglected (31-35).
Above this robe was the ephod itself — a kind
of gorgeous jacket, made in two pieces which
were joined at the shoulders, and bound together
at the waist by a cunningly woven band, which
was of the same piece. This ephod, like the cur-
tains of the tabernacle, was of blue and purple
and scarlet and fine-twined linen; but added to
these were threads of gold, and we read, as if
this were a novelty which needed to be ex-
plained, that they beat the gold into thin plates
and then cut it into threads (xxxix. 3, xxviii.
6-8).
Upon the shoulders were two stones, rightly
perhaps called onyx, and set in " ouches " — of
filagree work, as the word seems to say. Upon
them were engraven the names of the twelve
tribes, the burden of whose sins and sorrows he
should bear into the presence of his God, " for
a memorial " (9-12).
Upon the ephod was the breastplate, fastened
to it by rings and chains of twisted gold, made
to fold over into a square, a span in measure-
ment, and blazing with twelve gems, upon which
were engraved, as upon the onyxes on the shoul-
ders, the names of the twelve tribes. All at-
tempts to derive edification from the nature of
these jewels must be governed by the common-
place reflection that we canncot identify them;
and many of the present names are incorrect. It
is almost certain that neither topaz, sapphire, nor
222
1 HE HOOK OF EXODUS.
diamond could have been engraved, as these
stones were, with the name of one of the twelve
tribes (13-30).
" In the breastplate " (that is, evidently, be-
tween the folds as it was doubled), were placed
those mysterious means of ascertaining the will
of God, the Urim and the Thummim, the Lights
and the Perfections; but of their nature, or of
the manner in which they became significant,
nothing can be said that is not pure conjecture
(30)-
Lastly, there was a mitre of white linen, and
upon it was laced with blue cords a gold plate
bearing the inscription " Holy to Jehovah "
(36, 37)-
No mention is made of shoes or sandals; and
both from the commandment to Moses at the
burning bush, and from history, it is certain that
the priests officiated with their feet bare.
The picture thus completed has the clearest
ethical significance. There is modesty, rever-
ence, purity, innocence typified by whiteness, the
grandeur of the office of intercession displayed
in the rich colours and precious jewels by which
that whiteness was relieved, sympathy expressed
by the names of the people in the breastplate
that heaved with every throb of his heart, re-
sponsibility confessed by the same names upon
the shoulder, where the government was said
to press like a load (Isa. ix. 6); and over all. at
once the condition and the explanation of the
rest, upon the seat of intelligence itself, the
golden inscription on the forehead, " Holy to
Jehovah."
Such was the import of the raiment of the high
priest: let us see how it agrees with the nature
of his office.
THE PRIESTHOOD.
What, then, are the central ideas connected
with the institution of a priesthood?
Regarding it in the broadest way, and as a
purely human institution, we may trace it back
to the eternal conflict in the breast of m.an be-
tween two mighty tendencies — the thirst for God
and the dread of Him, a strong instinct of ap-
proach and a repelling sense of unworthiness.
In every age and climate, man prays. If any
curious inquirer into savage habits can point to
the doubtful exception of a tribe seemingly with-
out a ritual, he will not really show that religion
is one with superstition; for they who are said
to have escaped its grasp are never the most ad-
vanced and civilised among their fellows upon
that account, — they are the most savage and de-
based, they are to humanity what the only people
which has formally renounced God is fast be-
coming among the European races.
Certainly history cannot exhibit one com-
munity, progressive, energetic, and civilised,
which did not feel that more was needful and
might be had than its own resources could
supply, and stretch aloft to a Supreme Being the
hands which were so deft to handle the weapon
and the tool. Certainly all experience proves
that the foundations of national greatness are
laid in national piety, so that the practical result
of worship, and of the belief that God responds,
has not been to dull the energies of man, but to
inspire him with the self-respect befitting a con-
fidant of deity, apd to brace him for labours
worthy of one who draws, from the sense of Di-
vine favour, the hope of an infinite advance.
And yet, side by side with this spiritual gravi-
tation, there has always been recoil and dread,
such as was expressed when Moses hid his face
because he was afraid to look upon God.
Now, it is not this apprehension, taken alone,
which proves man to be a fallen creature: it is
the combination of the dread of God with the
desire of Him. Why should we shrink from our
supreme Good, except as a sick man turns away
from his natural food? He is in an unnatural
and morbid state of body, and we of soul.
Thus divided between fear and attraction, man
has fallen upon the device of commissioning
some one to represent him before God. The
priest on earth has come by the same road with
so many other mediators — angel and demigod,
saint and virgin.
At first it has been the secular chief of the
family, tribe, or nation, who has seemed least un-
worthy to negotiate as well with heaven as with
centres of interest upon earth. But by degrees-
the duty has everywhere been transferred into
professional hands, patriarch and king recoiling,
feeling the inconsistency of his earthly duties
with these sa<-red ones, finding his hands to be-
too soiled and his heart too heavily weighted
with sin for the tremendous Presence into which
the family or the tribe would press him. And
yet the union of the two functions might be the
ideal; and the sigh of all truly enlightened hearts
might be for a priest sitting upon his throne, a
priest after the order of Melchizedek. But thus
it came to pass that an official, a clique, perhaps
a family, was chosen from ?mong men in things
pertaining to God, and ihe institution of the
priesthood was perfected.
Now, this is the very process which is recog-
nised in Scripture; for these two conflicting
forces were altogether sound and right. Man
ought to desire God, for Whom he was created,
and Whose voice in the garden was once so wel-
come: but also he ought to shrink back from
Him, afraid now, because he is conscious of his
own nakedness, because he has eaten of the for-
bidden fruit.
Accordingly, as the nation is led out from
Egypt, we find that its intercourse with heaven
is at once real and indirect. The leader is vir-
tually the priest as well, at whose intercession
Amalek is vanquished and the sin of the golden
calf is pardoned, who entered the presence of
God and received the law upon their behalf,
when they feared to hear His voice lest they
should die, and by whose hand the blood of the-
covenant was sprinkled upon the people, when
they had sworn to obey all that the Lord had'
said (xvii. 11. xxxii. 30, xx. 19, xxiv. 8).
Soon, however, the express command of God
provided for an orthodox and edifying transfer
of the priestly function from Moses to his
brother Aaron. Some such division of duties
between the secular chief and the religious priest
would no doubt have come, in Israel as else-
where, as soon as Moses disappeared; but it
might have come after a very different fashion,
associated with heresy and schism. Especially
would it have been demanded why the family of
Moses, if the chieftainship must pass away from
it, could not retain the religious leadership. We
know how cogent such a plea would have ap-
peared; for, although the transfer was made pub-
licly and by his own act, yet no sooner did the
nation begin to split into tribal subdivisions,
amid the confused efforts of each to conquer its
Exodus xxix,]
THE CONSECRATION SERVICES.
22
own share of the inheritance, than we find the
graindson of Moses securely establishing himself
and his posterity in the apostate and semi-
idolatrous worship of Shechem (Judg. xviii. 30,
K. v.).
And why should not this illustrious family
nave been chosen?
Perhaps because it was so illustrious. A
priesthood of that great line might seem to have
earned Its office, and to claim special access to
God, like the heathen priests, by virtue of some
special desert. Therefore the honour was trans-
ferred to the far less eminent line of Aaron, and
that in the very hour when he was lending his
help to the first great apostasy, the type of the
many idolatries into which Israel was yet to fall.
So. too, the whole tribe of Levi was in some
sense consecrated, not for its merit, but because,
through the sin of its founder, it lacked a place
and share among its brethren, being divided in
Jacob and scattered in Israel .by reason of the
massacre of Shechem (Gen. xlix. 7).
Thus the nation, conscious of its failure to en-
joy intercourse with heaven, found an author-
ised expression for its various and conflicting
emotions. It was not worthy to commune with
God, and yet it could not rest without Him.
Therefore a spokesman, a representative, an am-
bassador, was given to it. But he was chosen
after such a fashion as to shut out any suspicion
that the merit of Levi had prevailed where that
of Israel at large had failed. It was not because
•Levi executed vengeance on the idolaters that
he was chosen, for the choice was already made,
and made in the person of Aaron, who was so
far from blameless in that offence.
And perhaps this is the distinguishing pe-
culiarity of the Jewish priest among others: that
he was chosen from among his brethren, and
simply as one of them; so that while his oflfice
was a proof of their exclusion, it was also a kind
of sacrament of their future admission, because
he was their brother and their envoy, and
entered not as outshining but as representing
them, their forerunner for them entering. The
almond rod of Aaron was dry and barren as the
rest, until the miraculous power of God invested
it with blossoms and fruit.
Throughout the ritual, the utmost care was
taken to inculcate this double lesson of the
ministry. Into the Holy Place, whence the
people were excluded, a whole family could
enter. But there was an inner shrine, whither
only the high priest might penetrate, thus re-
ducing the family to a level with the nation; " the
Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the
Holy Place hath not yet been made manifest,
while as the first tabernacle (the outer shrine—
ver. 6) was yet standing" (Heb. ix. 8).
Thus the people felt a deeper awe. a broader
separation. And yet, when the sole and only
representative who was left to them entered that
" shrine, remote, occult, untrod." they saw that
the way was not wholly barred against human
footsteps: the lesson suggested was far from
being that of absolute despair, — it was, as the
Epistle to the Hebrews said, " Not yet." The
prophet Zechariah foresaw a time when the bells
of the horses should bear the same consecrating
legend that shone upon the forehead of the priest:
Holy unto the Lord (Zech. xiv. 20).
It is important to observe that the only book
of the New Testament in which the priesthood is
discussed dwells quite as largely upon the differ-
ence as upon the likeness between the Aaronic
and the Messianic priest. The latter offered but
one Sacrifice for sins, the former offered for him-
self before doing so for the people (Heb. x. 12)
The latter was a royal Priest, and of the order of
a Canaanite (Heb. vii. 1-4), thus breaking down
all the old system at one long-predicted blow—
for if He were on earth He could not so much
as be a priest at all (Heb. viii. 4)— and with it all
the old racial monopolies, all class distinctions,
being Himself of a tribe as to which Moses
spake nothing concerning priests (Heb. vii. 14).
Every priest standeth, but this priest hath for
ever sat down, and even at the right hand of
God (Heb. x. 11, 12).
In one sense this priesthood belongs to Christ
alone. In another sense it belongs to all who
are made one with Him, and therefore a kingly
priesthood unto God. But nowhere in the New
Testament is the name by which He is desig-
nated bestowed upon any earthly minister by
virtue of his office. The presbyter is never called
sacerdos. And perhaps the heaviest blow ever
dealt to popular theology was the misapplying of
the New Testament epithet (elder, presbyter or
priest) to designate the sacerdotal functions of
the Old Testament, and those of Christ which
they foreshadowed. It is not the word " priest "
that is at fault, but some other word for the Old
Testament official which is lacking, and cannot
now be supplied.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE CONSECRATION SERVICES.
Exodus xxix.
The priest being now selected, and his raiment
so provided as that it shall speak of his office
and its glory, there remains his consecration.
In our day there is a disposition to make light
of the formal setting apart of men and things for
sacred uses. If God, we are asked, has called
one to special service, is not that enough? What
more can earth do to commission the chosen of
the sky? But the plain answer which we ought
to have the courage to return is that this is not
at all enough. For God Himself had already
called Paul and Barnabas when He said to such
folk as Simeon Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and
Manaen, " Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for
the work whereunto I have called them " (Acts
xiii. 1-4). And these obscure people not only
laid their hands upon the great apostle, but
actually sent him forth. Now, if he was not
exempted from the need of an orderly com-
mission by the marvellous circumstances of his
call, by his apostleship not of man, by the ex-
plicit announcement that he was a chosen vessel
to bear the sacred name before kings and
peoples, it is startling to be told of some shallow
modern evangelist, who works for no Church
and submits to no discipline, that he can dis-
pense with the sanction of human ordination be-
cause he is so clearly sent of heaven.
The example of the Old Testament will no
doubt be brushed aside as if the religion which
Jesus learned and honoured were a mere human
superstition. Or else it would be natural to ask,
Is it because the offices and functions of Judaism
were more formal, more perfunctory than ours,
324
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
that a greater spiritual grace went with their ap-
pointments than with the laying on of hands in
the Christian Church, a rite so clearly sanctioned
in the New Testament?
It is written of Joshua that Moses was to lay
his hands upon him, because already the Spirit
was in him; and of Timothy that he had un-
feigned faith, and that prophecies went before
concerning him (Num. xxvii. i8; i Tim. i. i8;
2 Tim. i. 5). But in neither dispensation did
special grace fail to accompany the official sepa-
ration to sacred office: Joshua was full of the
Spirit of Wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands
upon him; and Timothy was bidden to stir into
flame that gift of God which was in him through
the laying on of the Apostle's hands (Deut.
xxxiv. 9; 2 Tim. i. 6).
Accordingly there is great stress laid upon the
orderly institution of the priest. And yet, to
make it plain that his authority is only " for his
brethren," Moses, the chief of the nation, is to
officiate throughout the ceremony of consecra-
tion. He it is who shall ofTer the sacrifices upon
the altar, and sprinkle the blood, not upon the
first day only, but throughout the ceremonies of
the week.
In the first place certain victims must be held
in readiness — a bullock and two rams; and with
these must be brought in one basket unleavened
bread, and unleavened cakes made with oil, and
unleavened wafers on which oil is poured.
Then, at the door of the tent of the meeting of
man with God, a ceremonial washing must fol-
low, in a laver yet to be provided. Here the
assertion that purity is needed, and that it is
not inherent, is too plain to be dwelt upon.
But such details as the assuming of the exist-
ence of a laver, for which no directions have yet
been given (and presently also of the anointing
oil, the composition of which is still untold), de-
serve notice. They are much more in the man-
ner of one who is working out a plan, seen
already by his mental vision, but of which only
the salient and essential parts have been as yet
stated, than of any priest of the latter days, who
would first have completed his catalogue of the
furniture, and only then have described the cere-
monies in which he was accustomed to see all
this apparatus take its appointed place.
What we actually find is quite natural to a
creative imagination, striking out the broad de-
sign of the work and its uses first, and then fill-
ing in the outlines. It is not natural at a time
when freshness and inspiration have departed,
and squared timber, as we are told, has taken the
place of the living tree.
The priest, when cleansed, was next to be clad
in his robes of office, with the mitre on his head,
and upon the mitre the golden plate, with its
inscription, which is here called, as the culmi-
nating object in all his rich array, " the holy
crown " (ver. 6).
And then he was to be anointed. Now, the
use of oil, in the ceremony of investiture to
office, is peculiar to revealed religion. And
whether we suppose it to refer to the oil in a
lamp, invisible, yet the secret source of all its
illuminating power, or to that refreshment and
renovated strength bestowed upon a weary trav-
eller when his head is anointed with oil. in either
case it expresses the grand doctrine of revealed
religion — that no office may be filled in one's
own strength, but that the inspiring help of God
is oflfered, as surely as responsibilities are im-
posed. " The Spirit of the Lord God is up^n
Me, because He hath anointed Me."
With these three ceremonies — ablution, rob-
ing and anointing — the first and most personal
section of the ritual ended. And now began a
course of sacrifices to God, advancing from the
humblest expression of sin, and appeal to heaven
to overlook the unworthiness of its servant, to
that which best exhibited conscious acceptance,
enjoyment of privilege, admission to a feast with
God. The bullock was a sin-oflfering: the word
is literally sin, and occurs more than once in the
double sense: " let him offer for his sin which he
hath sinned a young bullock . . . for a sin-
(offering) " (Lev. iv. 3, v. 6, etc). And this is
the explanation of the verse which has perplexed
so many: " He made Him to be sin for us. Who
knew n> sin " (2 Cor. v. 21). The doctrine that
pardon comes not by a cheap and painless over-
looking of transgression, as a thing indifferent,
but by the transfer of its consequences to a
victim divinely chosen, could not easily find
clearer expression than in this word. And it
was surely a sobering experience, and a whole-
some one, when Aaron, in his glorious robes,
sparkling with gems, and bearing on his fore-
head the legend of his holy calling, laid his hand,
besi-^e those of his children and successors, upon
the doomed creature which was made sin for
him. The gesture meant confession, acceptance
of the appointed expiation, submission to be
freed from guilt by a method so humiliating and
admonitory. There was no undue exaltation in
the mind of any priest whose heart went with
this " remembrance of sins."
The bullock was immediately slain at the door
of " the tent of meeting"; and to show that the
shedding of his blood was an essential part of
the rite, part of it was put with the finger on the
horns of the altar, and the remainder was poured
out at the base. Only then might the fat and the
kidney be burned upon the altar; but it is never
said of any sin-offering, as presently of the
burnt-oflfering and the peace-offerings, that it
is " a sweet savour before Jehovah " (vers. 18,
25) — a phrase which is only once extended to a
trespass-offering for a purely unconscious lapse
(Lev. iv. 31). The sin-offering is, at the best, a
deplorable necessity. And therefore the notion
of a gift, welcome to Jehovah, is carefully shut
out: no portion of such an offering may go to
maintain the priests: all must be burned "with
fire without the camp; it is a sin-offering" (ver.
14). Rightly does the Epistle to the Hebrews
emphasise this fact: " The bodies of those beasts
whose blood is brought into the Holy Place . . .
as an offering for sin " are burned without the
camp. The bodies of other sacrifices were not
reckoned unfit for food.* And so there is a
striking example of humility, as well as an in-
structive coincidence, in the fact that Jesus suf-
fered without the gate, being the true Sin-offer-
ing, " that He might sanctify the people through
His own blood" (Heb. xiii. 11, 12).
Thus, by sacrifice for sin. the priest is rendered
fit to offer up to God the symbol of a devoted
life. Again, therefore, the hands of Aaron and
his sons are laid upon the head of the ram, be-
cause they come to offer what represents them-
selves in another sense than that of expiation — ^a
sweet savour now, an offering made by fire unto
* Neither, it must be added, were the bodies of certain
sin-ofTerinp:s of the lower ,!?rade, and in which the priest
was not personally concerned (Lev. x. 17, etc.).
Exodus XXX. i-io.]
INCENSE.
225
Jehovah (ver. 18). And to show that it is per-
fectly acceptable to Him, the whole ram shall be
burnt upon the altar, and not now without the
camp: " it is a burnt-offering unto the Lord."
Such is the appointed way of God with man —
first expiation, then devotion.
The third animal was a " peace-offering " (ver.
28). This is wrongly explained to mean an
offering by which peace is made, for then there
could be no meaning in what went before. It is
the offering of one who is now in a state of peace
with God, and who is therefore himself, in many
cases, allowed to partake of what he brings.
But on this occasion some quite peculiar cere-
monies were introduced, and the ram is called
by a strange name — " the ram of consecration."
When Aaron and his sons have again declared
their connection with the animal by laying their
hands upon it, it is slain. And then the blood
is applied to the tip of their right ear, the thumb
of their right hand, and the great toe of their
right foot, that the ear may hearken, and the
best energies obey, and their life become as that
of the consecrat?d animal, their bodies being
presented, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to
God. Then the same blood, with the oil which
spoke of heavenly anointing, was sprinkled upon
them and upon their official robes, and all were
hallowed. Then the fattest and richest parts of
the animal were taken, with a loaf, a cake, and
a wafer from the basket, and placed in the hands
of Aaron and his sons. This was their formal
investiture with official rights; although not yet
performing service, it was as priests that they
received these; and their hands, swayed by those
of Moses, solemnly waved them before the Lord
in formal presentation, after which the pieces
were consumed by fire. The breast was likewise
waved, and became the perpetual property of
Aaron and his sons — although on this occasion
it passed from their hands to be the portion of
Moses, who officiated. The remainder of the
flesh, seethed in a holy place, belonged to Aaron
and his sons. No stranger (of another family)
might eat it, and what was left until morning
should be consumed by fire, that is to say, de-
stroyed in a manner absolutely clean, seeing no
corruption.
For seven days this rite of consecration was
repeated; and every day the altar also was
cleansed, rendering it most holy, so that what-
ever touched it was holy.
Thus the people saw their representative and
chief purified, accepted, and devoted. Thence-
forward, when they too brought their offerings,
and beheld them presented (in person or through
his subordinates) by the high priest with holi-
ness emblazoned upon his brow, they gained
hope, and even assurance, since one so conse-
crated was bidden to present their intercession;
and sometimes they saw him pass into secret
places of mysterious sanctity, bearing their
tribal name on his shoulder and' his bosom, while
the chime of golden bells announced his move-
ments, ministering there for them.
But the nation as a whole, with which this his-
torical book is chieffy interested, saw in the high
priest the means of continually rendering to
God the service of its loyalty. Every day be-
gan and closed with the burnt-offering of a lamb
of the first year, along with a meal-offering of
fine flour and oil, and a drink-offering of wine.
This would be a sweet savour unto God, not
after the carnal fashion in which sceptics have
interpreted the words, but in the same sense in
which the wicked are a smoke in His nostrils
from a continually burning fire.
And where this offering was made, the Omni-
present would meet with them. There He would
convey His mind to His priest. There also He
would meet with all the people — not occasion-
ally, as amid the more impressive but less tol-
erable splendours of Sinai, but to dwell among
them and be their God. And they should know
that all this was true, and also that for this He
led them out of Egypt: " I am Jehovah their
God."
CHAPTER XXX.
INCENSE.
Exodus xxx. i-io.
The altar of incense was not mentioned when
the tent of meeting was being prepared and fur-
nished. But when, in the Divine idea, this is
done, when all is ready for the intercourse of
God and man, and the priest and the daily vic-
tims are provided for, something more than this
formal routine of offerings might yet be sought
for. This material worship of the senses, this
round of splendour and of tragedy, this blaze of
gold and gold-encrusted timber, these curtains
embroidered in bright colours, and ministers
glowing with gems, this blood and fire upon the
altar, this worldly sanctuary, — was it all? Or
should it not do as nature ever does, which
seems to stretch its hands out into the impalpa-
ble, and to grow all but spiritual while we gaze;
so that the mountain folds itself in vapour, and
the ocean in mist and foam, and the rugged
stem of the tree is arrayed in fineness of quiver-
ing frondage, and it may be of tinted blossom,
and around it breathes a subtle fragrance, the
most impalpable existence known to sense?
Fragrance indeed is matter passing into the im-
material, it is the sigh of the sensuous for the
spiritual state of being, it is an aspiration.
And therefore an altar, smaller than that of
burnt-offering, but much more precious, being
plated all around and on the top with gold (a
" golden altar ") (xxxix. 38), is now to be pre-
pared, on which incense of sweet spices should
be burned whenever a burnt-offering spoke of
human devotion, and especially when the daily
lamb was offered, every morning and every
night.
This altar occupied a significant position. Of
necessity it was without the Most Holy Place,
or else it would have been practically in-
accessible; and yet it was spiritually in the
closest connection with the presence of God
within. The Epistle to the Hebrews reckons it
among the furniture of the inner shrine * (Heb.
ix. 4), close to the veil of which it stood, and
within which its burning odours made their
sweetness palpable. In the temple of Solomon
it was " the altar that belonged to the oracle "
(i Kings vi. 22). In Leviticus (xvi. 12) incense
was connected especially with that spot in the
♦For it is incredible that, in a catalosfue of furniture
which included Aaron's rod and the pot of manna, this
altar should be omitted, and "a golden censer," else-
where unheard of, substituted. The gloss is too evidently
an endeavour to get rid of a difficulty. But in idea and
suggestion this altar belonged to the Most Holy. That
shrine " had " it, though it actually stood outside.
226
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
Most Holy Place which best expressed the grace
that it appealed to, and " the cloud of incense "
was to " cover the mercy-seat." Therefore
Moses was bidden to put this altar " before the
veil that is by the ark of the testimony, before
the mercy-seat " (ver. 6).
It can never have been difficult to see the
meaning of the rite for which this altar was pro-
vided. When Zacharias burned incense the
multitude stood without, praying. The incense
in the vial of the angel of the Apocalypse was the
prayers of the saints (Luke i. lO; Rev. viii. 3).
And, long before, when the Psalmist thought of
the priest approaching the veil which concealed
the Supreme Presence, and there kindling pre-
cious spices until their aromatic breath became
a silent plea within, it seemed to him that his
own heart was even such an altar, whence the
perfumed flame of holy longings might be wafted
into the presence of his God, and he whispered,
" Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as
incense " (Ps. cxli. 2).
Such being the import of the type, we need
not wonder that it was a perpetual ordinance in
their generations, nor yet that no strange per-
fume might be offered, but only what was pre-
scribed by God. The admixture with prayer of
any human, self-asserting, intrusive element, is
this unlawful fragrance. It is rhetoric in the
leader of extempore prayer; studied inflexions
in the conductor of liturgical service; animal ex-
citement, or sentimental pensiveness, or assent
which is merely vocal, among the worshippers.
It is whatever professes to be prayer, and is not
that but a substitute. And formalism is an
empty censer.
But, however earnest and pure may seem to be
the breathing of the soul to God. something
unworthy mingles with what is best in man.
The very altar of incense needs to have an atone-
ment made for it once in the year throughout
their generations with the blood of the sin-
ofifering of atonement. The prayer of every
heart which knows its own secret will be this:
" Forgfive what seemed my sin in me,
What seemed my worth since I began ;
For merit lives from man to man
And not from man, O Lord, to Thee."
THE CENSUS.
Exodus xxx. 11-16.
Moses by Divine command was soon to num-
ber Israel, and thus to lay the foundation for its
organisation upon the march. A census was
not, therefore, supposed to be presumptuous or
sinful in itself; it was the vain-glory of David's
census which was cuipable.
But the honour of being numbered among the
people of God should awaken a sense of un-
worthiness. Men had reason to fear lest the
enrolment of such as they were in the host of
God should produce a pestilence to sweep out
the unclean from among the righteous. At least
they must make some practical admission of their
demerit. And therefore every man of twenty
years who passed over unto them that were
numbered (it is a picturesque glimpse that is
here given into the method of enrolment) should
offer for his soul a ransom of half a shekel after
the shekel of the sanctuary. And because it
was a ransom, the tribute was the same for all;
the poor might not bring less, nor the rich more.
Here was a grand assertion of the equality of all
souls in the eyes of God — a seed which long
ages might overlook, but which was sure to
fructify in its appointed time.
For indeed the madness of modern levelling
systems is only their attempt to level down in-
stead of up, their dream that absolute equality
can be obtained, or being obtained can be made
a blessing, by the envious demolition of all that
is lofty, and not by all together claiming the
supreme elevation, the measure of the stature
of manhood in Jesus Christ.
It is not in any plialanstere of Fourier or Har-
mony Hall of Owen, that mankind will ever
learn to break a common bread and drink of a
common cup; it is at the table of a common
Lord.
And so this first assertion of the equality of
man was given to those who all ate the same
spiritual meat and drank the same spiritual
drink.
This half-shekel gradually became an annual
impost, levied for the great expenses of the
Temple. Thus Joash made a proclamation
throughout Judah and Jerusalem, " to bring in
for the Lord the tax that Moses, the servant of
God, laid upon Israel in the wilderness " (2
Chron. xxiv. 9).
And it was the claim for this impost, too
rashly conceded by Peter with regard to his
Master, which led Jesus to distinguish clearly be-
tween His own relation to God and that of
others, even of the chosen race.
He paid no ransom for His soul. He was a
Son, in a sense in which no other, even of the
Jews, could claim to be so. Now, the kings of
the earth did not levy tribute from their sons;
so that, if Christ paid, it was not to fulfil a duty,
but to avoid being an offence. And God Him-
self would provide, directly and miraculously,
what He did not demand from Jesus. There-
fore it was that, on this one occasion and no
other, Christ Who sought figs when hungry, and
when athirst asked water at alien hands, met His
own per.sonal requirement by a miracle, as if to
protest in deed, as in word, against any burden
from such an obligation as Peter's rashness had
conceded.
And yet. with that marvellous condescension
which shone most brightly when He most
asserted His prerogative. He admitted Peter also
to a share in this miraculous redemption-money,
as He admits us all to a share in His glory in
the skies. Is it not He only Who can redeem
His brother, and give to God a ransom for
him?
It is the silver thus levied which was used in
the construction of the sanctuary. All the other
materials were free-will offerings; but even as
the entire tabernacle was based upon the pon-
derous sockets into which the boards were fitted,
made of the silver of this tax, so do all our glad
and willing services depend upon this funda-
mental truth, that we are unworthy even to be
reckoned His, that we owe before we can be-
stow, that we are only allowed to offer any gift
because He is so merciful in His demand. Israel
gladly brought much more than was needed
of all things precious. But first, as an abso-
lutely imperative ransom, God demanded from
each soul the half of three shillings and seven-
pence.
Exodus XXX. 22-3S ]
ANOINTING OIL AND INCENSE.
227
THE LAVER.
Exodus xxx. 17-21.
For the cleansing of various sacrifices, but
especially for the ceremonial washing of the
priests, a laver of brass was to be made, and
placed upon a separate base, the more easily to
be emptied and replenished.
We have seen already that although its actual
use preceded that of the altar, yet the other
stood in front of it, as if to assert, to the very
eyes of all men, that sacrifice precedes purifica-
tion. But the use of the lav.er was not by the
man as man, but by the priest as mediator. In
his ofiice he represented the absolute purity of
Christ. And therefore it was a capital offence to
enter the tabernacle or to burn a sacrifice with-
out first having washed the hands and feet. At
his inauguration, the whole person of the priest
was bathed, and thenceforth he needed not save
to remove the stains of contact with the world.
When the laver was actually made, an inter-
esting fact was recorded about its materials:
" He made the laver of brass, and the base of it
of brass, of the mirrors of the serving-women
which served at the door of the tent of meeting "
(xxxviii. 8). Thus their instruments of personal
adornment were applied to further a personal
preparation of a more solemn kind, like the oint-
ment with which a penitent woman anointed the
feet of Jesus. There is a fitness which ought to
be considered in the direction of our gifts, not
as a matter of duty, but of good taste and charm.
And thus also they continually saw the monu-
ment of their self-sacrifice. There is an inno-
cent satisfaction, far indeed from vanity, when
one looks at his own work for God.
THE ANOINTING OIL AND THE
INCENSE.
Exodus xxx. 22-38.
We have already seen the meaning of the
anointing oil and of the incense.
But we have further to remark that their in-
gredients were accurately prescribed, that they
were to be the best and rarest of their kind, and
that special skill was demanded in their prepa-
ration.
Such was the natural dictate of reverence in
preparing the symbols of God's grace to man,
and of man's appeal to God.
With the type of grace should be anointed the
tent and the ark, and the table of shewbread and
the candlestick, with all their implements, and
the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt sacri-
fice and the laver. All the import of every por-
tion of the Temple worship could be realized
only by the outpouring of the Spirit of Grace.
It was added that this should be a holy anoint-
ing oil, not to be made, much less used, for com-
mon purposes, on pain of death. The same was
enacted of the incense which should burn before
Jehovah: "according to the composition thereof
ye shall not make for yourselves; it shall be unto
thee holy for the Lord: whosoever shall make
like unto that, to smell thereto, he shall be cut
off from his people."
And this was meant to teach reverence. One
might urge that the spices and frankincense and
salt were not in themselves sacred: there was no
consecrating efficacy in their combination, no
charm or spell in the union of these, more than
of any other drugs. Why, then, should they be
denied to culture? Why should her resources
be thus restricted? Does any one suppose that
such arguments belong peculiarly to the New
Testament spirit, or that the saints of the older
dispensation had any superstitious views about
these ingredients? If it was through such no-
tions that they abstained from vulgarising its
use, then they were on the way to paganism,
through a materialised worship.
But in truth they knew as well as we that gums
were only gums, just as they knew that the Most
High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.
And yet they were bidden to reverence both the
shrine and the apparatus of His worship, for
their own sakes, for the solemnity and sobriety
of their feelings, not because God would be a
loser if they did otherwise. And we may well
ask ourselves, in these latter days, whether the
constant proposal to secularise religious build-
ings, revenues, endowments, and seasons does
really indicate greiter religious freedom, or
only greater freedom from religious control.
And we may be sure that a light treatment of
sacred subjects and sacred words is a very dan-
gerous symptom: it is not the words and sub-
jects alone that are being secularised, but also
our own souls.
There is in our time a curious tendency among
men of letters to use holy things for a mere per-
fume, that literature may " smell thereto."
A novelist has chosen for the title of a story
" Just as I am." An innocent and graceful poet
has seen a smile, — ■
"Twas such a smile,
Aaron's twelve jewels seemed to mix
With the lamps of the p^olden candlesticks."
Another is bolder, and sings of the war of love, —
" In the great battle when the hosts are met
On Armageddon's plain, with spears beset."
Another thinks of Mazzini as the
"Dear lord and leader, at whose hand
The first days and the last days stand."
and again as he who
" Said, when all Time's sea was foam,
' Let there be Rome,' and there was Rome."
And Victor Hugo did not shrink from describ-
ing, and that with a strange and scandalous igno-
rance of the original incidents, the crucifixion
by Louis Napoleon of the Christ of nations.
Now, Scripture is literature, besides being a
great deal more; and, as such, it is absurd to
object to all allusions to it in other literature.
Yet the tendency of which these extracts are
examples is not merely toward allusion, but
desecration of solemn and sacred thoughts: it is
the conversion of incense into perfumery.
There is another development of the same
tendency, by no means modern, noted by the
prophet when he complains that the message of
God has become as the " very lovely song of one
who hath a pleasant voice and playeth well on an
instrument." Wherever divine service is only
appreciated in so far as it is " well rendered," as
rich music or stately enunciation charms the ear,
and the surroundings are aesthetic, — wherever
the gospel is heard with enjoyment only of the
S28
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
eloquence or controversial skill of its rendering,
wherever religion is reduced by the cultivated
to a thrill or to a solace, or by the Salvationist
to a riot or a romp, wherever Isaiah and the
Psalms are only admired as poetry, and heaven
is only thought of as a languid and sentimental
solace amid wearying cares, — there again is a
making of the sacred balms to smell thereto.
And as often as a minister of God finds in his
holy ofifice a mere outlet for his natural gifts of
rhetoric or of administration, he also is tempted
to commit this crime.
CHAPTER XXXI.
BEZALEEL AND AHOLIAB.
Exodus xxxi. 1-18.
Next after this marking oflf so sharply of the
holy from the profane, this consecration of men
to special service, this protection of sacred un-
guents and sacred gums from secular use, we
come upon a passage curiously contrasted, yet
not really antagonistic to the last, of marvellous
practical wisdom, and well calculated to make
a nation wise and great.
The Lord announces that He has called by
name Bezaleel, the son of Uri, and has filled him
with the Spirit of God. To what sacred ofifice,
then, is he called? Simply to be a supreme
craftsman, the rarest of artisans. This also is a
divine gift. " I have filled him with the Spirit
of God in wisdom and in understanding and in
knowledge and in all manner of workmanship,
to devise cunning works, to work in gold and
in silver and in brass and in cutting of stones for
setting, and in carving of wood, to work in all
manner of workmanship," — that is to say, of
manual dexterity. With him God had appointed
Aholiab; " and in the hearts of all the wise-
hearted I have put wisdom." Thus should be
fitly made the tabernacle and its furniture, and
the finely wrought garments, and the anointing
oil and the incense.
So then it appears that the Holy Spirit of God
is to be recognised in the work of the carpen-
ter and the jeweller, the apothecary and the
tailor. Probably we object to such a statement,
so baldly put. But inspiration does not object.
Moses told the children of Israel that Jehovah
had filled Bezaleel with the Spirit of God, and
also Aholiab, for the work " of the engraver . . .
and of the embroiderer . . . and of the weaver "
(xxxv. 31, 35).
It is quite clear that we must cease to think of
the Divine Spirit as inspiring only prayers and
hymns and sermons. All that is good and beau-
tiful and wise in human art is the gift of God.
We feel that the supreme Artist is audible in the
wind among the pines; but is man left to himself
when he marshals into more sublime significance
the voices of the wind among the organ tubes?
At sunrise and sunset we feel that
" On the beautiful mountains the pictures of God are
hung;"
but is there no revelation of glory and of fresh-
ness in other pictures? Once the assertion that
a great masterpiece was " inspired " was a clear
recognition of the central fire at which all genius
lights its lamp: now, alas! it has become little
more than a sceptical assumption that Isaiah and
Milton are much upon a level. But the doctrine
of this passage is the divinity of all endowment;
it is quite another thing to claim Divine au-
thority for a given product sprung from the free
human being who is so richly crowned and
gifted.
Thus far we have smoothed our way by speak-
ing onlj' of poetry, painting, music — things
which really compete with nature in their
spiritual suggestiveness. But Moses spoke of
the robe-maker, the embroiderer, the weaver,
and the perfumer.
Nevertheless, the one is carried with the other.
Where shall we draw the line, for example, in
architecture or in ironwork? And there is an-
other consideration which must not be over-
looked. God is assuredly in the growth of hu-
manity, in the progress of true civilisation — in
all, the recognition of which makes history philo-
sophical. It is not only the saints who feel
themselves to be the instruments of a Greater
than they. Cromwell and Bismarck, Columbus,
Raleigh and Drake, William the Silent and Wil-
liam the Third, felt it. Mr. Stanley has told us
how the consciousness that he was being used
grew up in him, not through fanaticism but by
slow experience, groping his way through the
gloom of Central Africa.
But none will deny that one of the greatest
factors in modern history is its industrial devel-
opment. Is there, then, no sacredness here?
The doctrine of Scripture is not that man is a
tool, but that he is responsible for vast gifts,
which come directly from heaven — that every
good gift is from above, that it was God Him-
self Who planted in Paradise the tree of knowl-
edge.
Nor would anything do more to restrain the
passions, to calm the impulses, and to elevate the
self-respect of modern life, to call back its ener-
gies from the base competition for gold, and
make our industries what dreamers persuade
themselves that the mediaeval industries were,
than a quick and general perception of what is
meant when faculty goes by such names as talent,
endowment, gift — of the glory of its use. the
tragedy of its defilement. Many persons, in-
deed, reject this doctrine because they cannot be-
lieve that man has power to abase so high a
thing so sadly. But what, then, do they think
of the human body?
What connection is there between all this and
the reiteration of the law of the Sabbath? Not
merely that the moral law is now made a civic
statute as well, for this had been done already
(xxiii. 12). But, as our Lord has taught us that
a Jew on the Sabbath was free to perform works
of mercy, it might easily be supposed lawful, and
even meritorious, to hasten forward the con-
struction of the place where God would meet
His people. But He who said " I will have
mercy and not sacrifice " said also that to obey
was better than sacrifice. Accordingly this cau-
tion closes the long story of plans and prepara-
tions. And when Moses called the people to the
work, his first words were to repeat it (xxxv. 2).
Finally, there was given to Moses the deposit
for which so noble a shrine was planned — the
two tables of the law, miraculously produced.
If any one, without supposing that they were
literally written with a literal finger, conceives
that this was the meaning conveyed to a He-
brew by the expression " written with the finger
of God," he entirely misses the Hebrew mode of
Exodus xxxiii.]
PREVAILING INTERCESSION.
229
thought, which habitually connects the Lord
with an arm, with a chariot, with a bow made
naked, with a tent and curtains, without the
slightest taint of materialism in its conception.
Did not the magicians, failing to imitate the
third plague, say " This is the finger of a God " ?
Did not Jesus Himself " cast out devils by the
finger of God " ? (Ex. viii. 19; Luke xi. 20).
CHAPTER XXXIL
THE GOLDEN CALF.
Exodus xxxii.
While God was thus providing for Israel,
what had Israel done with God? They had
grown weary of waiting: had despaired of and
slighted their heroic leader (" this Moses, the
man that brought us up,") had demanded gods,
or a god, at the hand of Aaron, and had so far
csirried him with them or coerced him that he
thought it a stroke of policy to save them from
breaking the first commandment by joining
them in a breach of the second, and by infecting
" a feast to Jehovah " with the licentious " play "
of paganism. At the beginning, the only fitness
attributed to Aaron was that "he can speak well."
But the plastic and impressible temperament of
a gifted speaker does not favour tenacity of will
in danger. Demosthenes and Cicero, and Sa-
vonarola, the most eloquent of the reformers,
illustrate the tendency of such genius to be
daunted by visible perils.
God now rejects them because the covenant is
violated. As Jesus spoke no longer of " My
iFather's house," but " your house, left unto you
desolate," so the Lord said to Moses, " thy
people which thou broughtest up."
But what are we to think of the proposal to
destroy them, and to make of Moses a great
nation?
We are to learn from it the solemn reality of
intercession, the power of man with God, Who
says not that He will destroy them, but that He
will destroy them if left alone. Who can tell, at
any moment, what calamities the intercession of
the Church is averting from the world or from
the nation?
The first prayer of Moses is brief and intense;
there is passionate appeal, care for the Divine
honour, remembrance of the saintly dead for
whose sake the living might yet be spared, and
absolute forgetfulness of self. Already the
family of Aaron had been preferred to his, but
the prospect of monopolising the Divine predes-
tination has no charm for this faithful and patri-
otic heart. No sooner has the immediate de-
struction been arrested than he hastens to check
the apostates, makes them exhibit the madness
of their idolatry by drinking the water in which
the dust of their pulverised god was strewn; re-
ceives the abject apology of Aaron, thoroughly
spirit-broken and demoralised; and finding the
sons of Levi faithful, sends them to the slaugh-
ter of three thousand men. Yet this is he who
said " O Lord, why is Thy wrath hot against
Thy people?" He himself felt it needful to cut
deep, in mercy, and doubtless in wrath as well,
for true affection is not limp and nerveless: it is
like the ocean in its depth, and also in its
tempests. And the stern action of the Levites
appeared to him almost an omen; it was their
" consecration," the beginning of their priestly
service.
Again he returns to intercede; and if his prayer
must fail, then his own part in life is over: let
him too perish among the rest. For this is evi-
dently what he means and says: he has not quite
anticipated the spirit of Christ in Paul willing to
be anathema for his brethren (Rom. ix. 3), nor
has the idea of a vicarious human sacrifice been
suggested to him by the institutions of the
sanctuary. Yet how gladly would he have died
for his people, who made request that he might
die among them!
How nobly he foreshadows, not indeed the
Christian doctrine, but the love of Christ Who
died for man. Who from the Mount of Trans-
figuration, as Moses from Sinai, came down
(while Peter would have lingered) to bear the
sins of His brethren! How superior He is to
the Christian hymn which pronounces nothing
worth a thought, except how to make my own
election sure.
CHAPTER XXXIIL
PREVAILING INTERCESSION.
Exodus xxxiii.
At this stage the first concession is announced.
Moses shall lead the people to their rest, and
God will send an angel with him.
We have seen that the original promise of a
great Angel in whom was the Divine Presence
was full of encouragement and privilege (xxiii.
20). No unbiassed reader can suppose that it is
the sending of this same Angel of the Presence
which now expresses the absence of God, or that
He Who then would not pardon their transgres-
sion " because My Name is in Him " is now sent
because God, if He were in the midst of them
for a moment, would consume them. Nor
when Moses passionately pleads against this
degradation, and is heard in this thing also, can
the answer " My Presence shall go with thee "
be merely the repetition of those evil tidings.
Yet it was the Angel of His Presence Who
saved them. All this has been already treated,
and what we are now to learn is that the faith-
ful and sublime urgency of Moses did really save
Israel from degradation and a lower covenant.
It was during the progress of this mediation
that Moses, distracted by a double anxiety —
afraid to absent himself from his wayward fol-
lowers, equally afraid to be so long withdrawn
from the presence of God as the descending of
Sinai and returning thither would involve —
made a noble adventure of faith. Inspired by
the conception of the tabernacle, he took a tent,
" his tent," and pitched it outside the camp, to
express the estrangement of the people, and this
he called the Tent of the Meeting (with God),
but in the Hebrew it is never called the Taber-
nacle. And God did condescend to meet him
there. The mystic cloud guarded the door
against presumptuous intrusion, and all the
people, who previously wist not what had be-
come of him, had now to confess the majesty
of his communion, and they worshipped every
man at his tent door.
It would seem that the anxious vigilance of
Moses caused him to pass to and fro between the
tent and the camp. " but his minister, Joshua the
son of Nun, departed not out of the tent."
230
THE BOOK OF EXODUS.
The dread crisis in the history of the nation
was now almost over. God had said, " My
Presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee
rest,"— a phrase which the lowly Jesus thought
it no presumption to appropriate, saying, " / will
give you rest," as He also appropriated the
office of the Shepherd, the benevolence of the
Physician, the tenderness of the Bridegroom,
and the glory of the King and the Judge, all of
which belonged to God.
But Moses is not content merely to be secure,
for it is natural that he who best loves man
should also best love God. Therefore he pleads
against the least withdrawal of the Presence: he
cannot rest until repeatedly assured that God will
indeed go with him; he speaks as if there were
no " grace " but that. There are many people
now who think it a better proof of being re-
ligious to feel either anxious or comforted about
their own salvation, their election, and their
going to heaven. And these would do wisely
to consider how it comes to pass that the Bible
first taught men to love and to follow God, and
afterwards revealed to them the mysteries of the
inner life and of eternity.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE VISION OF GOD.
Exodus xxxiv.
It was when God had most graciously assured
Moses of His affection, that he ventured, in so
brief a cry that it is almost a gasp of longing, to
ask. " Show me, I pray Thee, Thy glory "
(xxxiii. 18).
We have seen how nobly this petition and the
answer condemn all anthropomorphic misunder-
standings of what had already been revealed;
and also how it exemplifies the great law, that
they who see most of God know best how much
is still unrevealed. The elders saw the God of
Israel and did eat and drink: Moses was led
from the bush to the flaming top of Sinai, and
thence to the tent where the pillar of cloud was
as a sentinel; but the secret remained unseen,
the longing unsatisfied, and the nearest approach
to the Beatific Vision reached by him with whom
God spake face to face as with a friend, was to
be hidden in a cleft of the rock, to be aware of
an awful Shadow, and to hear the Voice of the
Unseen.
It was a fit time for the proclamation which
was then made. When the people had been
righteously punished and yet graciously for-
given, the name of the Self-Existent expanded
and grew clearer, — " Jehovah, Jehovah, a God
full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger
and plenteous in mercy and truth, keeping mercy
for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgres-
sion and sin. and that will by no means clear
the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children and upon the children's chil-
dren, upon the third and upon the fourth genera-
tion." And as Moses made haste and bowed
himself, it is affecting to hear him again plead-
ing for that beloved Presence which even yet he
can scarce believe to be restored, and instead of
claiming any separation through his fidelity and
his honours, praying " Pardon our iniquity and
our sin, and take us for Thine inheritance "
(xxxiv. 10).
Thereupon the covenant is given, as if newly,
but without requiring its actual re-enactment;
and certain of the former precepts are rehearsed,
chiefly such as would guard against a relapse
into idolatry when they entered the good land
where God would bestow on them prosperity
and conquest.
As Moses had broken the former tablets, the
task was imposed on him of hewing out the
slabs on which God renewed His awful sanction
of the Decalogue, the fundamental statutes of
the nation. And they who had failed to endure
his former absence, were required to be patient
while he tarried again upon the mountain, forty
days and nights.
With his return a strange incident is con-
nected. Unknown by himself, the " skin of his
face shone by reason of His speaking with him,"
and Aaron and the people recoiled until he called
to them. And thenceforth he lived a strange
and isolated life. At each new interview the
glory of his countenance was renewed, and when
he conveyed his revelation to the people, they
beheld the lofty sanction, the light of God upon
his face. Then he veiled his face until next he
approached his God, so that none might see
what changes came there, and whether — as St.
Paul seems to teach us — the lustre gradually
waned.
His revelation, the apostle argues, was like
this occasional and fading gleam, while the
moral glory of the Christian system has no con-
cealments: it uses great frankness; there is noth-
ing withdrawn, no veil upon the face. Nor is it
given to one alone to behold as in a mirror the
glory of the Lord, and to share its lustre. We
all, with face unveiled, share this experience of
the deliverer (2 Cor. iii. 12, 18).
But the incident itself is most instructive.
Since he had already spent an equal time with
God, yet no such results had followed, it seems
that we receive what we are adapted to receive,
not straitened in Him but in our own capabili-
ties; and as Moses, after his vehemence of inter-
cession, his sublimity of self-negation, and his
knowledge of the greater name of God, received
new lustre from the unchangeable Fountain of
light, so does all true service and earnest aspira*
tion, while it approaches God, elevate and glorify
humanity.
We learn also something of the exaltation of
which matter is capable. We who have seen
coarse bulb and soil and rain transmuted by the
sunshine into radiance of bloom and subtlety of
perfume, who have seen plain faces illuminated
from within until they were almost angelic, — may
we not hope for something great and rare for
ourselves, and the beloved who are gone, as we
muse upon the profound word, " It is raised a
spiritual body " ?
And again we learn that the best religious at-
tainment is the least self-conscious: Moses wist
not that the skin of his face shone.
CHAPTERS XXXV— XL.
THE CONCLUSION.
The remainder of the narrative sets forth in
terms almost identical with the directions already
given, the manner in which the Divine injunc-
tions were obeyed. The people, purified in heart
by danger, chastisement, and shame, brought
Exodus xxxv->:l
THE CONCLUSION.
231
much more than was required. A quarter of a
million would poorly represent the value of the
shrine in which, at the last, Moses and Aaron
approached their God, while the cloud covered
the tent and the e:lory filled the tabernacle, and
Moses failed to overcome his awe and enter.
Thenceforth the cloud was the guide of their
halting and their march. Many a time they
grieved their God in the wilderness, yet the
cloud was on the tabernacle by day, and there
was fire therein by night, throughout all their
journeyings.
That cloud is seen no longer; but One has
said, " Lo, I am with you all the days." If the
presence is less material, it is because we ought
to be more spiritual.
Looking back upon the story, we can discern
more clearly what was asserted when we began
— the forming and training of a nation.
They are called from shameful servitude by the
devotion of a patriot and a hero, who has learned
in failure and exile the difference between self-
confidence and faith. The new name of God,
and His remembrance of their fathers, inspire
them at the same time with awe and hope and
nationality. They see the hollowness of earthly
force, and of superstitious worships, in the abase-
ment and ruin of Egypt. They are taught by
the Paschal sacrifice to confess that the Divine
favour is a gift and not a right, that their lives
also are justly forfeited. The overthrow of Pha-
raoh's army and the passage of the Sea brings
them into a new and utterly strange life, in an
atmosphere and amid scenes well calculated to
expand and deepen their emotions, to develop
their sense of freedom and self-respect, and yet
to oblige them to depend wholly on their God.
Privation at Marah chastens them. The attack
of Amalek introduces them to war, and forbids
their dependence to sink into abject softness.
The awful scene of Horeb burns and brands his
littleness into man. The covenant shows them
that, however little in themselves, they may enter
into communion with the Eternal. It also
crushes out what is selfish and individualising,
by making them feel the superiority of what they
all share over anything that is peculiar to one of
them. The Decalogue reveals a holiness at
once simple and profound, and forms a type of
character such as will make any nation great.
The sacrificial system tells them at once of the
pardon and the heinousness of sin. Religion is
both exalted above the world and infused into
it, so that all is consecrated. The priesthood and
the shrine tell them of sin and pardon, exclusion
and hope; but that hope is a common heritage,
which none may appropriate without his brother.
The especial sanctity of a sacred calling is
balanced by an immediate assertion of the
sacredness of toil, and the Divine Spirit is recog-
nised even in the gift of handicraft.
A tragic and shameful failure teaches them,
more painfully than any symbolic system of cur-
tains and secret chambers, how little fitted they
are for the immediate intercourse of heaven.
And yet the ever-present cloud, and the shrine
in the heart of their encampment, assure them
that God is with them of a truth.
Could any better system be imagined by which
to convert a slavish and superstitious multitude
into a nation at once humble and pure and gal-
lant— a nation of brothers and of worshippers,
chastened by a genuine sense of ill desert and of
responsibility, and yet braced and fired by the
conviction of an exalted destiny?
To do this, and also to lead mankind to liberty,
to rescue them from sensuous worship, and pre-
pare them for a system yet more spiritual, to
teach the human race that life is not repose but
warfare, pilgrimage and aspiration, and to sow
the seeds of beliefs and expectations which only
an atoning Mediator and an Incarnate God could
satisfy, this was the meaning of the Exodus.
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS,
CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE TABERNACLE WORSHIP.
(Lev. i.-x., xvi.)
Chaptkr I.
Introductory, . .....
Chapter II.
Sacrifice : The Burnt-Offering, .
Chapter III.
The Burnt-Offering {^Concluded),
Chapter IV.
The Mcal-O.'kiing
PAGE
237
243
Chapter XV.
Of the Uncleanness o£ Issues,
Chapter XVI.
The Uncleanr,es-s of Chihl-Bearing,
Chapter XVII.
The Uncleanness of Leprosy,
Chapter XVIII.
248 The Cleansing of the Leper,
PAGE
313
315
319
323
Chapter V.
The Peace-Offer! ng.
252
257
Chapter XIX.
Holiness in Eating, ...... 329
Chapter XX.
Chapter VI.
The Sin-Offering
Chapter VII.
The Ritual of tlie Sin-Offering,
Chapter VIII.
The Guilt-Offering,
Chapter IX.
The Priests' Portions,
Chapter X.
The Consecration of Aaron and His Sons, and of
the Tabernacle, ......
Chapter XI.
The Inauguration of the Tabernacle Service,
Chapter XH.
Nadab's and .\bihu's " Strange Fire,"
Chapter XIII.
The Great Day of Atonement, ....
PART II.
THE LA IV OF THE DAILY LIFE.
(Lev. xi.-xv.; xvii.-xxv.)
Chapter XIV.
Clean and Unclean Animals, and Defilement by
Dead Bodies, ......
The Law of Holiness : Chastity,
2C4 Chapter XXI.
The Law of Holiness {Concluded),
270
Chapter XXII.
Penal Sanctions,
276
Chapter XXIII.
„ The Law of Priestly Holiness, .
Chapter XXIV.
The Set Feasts of the Lord,
282
292
Chapter XXV.
The Holy Light and the Shew-Bread : the Blas-
phemer's End, ......
Chapter XXVI.
2q6 The Sabbatic Year and the Jubilee,
332
335
342
345
349
35f>
359
301
PART III.
CONCLUSION AND APPENDIX.
(Lev. xxvi., xxvii.)
'' Chapter XXVII.
The Promises and Threats of the Covenant,
367
Chapter XXVIII.
306 Concerning Vows, ...... 37?
235
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
BY THE REV. S. H. KELLOGG, D. D.
PART I.
THE TABERNACLE WORSHIP.
Leviticus i.-x.-xvi.
Section i. The law of the offerings : i.-vi.
Section 2. The Institution of the Tabernacle Service ;
vii.-x.
(i) The Consrecation of the Priesthood : vii.
(2) Thf! Induction of the Priesthood : ix., x.
Section 3. The day of Atonement : xvi.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
" And the Lord called unto Moses, and spake unto him
out of the tent of meeting."- LEVITICUS i. i.
Perhaps no book in the Bible presents to the
ordinary reader so many and peculiar difficulties
as the book of Leviticus. Even of those who de-
voutly believe, as they were taught in their child-
hood, that, like all the other books contained in
the Holy Scriptures, it is to be received through-
out with unquestioning faith as the very Word
of God, a large number will frankly own in a
discouraged way that this is with them merely a
matter of belief, which their personal experience
in reading the book has for the most part failed
to sustain; and that for them so to see through
symbol and ritual as to get much spiritual profit
from such reading has been quite impossible.
A larger class, while by no means denying or
doubting the original Divine authority of this
book, yet suppose that the elaborate ritual of the
Levitical law, with its multiplied, minute pre-
scriptions regarding matters religious and secu-
lar, since the Mosaic dispensation has now long
passed away, neither has nor can have any liv-
ing relation to present-day questions of Chris-
tian belief and practice; and so, under this im-
pression, they very naturally trouble themselves
little with a book which, if they are right, can
now only be of special interest to the religious
antiquarian.
Others, again, while sharing this feeling, also
confess to a great difficulty which they feel in
believing that many of the commands of 1,his law
can ever have been really given by inspiration
from God. The extreme severity of some of the
laws, and what seems to them to be the arbitrary
and even puerile character of other prescriptions,
appear to them to be irreconcilable, in the one
case, with the mercy, in the other, with the dig-
nity and majesty, of the Divine Being.
With a smaller, but, it is to be feared, an in-
creasing number, this feeling, either of indiffer-
ence or of doubt, regarding the book of Leviti-
cus, is further strengthened by their knowledge
of the fact that in our day its Mosaic origin and
inspired authority are strenuously denied by a
large number of eminent scholars, upon grounds
which they claim to be strictly scientific. And
if such Christians do not know enough to decide
for themselves on its merits the question thus
raised, they at least know enough to have a very
uncomfortable doubt whether an intelligent
Christian has any longer a right to regard the
book as in any true sense the Word of God; and
— what is still more serious — they feel that the
question is of such a nature that it is impossible
for any one who is not a specialist in Hebrew
and the higher criticism to reach any well-
grounded and settled conviction, one way or the
other, on the subject. Such persons, of course,
have little to do with this book. If the Word of
God is indeed there, it cannot reach them.
With such mental conditions so widely pre-
vailing, some words regarding the origin, au-
thority, purpose, and use of this book of Leviti-
cus seem to be a necessary preliminary to its
profitable exposition.
The Origin and Authority of Leviticus.
As to the origin and authority of this book, the
first verse presents a very formal and explicit
statement: "The Lord called unto Moses, and
spake unto him." These words evidently con-
tain by necessary implication two affirmations:
first, that the legislation which immediately fol-
lows is of Mosaic origin: " The Lord spake unto
Moses;" and; secondly, that it was not the prod-
uct merely of the mind of Moses, but came to
him, in the first instance, as a revelation from
Jehovah: "Jehovah spake unto Moses." And al-
though it is quite true that the words in this
first verse strictly refer only to that section of
the book which immediately follows, yet, inas-
much as the same or a like formula is used re-
peatedly before successive sections, — in all, no
less than fifty-six times in the twenty-seven chap-
ters,— these words may with perfect fairness be
regarded as expressing a claim respecting these
two points, which covers the entire book.
We must not, indeed, put more into these
words than is truly there. They simply and only
declare the Mosaic origin and the inspired au-
thority of the legislation which the book con-
tains. They say nothing as to whether or not
Moses wrote every word of this book himself;
or whether the Spirit of God directed and in-
spired other persons, in Moses' time or after-
ward, to commit this Mosaic law to writing.
They give us no hint as to when the various sec-
tions which make up the book were combined
into their present literary form, whether by
Moses himself, as is the traditional view, or by
men of God in a later day. As to these and
other matters of secondary importance which
might be named, the book records no statement.
The words used in the text, and similar expres-
sions used elsewhere, simply and only declare
the legislation to be of Mosaic origin and of in-
spired authority. Only, be it observed, so much
as this they do affirm in the most direct and un-
compromising manner.
It is of great importance to note all this: for
in the heat of theological discussion the issue is
too often misapprehended on both sides. The
real question, and, as every one knows, the burn-
ing Biblical question of the day, is precisely this,
237
16- Vol. L
238
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
whether the claim this book contains, thus
exactly defined, is true or false.
A certain school of critics, comprising many
of the greatest learning, and of undoubted
honesty of intention, assures the Church and the
world that a strictly scientific criticism compels
one to the conclusion that this claim, even as
thus sharply limited and defined, is, to use plain
words, not true; that an enlightened scholarship
must acknowledge that Moses had little or noth-
ing to do with what we find in this book; that,
in fact, it did not originate till nearly a thousand
years later, when, after the Babylonian captivity,
certain Jewish priests, desirous of magnifying
their authority with the people, fell on the happy
expedient of writing this book of Leviticus, to-
gether with certain other parts of the Penta-
teuch, and then, to give the work a prestige and
authority which on its own merits or over their
own names it could not have had, delivered it
to their countrymen as nearly a thousand years
old, the work of their great lawgiver. And,
strangest of all, they not only did this, but were
so successful in imposing this forgery upon the
whole nation that history records not even an
expressed suspicion of a single person, until
modern times, of its non-Mosaic origin; that is,
they succeeded in persuading the whole people
of Israel that a law which they had themselves
just promulgated had been in existence among
them for nearly ten centuries, the very work of
Moses, when, in reality, it was quite a new thing.
Astonishing and even incredible as all this may
seem to the uninitiated, substantially this theory
is held by many of the Biblical scholars of our
day as presenting the essential facts of the case;
and the discovery of these supposed facts we are
called upon to admire as one of the chief literary
triumphs of modern critical scholarship!
Ncnv the average Christian, whether minister
or layman, though intelligent enough in ordi-
nary matters of human knowledge, or even a
well-educated man, is not, and cannot be, a
specialist in Hebrew and in the higher criticism.
What is he then to do when such a theory is pre-
sented to him as endorsed by scholars of the
highest ability and the most extensive learning?
]».T<-ct we. then, all learn Hebrew and study this
higher criticism before we can be permitted to
have any well-justified and decided opinion
whether this book, this law of Leviticus, be the
Word of God or a forgery? We think not.
There are certain considerations, quite level to
the understanding of every one; certain facts,
which are accepted as such by the most eminent
scholars, which ought to be quite sufficient for
the maintenance and the abundant confirmation
of our faith in this book of Leviticus as the very
Word of God to Moses.
In the first place, it is to be observed that if
any theory which denies the Mosaic origin and
the inspired authority of this book be true, then
the fifty-six assertions of such origin and au-
thority which the book contains are unqualifiedly
false. Further, however any may seek to dis-
guise the issue with words, if in fact this Leviti-
cal ritual and code of laws came into existence
only after the Babylonian captivity and in the
way suggested, then the book of Leviticus can
by no possibility be the Word of God in any
sense, but is a forgery and a fraud. Surely this
needs no demonstration. " The Lord spake
unto Moses," reads, for instance, this first verse;
" The Lord did not speak these things unto
Moses," answer these critics; "they were in-
vented by certain unscrupulous priests centuries
afterwards." Such is the unavoidable issue.
Now who shall arbitrate in these matters? who
shall settle these questions for the great multi-
tude of believers who know nothing of Hebrew
criticism, and who, although they may not well
understand much that is in this book, have yet
hitherto accepted it with reverent faith as being
what it professes to be, the very Word of God
through Moses? To whom, indeed, can we refer
such a question as this for decision but to Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, our Lord and Saviour, con-
fessed of all believers to be in verity the only-
begotten Son of God from the bosom of the
Father? For He declared that "the Father
showed unto Him," the Son, " all things that He
Himself did;" He will therefore be sure to know
the truth of this matter, sure to know the Word
of His Father from the word of man, if He will
but speak.
And He has spoken on this matter. He, the
Son of God. What was the common belief of
the Jews in the time of our Lord as to the Mo-
saic origin and Divine authority of this book, as
of all the Pentateuch, every one knows. Not a
living man disputes the statement made by a
recent writer on this subject, that "previous to
the Christian era, there are no traces of a second
opinion" on this question; the book "was uni-
versally ascribed to Moses." Now, that Jesus
Christ shared and repeatedly endorsed this belief
of His contemporaries should be perfectly clear
to any ordinary reader of the Gospels.
The facts as to His testimony, in brief, are
these. As to the Pentateuch in general. He
called it (Luke xxiv. 44) " the law of Moses;"
and, as regards its authority. He declared it to
be such that " till heaven and earth pass away,
one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away
from the law, till all be fulfilled " (Matt. v. 18).
Could this be truly said of this book of Leviticus,
which is undoubtedly included in this term, " the
law," if it were not the Word of God, but a
forgery, so that its fifty-six affirmations of its
Mosaic origin and inspired authority were false?
Again, Christ declared that Moses in his
" writings " wrote of Him, — a statement, which,
it should be observed, imputes to Moses fore-
knowledge, and therefore supernatural inspira-
tion; and further said that faith in Himself was
so connected with faith in Moses, that if the
Jews had believed Moses, they would have also
believed Him (John v. 46, 47). Is it conceivable
that Christ should have spoken thus, if the
" writings " referred to had been forgeries?
But not only did our Lord thus endorse the
Pentateuch in general, but also, on several occa-
sions, the Mosaic origin and inspired authority
of Leviticus in particular. Thus, when He
healed the lepers (Matt. viii. 4) He sent them to
the priests on the ground that Moses had com-
manded this in such cases. But such a com-
mand is found only in this book of Leviticus
(xiv. 3-10). Again, in justifying His . disciples
for plucking the ears of corn on the Sabbath
day. He adduces the example of David, who ate
the shew-bread when he was an hungered,
'■ which was not lawful for him to eat, but only
for the priests" (Matt. xii. 4); thus referring to
a law which is only found in Leviticus (xxiv. 9).
But the citation was only pertinent on the
assumption that He regarded the prohibition of
the shew-bread as having the same inspired au-
Leviticus i,]
INTRODUCTORY.
239
thority as the obligation of the Sabbath. In John
vii. 32, again, He refers to Moses as having re-
newed the ordinance of circumcision, which at
the first had been given to Abraham; and, as
usual, assumes the Divine authority of the com-
mand as thus given. But this renewal of the
ordinance of circumcision is recorded only in
Leviticus (xii. 3). Yet once more, rebuking the
Pharisees for their ingenious justification of the
hard-hearted neglect of parents by undutiful chil-
dren, He reminds them that Moses had said that
he who cursed father or mother should be put
to death; a law which is only found in the so-
called priest-code, Exod. xxi. 17 and Lev. xx. 9.
Further, He is so far from merely assuming the
truth of the Jewish opinion for the sake of an
argument, that He formally declares this law,
equally with the fifth commandment, to be " a
commandment of God," which they by their tra-
dition had made void (Matt. xiv. 3-6).
One would suppose that it had been impossible
to avoid the inference from all this, that our
Lord believed, and intended to be understood as
teaching, that the law of Leviticus was, in a true
sense, of Mosaic origin, and of inspired, and
therefore infallible, authority.
We are in no way concerned, indeed, — nor is
it essential to the argument, — to press Lhis testi-
mony of Christ as proving more than the very
least which the words fairly imply. For in-
stance, nothing in His words, as we read them,
any more than in the language of Leviticus itself,
excludes the supposition that in the preparation
of the law, Moses, like the Apostle Paul, may
have had co-labourers or amanuenses, such as
Aaron, Eleazar, Joshua, or others, whose several
parts of the work might then have been issued
under his endorsement and authority; so that
Christ's testimony is in no wise irreconcilable
with the fact of differences of style, or with the
evidence of different documents, if any think
that they discover this, in the book.*
We are willing to go further, and add that in
the testimony of our Lord we find nothing which
declares against the possibility of one or more
redactions or revisions of the laws of Leviticus
in post-Mosaic times, by one or more inspired
men; as, e. g., by Ezra, described (Ezra vii. 6) as
" a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the
Lord, the God of Israel, had given;" to whom
also ancient Jewish tradition attributes the final
settlement of the Old Testament canon down to
his time. Hence no words of Christ touch the
question as to when the book of Leviticus re-
ceived its present form, in respect of the order of
its chapters, sections, and verses. This is a
matter of quite secondary importance, and may
be settled any way without prejudice to the Mo-
saic origin and authority of the laws it contains.
Neither, in the last place, do the words of our
Lord, carefully weighed, of necessity exclude
even the possibility that such persons, acting
under Divine direction and inspiration, may have
first reduced some parts of the law given by
* " Genesis may be made up of various documents, and
yet have been compiled by Moses ; and the same thing is
possible, even in the later books of the Pentateuch. If
these could be successfully partitioned amonp: different
writers, on the score of vafietj' in literary execution, why
may not these have been enjfajjed jointly with Moses
himself in preparing each his appointed portion, and the
whole have been finally reduced by Moses to its present
form ? . . . Why might not these continue their work,
and record what occurred after Moses was taken away ?"
— Professor W. H. Green. Schaff-Herzog Encyclopirdia :
article, "The Pentateuch."
Moses to writing;* or even, as an extreme sup-
position, may have entered here and there, under
the unerring guidance of the Holy Ghost, pre-
scriptions which, although new as to the letter,
were none the less truly Mosaic, in that by neces-
sary implication they were logically involved in
the original code.t
We do not indeed here argue either for or
against any of these suppositions, which were
apart from the scope of the present work. We
are only concerned here to remark that Christ
has not incontrovertibly settled these questions.
These things may be true or not true; the deci-
sion of such matters properly belongs to the
literary critics. But decide them as one will, it
will still remain true that the law is " the law of
Moses," given by revelation from God.
So much as this, however, is certain. What-
soever modifications may conceivably have
passed upon the text, all work of this kind was
done, as all agree, long before the time of our
Lord; and the text to which He refers as of Mo-
saic origin and of inspired authority, was there-
fore essentially the text of Leviticus as we have
it to-day. We are thus compelled to insist that
whatever modifications may have been made in
the original Levitical law, they cannot have been,
according to the testimony of our Lord, such as
in any way conflicted with His affirmation of its
Mosaic origin and its inspired authority. They
can thus, at the very utmost, only have been, as
suggested, in the way of legitimate logical devel-
opment and application to successive circum-
stances, of the Levitical law as originally given
to Moses; and that, too, under the administration
of a priesthood endowed with the possession of
the Urim and Thummim, so as to give such
official deliverances, whenever required, the sanc-
tion of inerrant Divine authority, binding on the
conscience as from God. Here, at least, surely,
Christ by His testimony has placed an immova-
ble limitation upon the speculations of the critics.
And yet there are those who admit the facts as
to Christ's testimony, and nevertheless claim that
without any prejudice to the absolute truthful-
ness of our Lord, we may suppose that in speak-
ing as He did, with regard to the law of Leviti-
cus, He merely conformed to the common usage
of the Jews, without intending thereby to en-
dorse their opinion; any more than, when, con-
forming to the ordinary mode of speech. He
spoke of the sun as rising and setting. He meant
thereby to be understood as endorsing the com-
mon opinion of men of that time that the sun
actually passed round the earth every twenty-
* " If it be proven that a record was committed to
writing at a comparatively late date, it does not neces-
sarily follow that the essential part has not been accu-
ratelv handed down."— Professor Strack, Ibid.
t Something like this seems to have been the final posi-
tion of the late Professor Delitzsch, who said : " We hold
firmly that Moses laid the foundation of this codification "
(of the " priest-code " of Leviticus, etc.), " but it was con-
tinued in the post-Mosaic period within the priesthood,
to whom was entrusted the transmission, interpretation,
and administration of the law. We admit this willingly .;
and even the participation of Ezra in this codification in
itself furnishes no stumbling block for us. For it is not
inconceivable that laws which until then had been handed
down orally were fixed by him in writing to secure their
judicial authority and execution. The most important
thing for us is the historico-traditional character of the
Pentateuchal legislation, and especially the occasions
for (the laws) and the fundamental arrangements in the
history of the times. That which we cannot be persuaded
to admit is that the so-called Priestly Code is the work
of the free in vention of the latest date, which takes on the
artificial appearance of ancient history." — The Presbyter-
ian Revie7i\ \ix\y ., 1882; article, "Delitzsch on the Origin
and Composition of the Pentateuch," p. 378.
240
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
four hours. To which it is enough to reply that
this illustration, which has so often been used in
this argument, is not relevant to the case before
us. For not only did our Lord use language
which implied the truth of the Jewish belief re-
garding the origin and authority of the Mosaic
law, but He formally teaches it; and^what is of
still more moment — He rests the obligation of
certain duties upon the fact that this law of Le-
viticus was a revelation from God to Moses for
the children of Israel. But if the supposed facts,
upon which He bases His argument in such
cases, are, in reality, not facts, then His argu-
ment becomes null and void. How, for instance,
is it possible to explain away the words in which
He appeals to one of the laws of Exodus and
Leviticus (Matt. xv. 3-6) as being not a Jewish
opinion, but, instead, in explicit contrast with the
traditions of the Rabbis, " a commandment of
God"? Was this expression merely "an accom-
modation " to the mistaken notions of the Jews?
If so, then what becomes of His argument?
Others, again, feeling the force of this, and yet
sincerely and earnestly desiring to maintain
above possible impeachment the perfect truthful-
ness of Christ, still assuming that the Jews were
mistaken, and admitting that, if so, our Lord
must have shared their error, take another line
of argument. They remind us of what, however
mysterious, cannot be denied, that our Lord, in
virtue of His incarnation, came under certain
limitations in knowledge; and then urge that
without any prejudice to His character we may
suppose that, not only with regard to the time of
His advent and kingdom (Matt. xxiv. 36), but
also with respect to the authorship and the Di-
vine authority of this book of Leviticus, He may
have shared in the ignorance and error of His
countrymen.
But, surely, the fact of Christ's limitation in
knowledge cannot be pressed so far as the argu-
ment of such requires, without by logical neces-
sity nullifying Christ's mission and authority as
a religious teacher. For it is certain that accord-
ing to His own word, and the universal belief of
Christians, the supreme object of Christ's mis-
sion was to reveal unto men through His life and
teachings, and especially through His death upon
the cross, the tather; and it is certain that He'
claimed to have, in order to this end, perfect
knowledge of the Father. But how could this
most essential claim of His be justified, and how
could He be competent to give unto men a per-
fect and inerrant knowledge of the Father, if the
ignorance of His humiliation was so great that
He was unable to distinguish from His Father's
Word a book which, by the hypothesis, was not
the Word of the Father, but an ingenious and
successful forgery of certain crafty post-exilian
priests?
It is thus certain that Jesus must have known
whether the Pentateuch, and, in particular, this
book of Leviticus, was the Word of God or not;
certain also that, if the Word of God, it could
not have been a forgery; and equally certain that
Jesus could not have intended in what He said
on this subject to accommodate His speech to a
common error of the people, without thereby
endorsing their belief. It thus follows that
critics of the radical school referred to are di-
rectly at issue with the testimony of Christ re-
garding this book. It is of immense conse-
quence that Christians should see this issue
clearly. While Jesus taught in various ways that
Leviticus contains a law given by revelation from
God to Moses, these teach that it is a priestly
forgery of the days after Ezra. Both cannot be
right; and if the latter are in the right, then —
we speak with all possible deliberation and
reverence — ^Jesus Christ was mistaken, and was
therefore unable even to tell us with inerrant
certainty whether this or that is the Word of
God or not. But if this is so, then how can we
escape the final inference that His claim to have
a perfect knowledge of the Father must have
been an error; His claim to be the incarnate Son
of God, therefore, a false pretension, and Chris-
tianity, a delusion, so that mankind has in Him
no Saviour?
But against so fatal a conclusion stands the
great established fact of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead; whereby He was with
power declared to be the Son of God, so that we
may know that His word on this, as on all sub-
jects where He has spoken, settles controversy,
and is a sufficient ground of faith; while it im-
poses upon all speculations of men, literary or
philosophical, eternal and irremovable limita-
tions.
Let no one think that the case, as regards the
issue at stake, has been above stated too strongly.
One could not well go beyond the often cited
words of Kuenen on this subject: "We must
either cast aside as worthless our dearly bought
scientific method, or we must for ever cease to
acknowledge the authority of the New Testament
in the domain of the exegesis of the Old." With
good reason does another scholar exclaim at
these words, " The Master must not be heard as
a witness! We treat our criminals with more
respect." So then stands the question this day
which this first verse of Leviticus brings before
us: In which have we more confidence? in
literary critics, like a Kuenen or Wellhausen, or
in Jesus Christ? Which is the more likely to
know with certainty whether the law of Leviticus
is a revelation from God or not?
The devout Christian, who through the grace
of the crucified and risen Lord " of whom Moses,
in the law, and the prophets did write," and who
has " tasted the good word of God," will not
long hesitate for an answer. He will not in-
deed, if wise, timidly or fanatically decry all
literary investigation of the Scriptures; but he
will insist that the critic shall ever hold his rea-
son in reverent subjection to the Lord Jesus on
all points where the Lord has spoken. Such
everywhere will heartily endorse and rejoice in
those admirable words of the late venerable Pro-
fessor Delitzsch; words which stand almost as of
his last solemn testament: — "The theology of
glory, which prides itself upon being its own
highest authority, bewitches even those who had
seemed proof against its enchantments; and the
theology of the Cross, which holds Divine folly
to be wiser than men, is regarded as an unscien-
tific lagging behind the steps of progress. . . But
the faith which I professed in my first sermons,
. . . remains mine to-day, undiminished in
strength, and immeasurably higher than all
earthly knowledge. Even if in many Biblical
questions I have to oppose the traditional opin-
ion, certainly my opposition rests on this side of
the gulf, on the side of the theology of the Cross,
of grace, of miracles! ... By this banner let us
stand; folding ourselves in it, let us die! " * To
* r/te Expositor, January, 1889 ; article,
Theology and the New," pp. 54, 55.
The Old
Leviticus i.]
INTRODUCTORY.
241
which truly noble words every true Christian
may well say, Amen!
We then stand without fear with Jesus Christ
in our view of the origin and authority of the
book of Leviticus.
The Occasion and Order of Leviticus.
Before proceeding to the exposition of this
book, a few words need to be said regarding its
occasion and plan, and its object and present
use.
The opening words of the book, " And the
Lord said," connect it in the closest manner with
the preceding book of Exodus, at the contents
of which we have therefore to glance for a mo-
ment. The kingdom of God, rejected by cor-
porate humanity in the founding of the Baby-
lonian world-power, but continuing on earth in
a few still loyal souls in the line of Abraham and
his seed, at last, according to promise, had been
formally and visibly re-established on earth at
Mount Sinai. The fundamental law of the king-
dom, contained in the ten commandments and
certain applications of the same, had been de-
livered in what is called the Book of the Cove-
nant, amid thunders and lightnings, at the holy
mount. Israel had solemnly entered into cove-
nant with God on this basis, saying, " All these
things will we do and be obedient," and the
covenant had been sealed by the solemn sprin-
kling of blood.
This being done, Jehovah now issued com-
mandment for the iDuilding of the tabernacle or
" tent of meeting," where He might manifest
His glory and from time to time communicate
His will to Israel. As mediators between Him
and the people, the priesthood was appointed,
their vestments and duties prescribed. All this
having been done as ordered, the tent of meeting
covering the interior tabernacle was set up; the
Shekinah cloud covered it, and the glory of Je-
hovah filled the tabernacle, — the manifested pres-
ence of the King of Israel!
Out of the tent of meeting, from this excellent
glory, Jehovah now called unto Moses, and de-
livered the law as we have it in the first seven
chapters of the book of Leviticus. To the law
of offerings succeeds (viii.-x.) an account of the
consecration of Aaron and his sons to the priestly
ofifice, and their formal public assumption of their
functions, with an account of the very awful sanc-
tion which was given to the preceding law, by
the death of Nadab and Abihu before the Lord,
for ofifering as He had not commanded them.
The next section of the book contains the law
concerning the clean and the unclean, under the
several heads of food (xi.), birth-defilement
(xii.), leprosy (xiii., xiv.), and unclean issues
(xv.); and closes (xvi.) with the ordinance of the
great day of atonement, in which the high priest
alone, presenting the blood of a sin-offering in
the Holy of Holies, was to make atonement once
a year for the sins of the whole nation.*
The third section of the book contains the law
of holiness,! first, for the people (xvii.-xx.), and
then the special laws for the priests (xxi., xxii.).
These are followed, first (xxiii.), by the order
for the feasts of the Lord, or appointed times of
* From the note in xvi. i it would appear that this chap-
ter, so different in subject from the five preceding chapters
on " Uncleanesses," originally preceded them, and so
followed X., with which it is so closely connected. Its ex-
position is therefore given immediateljr after that of x.
t This name is often restricted to xviii.-xx.
public holy convocation; then (xxiv.), by a his-
torical incident designed to show that the law,
as given, must, in several respects noted, be ap-
plied in all its strictness no less to the alien than
to the native-born Israelite; and finally (xxv.),
by the remarkable ordinances concerning the
sabbatic year, and the culmination of the sabbatic
system of the law in the year of jubilee.
As a conclusion to the whole, the legislation
thus given is now sealed (xxvi.) with promises
from God of blessing to the nation if they will
keep this law, and threats of unsparing ven-
geance against the people and the land, if they
forsake His commandments and break the cove-
nant, though still with a promise of mercy when,
having thus transgressed, they shall at any time
repent. The book then closes with a supple-
mental chapter on voluntary vows and dues
(xxvii.).
The Purpose of Leviticus.
What now was the purpose of Leviticus? In
general, as regards Israel, it was given to direct
them how they might live as a holy nation in fel-
lowship with God. The key-note of the book is
" Holiness to Jehovah." More particularly, the
object of the book was to furnish for the theoc-
racy set up in Israel a code of law which should
secure their physical, moral, and spiiitual well-
being. But the establishment of the theocracy
in Israel was itself only a means to an end;
namely, to make Israel a blessing to all nations,
in mediating to the Gentiles the redemption of
God. Hence, the Levitical laws were all in-
tended and adapted to train and prepare the
nation for this special historic mission to which
God had chosen them.
To this end, it was absolutely necessary, first
of all, that Israel should be kept separate from
the heathen nations. To effect and maintain
this separation, these laws of Leviticus were ad-
mirably adapted. They are of such a character
that obedience to them, even in a very imperfect
way, has made the nation to this day to be, in
a manner and degree perfectly unique, isolated
and separate from all the peoples in the midst
of whom they dwell.
The law of Leviticus was intended to effect
this preparation of Israel for its world-mission,
not only in an external manner, but also in an
internal way; namely, by revealing in and to
Israel the real character of God, and in particu-
lar His unapproachable holiness. For if Israel
is to teach the nations the way of holiness, in
which alone they can be blessed, the chosen
nation must itself first be taught holiness by the
Holy One. A lesson here for every one of us!
The revelation of the holiness of God was made,
first of all, in the sacrificial system. The great
lesson which it must have kept before the most
obtuse conscience was this, that " without shed-
ding of blood there is no remission of sin;" that
God therefore must be the Most Holy, and sin
against Him no trifle. It was made, again, in
the precepts of the law. If in some instances
these seem to tolerate evils which we should have
expected that a holy God would at once have
swept away, this is explained by our Lord (Matt.
xix. 8) by the fact that some things were of
necessity ordained in view of the hardness of
men's hearts; while, on the other hand, it is cer-
tainly quite plain that the laws of Leviticus con-
stantly held before the Israelite the absolute
-.242
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
holiness of God as the only standard of perfec-
tion.
The holiness of God was further revealed by
the severity of the penalties which were attached
to these Levitical laws. Men often call these
harsh, forgetting that we are certain to under-
estimate the criminality of sin; forgetting that
God must, in any case, have rights over human
life which no earthly ruler can have. But no
one will deny that this very severity of the law
was fitted to impress the Israelite, as nothing else
could, with God's absolute intolerance of sin and
impurity, and make him feel that he could not
trifle with God, and hope to sin with impunity.
And yet we must not forget that the law was
adapted no less to reveal the other side of the
Divine holiness; that "the Lord God is merciful
and gracious, and of great kindness." For if the
law of Leviticus proclaims that " without shed-
ding of blood there is no remission," with equal
clearness it proclaims that with shedding of
blood there can be remission of sin to every be-
lieving penitent.
And this leads to the observation that this law
was further adapted to the training of Israel for
its world-mission, in that to every thoughtful
man it must have suggested a secret of redeem-
ing mercy yet to be revealed. Every such one
must have often said in his heart that it was
" not possible that the blood of bulls and of
goats should take away sin;" and that as a sub-
stitute for human life, when forfeited by sin,
more precious blood than this must be required;
even though he might not have been able to
imagine whence God should provide such a
Lamb for an offering. And so it was that the
law was fitted, in the highest degree, to prepare
Israel for the reception of Him to whom all
these sacrifices pointed, the High Priest greater
than Aaron, the Lamb of God which should
" take away the sins of the world," in whose per-
son and work Israel's mission should at last re-
ceive its fullest realisation.
But the law of Leviticus was not only intended
to prepare Israel for the Messiah by thus awak-
ening a sense of sin and need, it was so ordered
as to be in many ways directly typical and pro-
phetic of Christ and His great redemption, in
its future historical development. Modern
rationalism, indeed, denies this; but it is none the
less a fact. According to the Apostle John (v.
46). our Lord declared that Moses wrote of
Him; and, according to Luke (xxiv. 27), when
He expounded unto the two walking to Emmaiis
" the things concerning Himself," He began His
exposition with " Moses " and (ver. 44) repeated
what He had before His resurrection taught
them, that all things " which were written in the
law of Moses " concerning Him, must be ful-
filled. And in full accord with the teaching of
the Master taught also His disciples. The writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, especially, argues
from this postulate throughout, and also ex-
plicitly affirms the typical character of the ordi-
nances of this book; declaring, for example, that
the Levitical priests in the tabernacle service
served " that which is a copy of the heavenly
things" (Heb. viii. 5); that the blood with which
" the copies of the things in the heavens " were
cleansed, prefigured " better sacrifices than
these," even the one offering of Him who " put
away sin by the sacrifice of Himself " (Heb. ix.
23-6) ; and that the holy times and sabbatic sea-
sons of the law were " a shadow of the things to
come." The fact is familiar, and one need not
multiply illustrations. Many, no doubt, in the
interpretation of these types, have broken loose
from the principles indicated in the New Testa-
ment, and given free rein to an unbridled fancy.
But this only warns us that we the more care-
fully take heed to follow the intimations of the
New Testament, and beware of mistaking our
own imaginings for the teachings of the Holy
Ghost. Such interpretations may bring typology
into disrepute, but they cannot nullify it as a
fact which must be recognised in any attempt to
open up the meaning of the book.
Neither is the reality of this typical corre-
spondence between the Levitical ritual and order
and New Testament facts set aside, even though
it is admitted that we cannot believe that Israel
generally could have seen all in it which the New
Testament declares to be there. For the very
same New Testament which declares the typical
correspondence, no less explicitly tells us this
very thing: that many things predicted and pre-
figured in the Old Testament, concerning the
sufferings and glory of Christ, were not under-
stood by the very prophets through whom they
were anciently made known (r Peter i. 10-12).
We have then carefully to distinguish in our
interpretation between the immediate historical
intention of the Levitical ordinances, for the
people of that time, and their typical intention
and meaning; but we are not to imagine with
some that to prove the one is to disprove the
other.
Tfie Present-d.a.y Use of Leviticus.
This verj' naturally brings us to the answer to
the frequent question: Of what use can the book
of Leviticus be to believers now? We answer,
first, that it is to us, just as much as to ancient
Israel, a revelation of the character of God. It
is even a clearer revelation of God's character to
us than to them; for Christ has come as the Ful-
filler, and thus the Interpreter, of the law. And
God has not changed. He is still exactly what
He was when He called to Moses out of the
tent of meeting or spoke to him at Mount Sinai.
He is just as holy as then; just as intolerant of
sin as then; just as merciful to the penitent sinner
who presents in faith the appointed blood of
atonement, as He was then.
More particularly. Leviticus is of use to us
now, as holding forth, in a singularly vivid man-
ner, the fundamental conditions of true religion.
The Levitical priesthood and sacrifices are no
more, but the spiritual truth they represented
abides and must abide for ever: namely, that
there is for sinful man no citizenship in the king-
dom of God apart from a High Priest and Medi-
ator with a propitiatory sacrifice for sin. These
are days when many, who would yet be called
Christians, belittle atonement, and deny the
necessity of the shedding of substitutionary
blood for our salvation. Such would reduce, if
it vyere possible, the whole sacrificial ritual of Le-
viticus to a symbolic jr//^-offering of the wor-
shipper to God. But against this stands the con-
stant testimony of our Lord and His apostles,
that it is only through the shedding of blood not
his ozvn that man can have remission of sin.
But Leviticus presents not only a ritual, but
also a body of civil law for the theocracy.
Hence it comes that the book is of use for to-
day, as suggesting principles which should
Leviticus i. 2-4.]
THE BURNT OFFERING.
'■43
guide human legislators who would rule accord-
ing to the mind of God. Not, indeed, that the
laws in their detail should be adopted in our
modern states; but it is certain that the prin-
ciples which underlie those laws are eternal. So-
cial and governmental questions have come to
the front in our time as never before. The ques-
tion of the relation of the civil government to
religion, the question of the rights of labour and
of capital, of land-holding, that which by a sug-
gestive euphemism we call " the social evil,"
with its related subjects of marriage and divorce,
— all these are claiming attention as never be-
fore. There is not one of these questions on
which the legislation of Leviticus does not cast
a. flood of light, into which our modern law-
makers would do well to come and walk.
For nothing can be more certain than this;
that if God has indeed once stood to a common-
wealth in the relation of King and political Head,
we shall be sure to discover in His theocratic
law upon what principles infinite righteousness,
wisdom, and goodness would deal with these
matters. We shall thus find in Leviticus that the
law which it contains, from beginning to end,
stands in contradiction to that modern demo-
cratic secularism, which would exclude religion
from government and order all national afifairs
without reference to the being and government
of God: and. by placing the law of sacrifice at
the beginning of the book, it suggests distinctly
enough that the maintenance of right relation to
God is fundamental to good government.
The severity of many of the laws is also in-
structive in this connection. The trend of pub-
lic opinion in many communities is against capi-
tal punishment, as barbarous and inhuman. We
are startled to observe the place which this has
in the Levitical law: which exhibits a severity
far removed indeed from the unrighteous and un-
discriminating severity of the earlier English
law. but no less so from the more undiscriminat-
ing leniency which has taken its place, especially
as regards those crimes in which large numbers
•of people are inclined to indulge.
No less instructive to modern law-makers and
political economists is the bearing of the Leviti-
cal legislation on the social question, the rela-
tions of rich and poor, of employer and em-
ployed. It is a legislation which, with admirable
impartiality, keeps the poor man and the rich
man equally in view; a body of law which, if
strictly carried out, would have made in Israel
either a plutocracy or a proletariat alike impos-
sible. All these things will be illustrated in the
course of exposition. Enough has been said to
show that those among us who are sorely per-
plexed as to what government should do, at what
it should aim in these matters, may gain help by
studying the mind of Divine wisdom concerning
these questions, as set forth in the theocratic law
of Leviticus.
Further, Leviticus is of use to us now as a
revelation of Christ. This follows from what
has been already said concerning the typical
character of the law. The book is thus a
treasury of divinely-chosen illustrations as to
the way of a sinner's salvation through the
priestly work of the Son of God. and as to his
present and future position and dignity as a re-
deemed man.
Finally, and for this same reason, Leviticus is
still of use to us as embodying in type and figure
prophecies of things yet to come, pertaining to
Messiah's kingdom. We must not imagine with
some that because many of its types are long ago
fulfilled, therefore all have been fulfilled. Many,
according to the hints of the New Testament,
await their fulfilment in a bright day that is com-
ing. Some, for instance, of the feasts of the
Lord have been fulfilled; as passover, and the
feast of Pentecost. But how about the day of
atonement for the sin of corporate Israel? We
have seen the type of the day of atonement ful-
filled in the entering into heaven of our great
High Priest: but in the type He came out again
to bless the people: has that been fulfilled? Has
He yet proclaimed absolution of sin to guilty
Israel? How, again, about the feast of trumpets,
and that of the ingathering at full harvest? How
about the Sabbatic year, and that most consum-
mate type of all. the year of jubilee? History
records nothing which could be held a fulfilment
of any of these; and thus Leviticus bids us look
forward to a glorious future yet to come, when
the great redemption shall at last be accom-
plished, and " Holiness to Jehovah " shall, as
Zechariah puts it (xiv. 20). be written even " on
the bells of the horses."
CHAPTER II.
SACRIFICE: THE BURNT-OFFERING.
Leviticus i. 2-4.
The voice of Jehovah which had spoken not
long before from Sinai, now speaks from out
" the tent of meeting." There was a reason for
the change. For Israel had since then entered
into covenant with God; and Moses, as the
mediator of the covenant, had sealed it by
sprinkling with blood both the Book of the
Covenant and the people. And therewith they
had professedly taken Jehovah for their God
and He had taken Israel for His people. In in-
finite grace, He had condescended to appoint for
Himself a tabernacle or " tent of meeting," where
He might, in a special manner, dwell among
them, and manifest to them His will. The taber-
nacle had been made, according to the pattern
shown to Moses in the mount; and it had been
now set up. And so now. He who had before
spoken amid the thunders of flaming, trembling
Sinai, speaks from the hushed silence of " the
tent of meeting." The first words from Sinai
had been the holy law, forbidding sin with
threatening of wrath: the first words from the
tent of meeting are words of grace, concerning
fellowship with the Holy One maintained
through sacrifice, and atonement for sin by the
shedding of blood. A contrast this which is
itself a Gospel!
The ofiferings of which we read in the next
seven chapters are of two kinds, namely, bloody
and unbloody offerings. In the former class
were included the burnt-ofifering, the peace-offer-
ing, the sin-offering, and the guilt-, or trespass-
offering; in the latter, only the meal-offering.
The book begins with the law of the burnt-
offering.
In any exposition of this law of the offerings,
it is imperative that our interpretation shall be
determined, not by any fancy of ours as to what
the offerings might fitly symbolise, nor yet, on
the other hand, be limited by what we may sup-
pose that any Israelite of that day might have
thought regarding them; but by the statements
*44
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
concerning them which are contained in the
]aw itself, and in other parts of Holy Scripture,
especially in the New Testament.
First of all, we may observe that in the book
itself the offerings are described by the remarka-
ble expression, " the bread " or " food of God."
'Thus, it is commanded (xxi. 6) that the priests
should not defile themselves, on this ground:
" the offerings of the Lord made by fire, the
bread of their God, do they offer." It was an
ancient heathen notion that in sacrifice, food was
provided for the Deity in order thus to show
Him honour. And, doubtless, in Israel, ever
prone to idolatry, there were many who rose no
higher than this gross conception of the mean-
ing of such words. Thus, in Psalm 1. 8-15, God
sharply rebukes Israel for so unworthy thoughts
of Himself, using language at the same time
which teaches the spiritual meaning of the sacri-
fice, regarded as the " food," or " bread," of
God: " I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices;
and thy burnt-offerings are continually before
Me. . . I will take no bullock out of thy house,
nor he-goats out of thy stalls. . . If I were hun-
gry, I would not tell thee; for the world is Mine,
and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of
bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto
God the sacrifice of thanksgiving; and pay thy
vows unto the Most High; and call upon Me in
the day of trouble: I will deliver thee and thou
shalt glorify Me."
Of which language the plain teaching is this:
If the sacrifices are called in the law " the bread
of God," God asks not this bread from Israel in
any material sense, or for any material need. He
asks that which the offerings symbolise; thanks-
giving, loyal fulfilment of covenant engagements
to Him, and that loving trust which will call on
Him in the day of trouble. Even so! Gratitude,
loyalty, trust! this is the " food of God," this the
" bread " which He desires that we should offer,
the bread which those Levitical sacrifices sym-
bolised. For even as man, when hungry, craves
food, and cannot be satisfied without it, so God,
who is Himself Love, desires our love, and de-
lights in seeing its expression in all those offices
of self-forgetting and self-sacrificing service in
which love manifests itself. This is to God even
as is food to us. Love cannot be satisfied except
with love returned; and we may say, with
deepest humility and reverence, the God of love
cannot be satisfied without love returned. Hence
it is that the sacrifices, which in various ways
symbolise the self-offering of love and the fel-
lowship of love, are called by the Holy Ghost
" the food," or " bread of God."
And yet we must, on no account, hasten to
the conclusion, as many do, that therefore the
Levitical sacrifices were only intended to express
and symbolise the self-offering of the worshipper,
and that this exhausts their significance. On the
contrary, the need of infinite Love for this
" bread of God " cannot be adequately met and
satisfied by the self-offering of any creature, and,
least of all, by the self-offering of a sinful
creature, whose very sin lies just in this, that he
has fallen away from perfect love. The sym-
bolism of the sacrifice as " the food of God,"
therefore, by this very phrase points toward the
self-offering in love of the eternal Son to the
Father, and in behalf of sinners, for the Father's
sake. It was the sacrifice on Calvary which first
became, in innermost reality, that " bread of
God," which the ancient sacrifices wore only in
symbol. It was this, not regarded as satisfying
Divine justice (though it did this), but as satis-
fying the Divine love; because it was the su-
preme expression of the perfect love of the in-
carnate Son of God to the Father, in His becom-
ing " obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross."
And now, keeping all this in view, we may
venture to say even more than at first as to the
meaning of this phrase, " the bread of God," ap-
plied to these offerings by fire. For just as the
free activity of man is only sustained in virtue
of and by means of the food which he eats, so
also the love of the God of love is only sustained
in free activity toward man through the self-
offering to the Father of the Son, in that atoning
sacrifice which He offered on the cross, and in
the ceaseless service of that exalted life which,
risen from the dead, Christ now lives unto God
for ever. Thus already, this expression, so
strange to our ears at first, as descriptive of Je-
hovah's offerings made by fire, points to the per-
son and work of the adorable Redeemer as its
only sufficient explication.
But, again, we find another expression, xvii.
II, which is of no less fundamental consequence
for the interpretation of the bloody offerings of
Leviticus. In connection with the prohibition
of blood for food, and as a reason for that pro-
hibition, it is said: "The life of the flesh is in
the blood; and I have given it to you upon the
altar to make atonement for your souls; for it
is the blood that maketh atonement," — mark the
expression; not, as in the received version, "for
the soul," which were mere tautology, and gives
a sense which the Hebrew cannot have, but, as
the Revised Version has it, — " by reason of the
life," or " soul " (marg.). Hence, wherever in
this law we read of a sprinkling of blood upon
the altar, this must be held fast as its meaning,
whether it be formally mentioned or not; namely,
atonement made for sinful man through the life
of an innocent victim poured out in the blood.
There may be, and often are, other ideas, as we
shall see, connected with the offering, but this is
always present. To argue, then, with so many
in modern times, that because, not the idea of an
atonement, but that of a sacrificial meal given by
the worshipper to God, is the dominant concep-
tion in the sacrifices of the ancient nations, there-
fore we cannot admit the idea of atonement and
expiation to have been intended in these Leviti-
cal sacrifices, is simply to deny, not only the New
Testament interpretation of them, but the no less
express testimony of the record itself.
But it is, manifestly, in the nature of the case
" impossible that the blood of bulls and of
goats should take away sins." Hence, we are
again, by this phrase also, constrained to look
beyond this Levitical shedding of sacrificial
blood, for some antitype of which the innocent
victims slain at that altar were types; one who,
by the shedding of his blood, should do that in
reality, which at the door of the tent of meeting
was done in symbol and shadow.
What the New Testament teaches on this point
is known to every one. Christ Jesus was the
Antitype, to whose all-sufificient sacrifice each
insufficient sacrifice of every Levitical victim
pointed. John the Baptist struck the key-note
of all New Testament teaching in this matter,
when, beholding Jesus, he cried (John i. 29),
" Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away
the sin of the world." Jesus Christ declared the
Leviticus i. 2-4.]
THE BURNT-OFFERING.
a4S
same thought again and again, as in His words
at the sacramental Supper: " This is My blood
of the new covenant, which is shed for many for
the remission of sins." Paul expressed the same
thought, when he said (Eph. v. 2) that Christ
" gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacri-
fice to God, for an odour of a sweet smell;" and
that " our redemption, the forgiveness of our
trespasses," is " through His blood (Eph. i. 7).
And Peter also, speaking in Levitical language,
teaches that we " were redeemed . . . with
precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot, even the blood of Christ;" to
which he adds the suggestive words, of which
this whole Levitical ritual is the most striking
illustration, that Christ, although " manifested at
the end of the times," " was foreknown " as the
Lamb of God " before the foundation of the
world" (i Peter i. 18-20). John, in like manner,
speaks in the language of Leviticus concerning
Christ, when he declares (i John i. 7) that "the
blood of Jesus . . . cleanseth us from all sin;"
and even in the Apocalypse, which is the Gospel
of Christ glorified. He is still brought before us
as a Lamb that had been slain, and who has thus
" purchased with His blood men of every tribe,
and tongue, and people, and nation," " to be
unto our God a kingdom and priests " (Rev. v.
6, 9, 10).
In this clear light of the New Testament, one
can see how meagre also is the view of some
who would see in these Levitical sacrifices noth-
ing more than fines assessed upon the guilty, as
theocratic penalties. Leviticus itself should have
taught such better than that. For, as we have
seen, the virtue of the bloody offerings is made
to consist in this, that " the life of the flesh is in
the blood;" and we are told that "the blood
makes atonement for the soul," not in virtue of
the monetary value of the victim, in a com-
mercial way, but " by reason of the life " that is
in the blood, and is therewith poured out before
Jehovah on the altar, — the life of an innocent vic-
tim in the stead of the life of the sinful man.
No less inadequate, if we are to let ourselves
be guided either by the Levitical or the New
Testament teaching, is the view that the offer-
ings only symbolised the self-offering of the
worshipper. We do not deny, indeed, that the
sacrifice — of the burnt-offering, for example —
may have fitly represented, and often really ex-
pressed, the self-consecration of the offerer.
But, in the light of the New Testament, this can
never be held to have been the sole, or even the
chief, reason in the mind of God for directing
these outpourings of sacrificial blood upon the
altar.
We must insist, then, on this, as essential to
the right interpretation of this law of the offer-
ings, that every one of these bloody offerings of
Leviticus typified, and was intended to typify,
our Saviour. Jesus Christ. The burnt-offering
represented Christ; the peace-offering, Christ;
the sin-offering, Christ; the guilt-, or trespass-
offering, Christ. Moreover, since each of these,
as intended especially to shadow forth some par-
ticular aspect of Christ's work, differed in some
respects from all the others, while yet in all alike
a victim's blood was shed upon the altar, we are
by this reminded that in our Lord's redemptive
work the most central and essential thing is this,
that, as He Himself said (Matt. xx. 28), He
" came to give His life a ransom for many."
Keeping this guiding thought steadily before
us, it is now our work to discover, if we may,
what special aspect of the one great sacrifice of
Christ each of these offerings was intended espe-
cially to represent.
Only, by way of caution, it needs to be added
that we are not to imagine that every minute
circumstance pertaining to each sacrifice, in all
its varieties, must have been intended to point
to some correspondent feature of Christ's person
or work. On the contrary, we shall frequently
see reason to believe that the whole purpose of
one or another direction of the ritual is to be
found in the conditions, circumstances, or im-
mediate intention of the offering. Thus, to
illustrate, when a profound interpreter suggests
that the reason for the command that the victim
should be slain on the north side of the altar, is
to be found in the fact that the north, as the side
of shadow, signifies the gloom and joylessness of
the sacrificial act, we are inclined rather to see
sufficient reason for the prescription in the fact
that the other three sides were already in a man-
ner occupied: the east, as the place of ashes; the
south, as fronting the entrance; and the west, as
facing the tent of meeting and the brazen laver.
The Ritual of the Burnt-Offering.
In the law of the offerings, that of the burnt-
offering comes first, though in the order of the
ritual it was not first, but second, following the
sin-offering. In this order of mention we need,
however, seek no mystic meaning. The burnt-
offering was very naturally mentioned first, as
being the most ancient, and also in the most con-
stant and familiar use. We read of burnt-offer-
ings as offered by Noah and Abraham; and of
peace-offerings, too, in early times; while the
sin-offering and the guilt-offering, in Leviticus
treated last, were now ordered for the first time.
So also the burnt-offering was still, by Divine
ordinance, to be the most common. No day
could pass in the tabernacle without the offering
of these. Indeed, except on the great day of
atonement for the nation, in the ritual for which,
the sin-offering was the central act, the burnt-
offering was the most important sacrifice on all
the great feast-days.
The first law, which applies to bloody offerings
in general, was this: that the victim shall be "of
the cattle, even of the herd and of the flock "
(ver. 2) ; to which is added, in the latter part of
the chapter (ver. 14), the turtledove or young
pigeon. The carnivora are all excluded; for
these, which live by the death of others, could
never typify Him who should come to give life.
And among others, only clean beasts could be
taken. Israel must not offer as " the food of
God " that which they might not eat for their
own food; nor could that which was held un-
clean be taken as a type of the Holy Victim of
the future. And, even among clean animals, a
further selection is made. Only domestic ani-
mals were allowed; not even a clean animal was
permitted, if it were taken in hunting. For it
was fitting that one should offer to God that
which had become endeared to the owner as hav-
ing cost the most of care and labour in its bring-
ing up. For this, also, we can easily see an-
other reason in the Antitype. Nothing was to
mark Him more than this: that He should be
subject and obey, and that not of constraint, as
the unwilling captive of the chase, but freely and
unresistingly.
246
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
And now follow the special directions for the
burnt-offering. The Hebrew word so rendered
means, literally, " that which ascends." It thus
precisely describes the burnt-offering in its most
distinctive characteristic. Of the other offerings,
a part was burned, but a part was eaten; in some
instances, even by the offerer himself. But in
the burnt-offering all ascends to God in flame
and smoke. For the creature is reserved noth-
ing whatever.
The first specification in the law of the burnt-
offering is this: " If his oblation be a burnt-
offering of the herd, he shall offer it a male with-
out blemish " (ver. 3). It must be a " male," as
the stronger, the type of its kind; and "without
blemish," that is, ideally perfect.
The reasons for this law are manifest. The
Israelite was thereby taught that God claims
the best that we have. They needed this lesson,
as many among us do still. At a later day, we
find God rebuking them by Malachi (i. 6, 13),
with indignant severity, for their neglect of this
law: " A son honoureth his father: ... if then I
be a Father, where is My honour? ... Ye have
brought that which was taken by violence, and
the lame, and the sick; . . . should I accept this
of your hand? saith the Lord." And as point-
ing to our Lord, the command was no less fit-
ting. Thus, as in other sacrifices, it was fore-
shadowed that the great Burnt-offering of the
future would be the one Man without blemish,
the absolutely perfect Exemplar of what man-
hood should be, but is not.
And this brings us now to the ritual of the
offering. In the ritual of the various bloody
offerings we find six parts. These are: (i) the
Presentation; (2) the Laying on of the Hand;
(3) the Killing of the Victim; in which three the
ritual was the same for all kinds of offerings.
The remaining three are: (4) the Sprinkling of
Blood; (5) the Burning; (6) the Sacrificial
Meal. In these, differences appear in the various
sacrifices, which give each its distinctive char-
acter; and, in the burnt-offering, the sacrificial
meal is omitted,— the whole is burnt upon the
altar.
First is given the law concerning
The Presentation of the Victim.
" He shall offer it at the door of the tent of meeting:, that
he may be accepted before the Lord" (ver. 3).
In this it was ordered, first, that the offerer
should bring the victim himself. There were
parts of the ceremony in which the priest acted
for him; but this he must do for himself. Even
so, he who will have the saving benefit of Christ's
sacrifice must himself bring this Christ before
the Lord. As by so doing, the Israelite signified
his acceptance of God's gracious arrangements
concerning sacrifice, so do we, bringing Christ
in our act of faith before the Lord, express our
acceptance of God's arrangement on our behalf;
our readiness and sincere desire to make use of
Christ, who is appointed for us. And this no
man can do for another.
And the offering must be presented for a cer-
tain purpose; namely "that he may be accepted
before the Lord;" * and that, as the context tells
us, not because of a present made to God, but
through an atoning sacrifice. And so now it is
* The usage of the common Hebrew phrase so rendered
does not warrant the translation in the old version : "of
his voluntary will."
not enough that a man make much of Christ, and
mention Him in terms of praise before the Lord,
as the One whom He would imitate and seek
to serve. He must in his act of faith bring this
Christ before the Lord, in such wise as to secure
thus his personal acceptance through the blood
of the Holy Victim.
And, finally, the place of presentation is pre-
scribed. It must be " at the door of the tent of
meeting." It is easy to see the original reason
for this. For, as we learn from other Scriptures,
the Israelites were ever prone to idolatry, and
that especially at places other than the appointed
temple or tent of meeting, in the fields and on
high places. Hence the immediate purpose of
this order concerning the place, was to separate
the worship of God from the worship of
false gods. There is now, indeed, no law con-
cerning the place where we may present the
great Sacrifice before God. At home, in
the closet, in the church, on the street, wher-
ever we will, we may present this Christ in our
behalf and stead as a Holy Victim before God.
And yet the principle which underlies this ordi-
nance of place is no less applicable in this age
than then. For it is a prohibition of all self-
will in worship. It was not enough that an
Israelite should have the prescribed victim; it
is not enough that we present the Christ of
God in' faith, or what we think to be faith. But
we must make no terms or conditions as to the
mode or condition of the presentation, other than
God appoints. And the command was also a
command of publicity. The Israelite was therein
commanded to confess publicly, and thus attest,
his faith in Jehovah, even as God will now have
us all make our confession of Christ a public
thing.
The second act of the ceremonial was
The Laying on of the Hand.
It was ordered:
" He shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt offer-
ing ; and it shall be accepted for him, to make atone-
ment for him " (ver. 4).
The laying on of the hand was not, as some
have maintained, a mere declaration of the
offerer's property in that which he offered, as
showing his right to give it to God. If this
were true, we should find the ceremony also in
the bloodless offerings; where the cakes of corn
were no less the property of the offerer than the
bullock or sheep of the burnt-offering. But the
ceremony was confined to these bloody offerings.
It is nearer the truth when others say that this
was an act of designation. It is a fact that the
ceremony of the laying on of hands in Scripture
usage does indicate a designation of a person or
thing, as to some office or service. In this book
(xxiv. 14), the witnesses are directed to lay their
hands upon the blasphemer, thereby appointing
him to death. Moses is said to have laid his
hands on Joshua, thus designating him in a for-
mal way as his successor; and, in the New Testa-
ment, Paul and Barnabas are set apart to the
ministry by the laying on of hands. But, in all
these cases, the ceremony symbolised more than
mere designation; namely, a transfer or com-
munication of something invisible, in connection
with this visible act. Thus, in the New Testa-
ment the laying on of hands always denotes the
communication of the Holy Ghost, either as an
Leviticus i. 2-4.]
THE BURNT-OFFERING.
247
enduement for office, or for bodily healing. The
laying of the hands of Moses on Joshua, in like
manner, signified the transfer to him of the gifts,
otftce, and authority of Moses. Even in the
case of the execution of the blaspheming son of
Shelomith, the laying on of the hands of the
witnesses had the same significance. They
thereby designated him to death, no doubt; but
therewith thus symbolically transferred to the
criminal the responsibility for his own death.
From the analogy of these cases we should
expect to find evidence of an ideal transference
of somewhat from the offerer to the victim here.
And the context does not leave the matter doubt-
ful. It is added (ver. 4), " It shall be accepted
for him, to make atonement for him." Hence it
appears that while, indeed, the otTerer, by this
laying on of his hand, did dedicate the victim to
death, the act meant more than this. It symbol-
ised a transfer, according to God's merciful pro-
vision, of an obligation to suffer for sin, from
the offerer to the innocent victim. Henceforth,
the victim stood in the offerer's place, and was
dealt with accordingly.
This is well illustrated by the account which is
given (Numb./ viii.) of the formal substitution
of the Levites in the place of all the first-born of
Israel, for special service unto God. We read
that the Levites were presented before the Lord;
and that the children of Israel then laid their
hands upon the heads of the Levites, who were
thus, we are told, '' offered as an offering unto
the Lord," and were thenceforth regarded and
treated as substitutes for the first-born of all
Israel. Thus the obligation to certain special
service was symbolically transferred, as the con-
text tells us, from the first-born to the Levites;
and this transfer of obligation from all the tribes
to the single tribe of Levi was visibly represented
by the laying on of hands. And just so here:
the laying on of the hand designated, certainly,
the victim to death; but it did this, in that it was
the symbol of a transfer of obligation.
This view of the ceremony is decisively con-
firmed by the ritual of the great day of atone-
ment. In the sin-offering of that day, in which
the conception of expiation by blood received its
fullest symbolic expression, it was ordered (xvi.
21) that Aaron should lay his hands on the head
of one of the goats of the sin-offering, and " con-
fess over him all the iniquities of the children of
Israel." Thereupon the iniquity of the nation
'was regarded as symbolically transferred from
Israel to the goat; for it is added, " and the goat
shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a
solitary land." So, while in this ritual for the
burnt-offering there is no mention of such con-
fession, we have every reason to believe the uni-
form Rabbinical tradition, that it was the custom
to make also upon the head of the victim for the
burnt-offering a solemn confession of sin, for
which they give the form to be used.
Such then was the significance of the laying on
of hands. But the ceremony meant even more
than this. For the Hebrew verb which is always
used for this, as the Rabbis point out, does not
merely mean to lay the hand upon, but so to lay
the hand as to rest or lean heavily upon the vic-
tim. This force of the word is well illustrated
from a passage where it occurs, in Psalm
Ixxxviii. 7, '' Thy wrath lieth hard upon me."
The ceremony, therefore, significantly repre-
sented the offerer as resting or relying on the
victim to procure that from God for which he
presented him, namely, atonement and accept-
ance.
This part of the ceremonial of this and other
sacrifices was thus full of spiritual import and
typical meaning. By this laying on of the hand
to designate the victim as a sacrifice, the offerer
implied, and probably expressed, a confession of
personal sin and demerit; as done " before Je-
hovah," it implied also his acceptance of God's
penal judgnient against his sin. It implied,
moreover, in that the offering was made accord-
ing to an arrangement ordained by God, that the
offerer also thankfully accepted God's merciful
provision for atonement, by which the obligation
to suffer for sin was transferred from himself,
the guilty sinner, to the sacrificial victim. And,
finally, in that the offerer was directed so to lay
his hand as to rest upon the victim, it was most
expressively symbolised that he, the sinful Israel-
ite, rested and depended on this sacrifice as the
atonement for his sin, his divinely appointed sub-
stitute in penal death.
What could more perfectly set forth the way in
which we are for our salvation to make use of
the Lamb of God as slain for us? By faith, we
lay the hand upon His head. In this, we do
frankly and penitently own the sins for which, as
the great Burnt-sacrifice, the Christ of God was
offered; we also, in humility and self-abasement,
thus accept the judgment of God against our-
selves, that because of sin we deserve to be cast
out from Him eternally; while, at the same time,
we most thankfully accept this Christ as " the
Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the
world," and therefore our sins also, if we will
but thus make use of Him; and so lean and rest
with all the burden of our sin on Him.
For the Israelite who should thus lay his hand
upon the head of the sacrificial victim a promise
follows. " It shall be accepted for him, to make
atonement for him."
In this word " atonement " we are introduced
to one of the key-words of Leviticus, as indeed
of the whole Scripture. The Hebrew radical
originally means " to cover," and is used once
(Gen. vi. 14) in this purely physical sense. But,
commonly, as here, it means " to cover " in a
spiritual sense, that is, to cover the sinful person
from the sight of the Holy God, who is " of
purer eyes than to behold evil." Hence, it is
commonly rendered " to atone," or " to make
atonement;" also, " to reconcile," or " to make
reconciliation." The thought is this: that be-
tween the sinner and the Holy One comes now
the guiltless victim; so that the eye of God lootcs
not upon the sinner, but on the offered substi-
tute; and in that the blood of the substituted
victim is offered before God for the sinner, atone-
meht is made for sin, and the Most Holy One is
satisfied.
And when the believing Israelite should lay
his hand with confession of sin upon the ap-
pointed victim, it was graciously promised: " It
shall be accepted for him, to make atonement
for him." And just so now, whenever any guilty
sinner, fearing the deserved wrath of God be- '
cause of his sin, especially because of his lack of
that full consecration which the burnt-sacrifice
set forth, lays his hand in faith upon the great
Burnt-offering of Calvary, the blessing is the
same. For in the light of the cross, this Old
Testament word becomes now a sweet New Tes-
tament promise: " When thou shalt rest with the
34S
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
hand of faith upon this Lamb of God, He shall
be accepted for thee, to make atonement for
thee."
This is most beautifully expressed in an an-
cient " Order for the Visitation of the Sick," at-
tributed to Anselm of Canterbury, in which it is
written:
" The minister shall say to the sick man,
Dost thou believe that thou canst not be saved
but by the death of Christ? The sick man an-
swereth, Yes. Then let it be said unto him: Go
to, then, and whilst thy soul abideth in thee, put
all thy confidence in this death alone; place thy
trust in no other thing; commit thyself wholly to
this death; cover thyself wholly, with this alone.
. . . And if God would judge thee, say: Lord! I
place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between
me and Thy judgment; otherwise I will not con-
tend or enter into judgment with Thee.
" And if He shall say unto thee that thou art a
sinner, say: I place the death of our Lord Jesus
Christ between me and my sins. If He shall say
unto thee, that thou hast deserved damnation,
say: Lord! I put the death of our Lord Jesus
Christ between Thee and all my sins; and I oflfer
His merits for my own, which I should have,
and have not."
And whosoever of us can thus speak, to him
the promise speaks from out the shadows of the
tent of meeting: " This Christ, the Lamb of God,
the true Burnt-oflfering, shall be accepted for
thee, to make atonement for thee! "
CHAPTER III.
THE BURNT-OFFERING (concluded).
Leviticus i. 5-17; vi. 8-13.
After the laying on of the hand, the next
sacrificial act was —
The Killing of the Victim.
"And he shall kill the bullock before the Lord " (ver. 5).
In the light of what has been already said, the
significance of this killing, in a typical way, will
be quite clear. For with the first sin, and again
and again thereafter, God had denounced death
as the penalty of sin. But here is a sinner who,
in accord with a Divine command, brings before
God a sacrificial victim, on whose head he lays
his hand, on which he thus rests as he confesses
his sins, and gives over the innocent victim to
die instead of himself. Thus each of these sacri-
ficial deaths, whether in the burnt-oflfering, the
peace-ofifering, or the sin-ofifering, brings ever
before us the death in the sinner's stead of that
one Holy Victim who suffered for us, " the just
for the unjust," and thus laid down His life, in
accord with His own previously declared inten-
tion, " as a ransom for many."
In the sacrifices made by and for individuals,
the victim was killed, except in the case of the
turtle-dove or pigeon, by the offerer himself; but,
very naturally, in the case of the national and
public offerings, it was killed by the priest. As,
in this latter case, it was impossible that all indi-
vidual Israelites should unite in killing the vic-
tim, it is plain that the priest herein acted as the
representative of the nation. Hence we may
properly say that the fundamental thought of the
ritual was this, that the victim should be killed
by the oflferer himself.
And by this ordinance we may well be re-
minded, first, how Israel, — for whose sake as a
nation the antitypical Sacrifice was offered, — ■
Israel itself became the executioner of the Vic-
tim; and, beyond that, how, in a deeper sense,
every sinner must regard himself as truly causal
of the Saviour's death, in that, as is often truly
said, our sins nailed Christ to His cross. But
whether such a reference were intended in this
law of the offering or not, the great, significant,
outstanding fact remains, that as soon as the
offerer, by his laying on of the hand, signified
the transfer of the personal obligation to die for
sin from himself to the sacrificial victim, then
came at once upon that victim the penalty de-
nounced against sin.
And the added words, " before the Lord," cast
further light upon this, in that they remind us
that the killing of the victim had reference to Je-
hovah, whose holy law the oflferer, failing of that
perfect consecration which the ,burnt-oflfering
symbolised, had failed to glorify and honour.
The Sprinkling of Blood.
" And Aaron's sons, the priests, shall present the blood,
and sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar that is
at the door of the tent of meeting" (ver. 5).
And now follows the fourth act in the cere-
monial, the Sprinkling of the Blood. The
oflferer's part is now done, and herewith the work
of the priest begins. Even so must we, having
laid the hand of faith upon the head of the sub-
stituted Lamb of God, now leave it to the heav-
enly Priest to act in our behalf with God.
The directions to the priest as to the use of the
blood vary in the diflferent offerings, according
as the design is to give greater or less promi-
nence to the idea of expiation. In the sin-oflFer-
ing this has the foremost place. But in the
burnt-oflfering, as also in the peace-oflfering, al-
though the conception of atonement by blood
was not absent, it was not the dominant concep-
tion of the sacrifice. Hence, while the sprin-
kling of blood by the priest could in no wise be
omitted, it took in this case a subordinate place
in the ritual. It was to be sprinkled only on the
sides of the altar of burnt-oflfering which stood
in the outer court. We read (ver. 5) : " Aaron's
sons, the priests, shall present the blood, and
sprinkle the blood round about upon the altar
that is at the door of the tent of meeting."
It was in this sprinkling of the blood that the
atoning work was completed. The altar had
been appointed as a place of Jehovah's special
presence; it had been designated as a place where
God would come unto man to bless him. Thus,
to present and sprinkle the blood upon the altar
was symbolically to present the blood unto God.
And the blood represented life, — the life of an
innocent victim atoning for the sinner, because
rendered up in the stead of his life. And the
priests were to sprinkle the blood. So, while
to bring and present the sacrifice of Christ, to
lay the hand of faith upon His head, is our part,
with this our duty ends. To sprinkle the blood,
to use the blood God-ward for the remission of
sin, this is the work alone of our heavenly Priest.
We are then to leave that with Him.
Reserving a fuller exposition of the meaning
of this sprinkling of blood for the exposition of
the sin-oflFering, in which it was the central act
of the ritual, we pass on now to the burning of
the sacrifice, which in this offering marked the
culmination of its special symbolism.
r^eviticus i. 5-17.]
THE BURNT OFFERING.
249
The Sacrificial Burning.
Leviticus i. 6-9, 12, 13, 17.
" And he shall flay the burnt offering, and cut it into its
pieces. And the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire
upon the altar, and lay wood in order upon the fire : and
Aaron's sons, the priests, shall lay the pieces, the head,
and the fat, in order upon the wood that is on the fire
which is upon the altar : but its inwards and its legs shall
he wash with water : and the priest shall burn the whole
on the altar, for a burnt offering, an offering made by
fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord. . . And he shall
cut it into its pieces, with its head and its fat : and the
priest shall lay them in order on the wood that is on the
fire which is upon the altar : but the inwards and the legs
shall he wash with water : and the priest shall offer the
whole, and burn it upon the altar : it is a burnt offering,
an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the
Lord. . . And he shall rend it by the wings thereof, but
shall not divide it asunder : and the priest shall burn it
upon the altar, upon the wood that is upon the fire : it is
a burnt offering, an offering made by fire, of a sweet
savour unto the Lord."
It was the distinguishing peculiarity of the
burnt-offering, from which it takes its name, that
in every case the whole of it was burned, and
thus ascended heavenward in the fire and smoke
of the altar. The place of the burning, in this
and other sacrifices, is significant. The flesh of
the sin-offering, when not eaten, was to be
burned in a clean place without the camp. But
it was the law of the burnt-offering that it should
be wholly consumed upon the holy altar at the
door of the tent of meeting. In the directions
for the burning we need seek for no occult mean-
ing; the most of them are evidently intended
simply as means to the end; namely, the con-
sumption of the offering with the utmost readi-
ness, ease, and completeness. Hence it must be
flayed and cut into its pieces, and carefully ar-
ranged upon the wood. The inwards and the
legs must be washed with water, that into the
offering, as to be offered to the Holy One, might
come nothing extraneous, nothing corrupt and
unclean.
In vv. 10-13 and 14-17 provision is made for
the offering of different victims, of the flock, or
of the fowls. The reason for this permitted
variation, although not mentioned here, was
doubtless the same which is given for a similar
permission in chap. v. 7, where it is ordered that
if the offerer's means suffice not for a certain
offering, he may bring one of less value. Pov-
erty shall be no plea for not bringing a burnt-
sacrifice; to the Israelite of that time it thus set
forth the truth, that " if there first be a willing
heart, it is accepted according to that a man hath,
and not according to that he hath not."
The variations in the prescriptions regarding
the different victims to be used in the sacrifice
are but slight. The bird having been killed by
the priest (why this change it is not easy to see),
its crop, with its contents of food unassimilated.
and therefore not a part of the bird, as also the
feathers, was to be cast away. It was not to be
divided, like the bullock, and the sheep or goat,
simply because, with so small a creature, it was
not necessary to the speedy and entire combus-
tion of the offering. In each case alike, the
declaration is made that the sacrifice, thus
offered and wholly burnt upon the altar, is " an
offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the
Lord."
And now a question comes before us, the an-
swer to which is vital to the right understanding
of the burnt-offen'ng. wheth'^r in its original or
typical import. What was the significance of the
burning? It has been very often answered that
the consumption of the victim by fire symbolised
the consuming wrath of Jehovah, utterly destroy-
ing the victim which represented the sinful per-
son of the offerer. And, observing that the
burning followed the killing and shedding of
blood, some have even gone so far as to say that
the burning typified the eternal fire of hell! But
when we remember that, without doubt, the sac-
rificial victim in all the Levitical offerings was a
type of our blessed Lord, we may well agree
with one who justly calls this interpretation
" hideous." And yet many, who have shrunk
from this, have yet in so far held to this concep-
tion of the symbolic meaning of the burning as
to insist that it must at least have typified those
fiery sufferings in which our Lord offered up His
soul for sin. They remind us how often, in the
Scripture, fire stands as the symbol of the con-
suming wrath of God against sin, and hence
argue that this may justly be taken here as the
symbolic meaning of the burning of the victim
on the altar.
But this interpretation is nevertheless, in every
form, to be rejected. As regards the use of fire
as a symbol in Holy Scripture, while it is true
that it often represents the punitive wrath of
God, it is equally certain that it has not always
this meaning. Quite as often it is the symbol
of God's purifying energy and might. Fire was
not the symbol of Jehovah's vengeance in the
burning bush. When the Lord is represented as
sitting " as a refiner and a purifier of silver,"
surely the thought is not of vengeance, but of
purifying mercy. We should rather say that
fire, in Scripture usage, is the symbol of the in-
tense energy of the Divine nature, which con-
tinually acts upon 6very person and on every
thing, according to the nature of each person or
thing; here conserving, there destroying; now
cleansing, now consuming. The same fire which
burns the wood, hay, and stubble, purifies the
gold and the silver.
Hence, while it is quite true that fire often
typifies the wrath of God punishing sin, it is
certain that it cannot always symbolise this, not
even in the sacrificial ritual. For in the meal-
offering of chap. ii. it is impossible that the
thought of expiation should enter since no life is
offered and no blood is shed; yet this also is pre-
sented unto God in fire. The fire then in this
case must mean something else than the Divine
wrath, and presumably must mean one thing in
all the sacrifices. And that not even in the
burnt-offering can the burning of the sacrifice
symbolise the consuming wrath of God, becomes
plain, when we observe that, according to the
uniform teaching of the sacrificial ritual, atone-
ment is already fully accomplished, prior to the
burning, in the sprinkling of the blood. That
the burning, which follows the atonement, should
have any reference to Christ's expiatory suffer-
ings, is thus quite impossible.
We must hold, therefore, that the burning can
only mean in the burnt-offering that which alone
it can signify in the meal-offering; namely, the
ascending of the offering in consecration to God,
on the one hand; and, on the other, God's gra-
cious acceptance and appropriation of the offer-
ing. This was impressively set forth in the case
of the burnt-offering presented when the taber-
nacle service was inaugurated; when, we are told
(ix. 24), the fire which consumed it came forth
from before Jehovah, lighted by no human hand,
250
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
and was thus a visible representation of God ac-
cepting and appropriating the offering to Him-
self.
The symbolism of the burning thus under-
stood, we can now perceive what must have been
the special meaning of this sacrifice. As re-
garded by the believing Israelite of those days,
not yet discerning clearly the deeper truth it
shadowed forth as to the great Burnt-sacrifice of
the future, it must have symbolically taught him
that complete consecration unto God is essential
to right worship. There were sacrifices having
a different special import, in which, while a part
was burnt, the offerer might even himself join in
eating the remaining part, taking that for his
own use. But, in the burnt-offering, nothing
was for himself: all was for God; and in the fire
of the altar God took the whole in such a way
that the offering for ever passed beyond the
offerer's recall. In so far as the offerer entered
into this conception, and his inward experience
corresponded to this outward rite, it was for him
an act of worship.
But to the thoughtful worshipper, one would
think, it must sometimes have occurred that,
after all, it was not himself or his gift that thus
ascended in full consecration to God, but a vic-
tim appointed by God to represent him in death
on the altar. And thus it was that, whether
understood or not, the offering in its very nature
pointed to a Victim of the future, in whose per-
son and work, as the One only fully-consecrated
Man, the burnt-offering should receive its full
explication. And this brings us to the question.
What aspect of the person and work of our Lord
was herein specially typified? It cannot be the
resultant fellowship with God, as in the peace-
offering; for the sacrificial feast which set this
forth was in this case wanting. Neither can it
be expiation for sin; for although this is ex-
pressly represented here, yet it is not the chief
thing. The principal thing, in the burnt-offer-
ing, was the burning, the complete consumption
of the victim in the sacrificial fire. Hence what
is represented chiefly here, is not so much Christ
representing His people in atoning death, as
Christ representing His people in perfect conse-
cration and entire self-surrender unto God; in a
word, in perfect obedience.
Of these two things, the atoning death and the
representative obedience, we think, and with rea-
son, much of the former; but most Christians,
though without reason, think less of the latter.
And yet how much is made of this aspect of our
Lord's work in the Gospels! The first words
which we hear from His lips are to this effect,
when, at twelve years of age, He asked His
mother (Luke ii. 49), " Wist ye not that I must
be (lit.) in the things of My Father?" and after
His official work began in the first cleansing of
the temple, this manifestation of His character
was such as to remind His disciples that it was
written, " The zeal of Thy house shall eat me
up"; — phraseology which brings the burnt-
offering at once to mind.* And His constant
testimony concerning Himself, to which His
whole life bare witness, was in such words as
these: " I came down from heaven, not to do
My own will, but the will of Him that sent Me."
* See Psalm Ixix. q. ami compare in the Hebrew such ex-
of fire.
In particular. He especially regarded His aton-
ing work in this aspect. In the parable of the
Good Shepherd (John x. 1-18), for example, after
telling us that because of His laying down His
life for the sheep the Father loved Him, and
that to this end He had received from the Father
authority to lay down His life for the sheep, He
then adds as the reason of this: " This command-
ment have I received from My Father." And so
elsewhere (John xii. 49, 50) He says of all His
words, as of all His works: "The Father hath
given Me a commandment, what I should say,
and what I should speak; ... the things there-
fore which I speak, even as the Father hath said
unto Me, so I speak." And when at last His
earthly work approaches its close, and we see
Him in the agony of Gethsemane, there He ap-
pears, above all, as the perfectly consecrated
One, offering Himself, body, soul, and spirit, as
a whole burnt-offering unto God, in those never-
to-be-forgotten words (Matt. xxvi. 39), " Father,
if it be possible, let this cup pass away from Me;
nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."
And, if any more proof were needed, we have it
in that inspired exposition (Heb. x. 5-10) of
Psalm xl. 6-8, wherein it is taught that this per-
fect obedience of Christ, in full consecration,
was indeed the very thing which the Holy Ghost
foresignified in the whole brunt-offerings of the
law: "When He cometh into the world. He
saith. Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not,
but a body didst Thou prepare for Me; in whole
b^rnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hadst
no pleasure: then said I, Lo, I am come (in the
roll of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy
will, O God."
Thus the burnt-offering brings before us in
type, for our faith, Christ as our Saviour in
virtue of His being the One wholly surrendered
to the will of the Father. Nor does this exclude,
but rather defines, the conception of Christ as
our substitute and representative. For He said
that it was for our sakes that He '' sanctified," or
"consecrated" Himself (John xvii. 19); and
while the New Testament represents Him as
saving us by His death as an expiation for sin,
it no less explicitly holds Him forth to us as
having obeyed in our behalf, declaring (Rom. v.
19) that it is " by the obedience of the One Man "
that " many are made righteous." And, else-
where, the same Apostle represents the incom-
parable moral value of the atoning death of the
cross as consisting precisely in this fact, that it
was a supreme act of self-renouncing obedience,
as it is written (Phil. ii. 6-9): " Being in the form
of God, He yet counted it not a prize to be on an
equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking
the form of a servant, being made in the likeness
of men; . . . becoming obedient even unto death,
yea. the death of the cross. Wherefore also God
highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the
name which is above every name."
And so the burnt-offering teaches us to re-
member that Christ has not only died for our
sins, but has also consecrated Himself for us to
God in full self-surrender in our behalf. We are
therefore to plead not only His atoning death,
but also the transcendent merit of His life of full
consecration to the Father's will. To this, the
words, three times repeated concerning the
burnt-offerinp (vv. 9, 13, 17), in this chaptei",
blessedly apply: it is "an offering made by fire,
of a sweet savour," a fragrant odour, " unto the
Lord." That is, this full self-surrender of the
Leviticus vi. 8-13.]
THE BURNT OFFERING.
251
holy Son of God unto the Father is exceedingly
delightful and acceptable unto God. And for
this reason it is for us an ever-prevailing argu-
ment for our own acceptance, and for the gra-
cious bestowment for Christ's sake of all that
there is in Him for us.
Only let us ever remember that we cannot
argue, as in the case of the atoning death, that
as Christ died that we might not die, so He
ofifered Himself in full consecration unto God,
that we might thus be released from this obliga-
tion. Here the exact opposite is the truth. For
Christ Himself said in His memorable prayer,
just before His offering of Himself to death,
" For their sakes I sanctify (marg. " conse-
crate ") Myself, that they also might be sanctified
in truth." And thus is brought before us the
thought, that if the sin-offering emphasised, as
we shall see, the substitutionary death of Christ,
whereby He became our righteousness, the
burnt-offering, as distinctively, brings before us
Christ as our sanctification, offering Himself
without spot, a whole burnt-offering to God.
And as by that one life of sinless obedience to
the will of the Father He procured our salvation
by His merit, so in this respect He has also be-
come our one perfect Example of what conse-
cration to God really is. A thought this is
which, with evident allusion to the burnt-
offering, the Apostle Paul brings before us,
charging us (Eph. v. 2) that we " walk in love,
as Christ also loved us, and gave Himself for us,
an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odour
of a sweet smell."
And the law further suggests that no extreme
of spiritual need can debar any one from avail-
ing Himself of our great Burnt-sacrifice. A
burnt-offering was to be received even from one
who was so poor that he could bring but a turtle-
dove or a young pigeon (ver. 14). One might,
at first thought, not unnaturally say: Surely there
can be nothing in this to point to Christ; for the
true Sacrifice is not many, but one and pnly.
And yet the very fact of this difference allowed
in the typical victims, when the reason of the
allowance is remembered, suggests the most
precious truth concerning Christ, that no
spiritual poverty of the sinner need exclude him
from the full benefit of Christ's saving work.
Provision is made in Him for all those who,
most truly and with most reason, feel themselves
to be poor and in need of all things. Christ, as
our sanctification, is for all who will make use
of Him; for all who, feeling most deeply and
painfully their own failure in full consecration,
would take Him, as not only their sin-offering,
but also their burnt-offering, both their example
and their strength, unto perfect self-surrender
unto God. We may well here recall to mind the
exhortation of the Apostle to Christian believers,
expressed in language which at once reminds us
of the burnt-offering (Rom. xii. i): "I beseech
you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to
God, which is your reasonable service."
The Continual Burnt-offering.
Leviticus vi. 8-13.
" And the Lord spake unto Moses, sayinj?, Command
Aaron and his sons, .saying-. This is the law of the burnt
offering : the burnt offering- shall be on the hearth, upon
the altar all night unto the morning; and the fire of the
altar shall be kept burning thereon. And the priest shall
put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches shall he
put upon his flesh ; and he shall take up the ashes where-
to the fire hath consumed the burnt offering on the altar,
and he shall put them beside the altar. And he shall put
off his garments, and put on other garments, and carry
forth the ashes without the camp unto a clean place. And
the lire upon the altar shall be kept burning thereon, it
shall not go out ; and the priest shall burn wood on it
every morning : and he shall lay the burnt offering in
order upon it. and shall burn thereon the fat of the peace
offerings. Fire shall be kept burning upon the altar con-
tinually ; it shall not go out."
In chap. vi. 8-13 we have a " law of the burnt-
offering " specially addressed to " Aaron and his
sons," and designed to secure that the fire of the
burnt-offering should be continually ascending
unto God. In chap. i. we have the law regard-
ing burnt-offerings brought by the individual
Israelite. But besides these it was ordered,
Exod. xxix. .38-46, that every morning and even-
ing the priest should offer a lamb as a burnt-
offering for the whole people, — an offering which
primarily symbolised the constant renewal of
Israel's consecration as " a kingdom of priests "
unto the Lord. It is to this, the daily burnt-
offering, that this supplementary law of chap. vi.
refers. All the regulations are intended to pro-
vide for the uninterrupted maintenance of this
sacrificial fire: first, by the regular removal of
the ashes which would else cover and smother
the fire; and, secondly, by the supply of fuel.
The removal of the ashes from the fire is a
priestly function; hence it was ordained that the
priest for this service put on his robes of office,
" his linen garment and his linen breeches," and
then take up the ashes from the altar, and lay
them by the side of the altar. But as from time
to time it would be necessary to remove them
from this place quite without the tent, it was
ordered that he should carry them forth " with-
out the camp unto a clean place," that the sanc-
tity of all connected with Jehovah's worship
might never be lost sight of: though, as it was
forbidden to wear the priestly garments except
within the tent of meeting, the priest, when this
service was performed, must " put on other gar-
ments," his ordinary, unofficial robes. The
ashes being thus removed from the altar each
morning, then the wood was put on, and the
parts of the lamb laid in order upon it to be per-
fectly consumed. And whenever during the day
any one might bring a peace-offering unto the
Lord, on this ever-burning fire the priest was to
place also the fat, the richest part, of the offering,
and with it also the various individual burnt-
offerings and meal-offerings of each day. And
thus it was arranged by the law that, all day
long, and all night long, the smoke of the burnt-
offering should be continually ascending unto
the Lord.
The significance of this can hardly be missed.
By this supplemental law which thus provided
for " a continual burnt-offering " to the Lord, it
was first of all signified to Israel, and to us, that
the consecration which the Lord so desires and
requires from His people is not occasional, but
continuous. As the priest, representing the
nation, morning by morning cleared away the
ashes which had else covered the flame and
caused it to burn dull, and both morning by
morning and evening by evening, laid a new
victim on the altar, so will God have us do. Our
self-consecration is not to be occasional, but
continual and habitual. Each morning we
should imitate the priest of old. in putting away
all that micrht dull the flame of our devotion, and,
morning by morning, when we arise, and even-
252
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
ing by evening, when we retire, by a solemn act
of self-consecration give ourselves anew unto
the Lord. So shall the word in substance, thrice
repeated, be fulfilled in us in its deepest, truest
sense: "The fire shall be kept burning on the
altar continually: it shall not go out" (vv. 9, 12,
13).
But we must not forget that in this part of the
law, as in all else, we are pointed to Christ. This
ordinance of the continual burnt-ofTering re-
minds us that Christ, as our burnt-offering, con-
tinually offers Himself to God in self-consecra-
tion in our behalf. Very significant it is that
the burnt-oflfering stands in contrast in this re-
spect with the sin-offering. We never read of a
continual sin-offering; even the great annual sin-
offering of the day of atonement, which, like the
daily burnt-offering, had reference to the nation
at large, was soon finished, and once for all.
And it was so with reason; for in the nature of
the case, our Lord's offering of Himself for sin
as an expiatorv sacrifice was not and could not
be a continuous act. But with His presentation
of Himself unto God in full consecration of His
person as our Burnt-offering, it is different.
Throughout the days of His humiliation this
self-offering of Himself to God continued; nor,
indeed, can we say that it has yet ceased, or ever
can cease. For still, as the High Priest of the
heavenly sanctuary. He continually offers Him-
self as our Burnt-offering in constantly renewed
and constantly continued devotement of Himself
to the Father to do His will.
In this ordinance of the daily burnt-offering,
ever ascending in the fire that never went out,
the idea of the burnt-sacrifice reaches its fullest
expression, the type its most perfect develop-
ment. And thus the law of the burnt-offering
leaves us in the presence of this holy vision: the
greater than Aaron, in the heavenly place as our
great Representative and Mediator, morning by
morning, evening by evening, offering Himself
unto the Father in the full self-devotement of
His risen life unto God, as our " continual burnt-
offering." In this, let us rejoice and be at
peace.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MEAL-OFFERING.
Leviticus ii. 1-16; vi. 14-23.
The word which in the original uniformly
stands for the English "meal-offering" (A. V.
"meat-offering," i. e., "food-offering") pri-
marily means simply " a present," and is often
properly so translated in the Old Testament. It
is, for example, the word which is used (Gen.
xxxii. 13) when we are told how Jacob sent a
present to Esau his brother; or, later, of the
gift sent by Israel to his son Joseph in Egypt
(Gen. xliii. 11); and, again (2 Sam. viii. 2), of the
gifts sent by the Moabites to David. Whenever
thus used of gifts to men, it will be found that it
suggests a recognition of the dignity and au-
thority of the person to whom the present is
made, and, in many cases, a desire also to pro-
cure thereby his favour.
In the great majority of cases, however, the
word is used of offerings to God, and in this use
one or both of these ideas can easily be traced.
In Gen. iv. 4, 5, in the account of the offerings
of Cain and Abel, the word is applied both to the
bloody and the unbloody offering; but in the
Levitical law, it is only applied to the latter.
We thus find the fundamental idea of the meal-
offering to be this: it was a gift brought by the
worshipper to God, in token of his recognition
of His supreme authority, and as an expression
of desire for His favour and blessing.
But although the meal-offering, like the burnt-
offering, was an offering made to God by fire,
the differences between them were many and
significant. In the burnt-offering, it was always
a life that was given to God; in the meal-offer-
ing, it was never a life, but always the products
of the soil. In the burnt-offering, again, the
offerer always set apart the offering by the lay-
ing on of the hand, signifying thus, as we have
seen, a transfer of obligation to death for sin;
thus connecting with the offering, in addition to
the idea of a gift to God, that of expiation for
sin, as preliminary to the offering by fire. In
the meal-offering, on the other hand, there was
no laying on of the hand, as there was no shed-
ding of blood, so that the idea of expiation for
sin is in no way symbolised. The conception of
a gift to God, which, though dominant in the
burnt-offering, is not in that the only thing sym-
bolised, in the meal-offering becomes the only
thought the offering expresses.
It is further to be noted that not only must the
meal-offering consist of the products of the soil,
but of such alone as grow, not spontaneously,
but by cultivation, and thus represent the result
of man's labour. Not only so, but this last
thought is the more emphasised, that the grain
of the offering was not to be presented to the
Lord in its natural condition as harvested, but
only when, by grinding, sifting, and often, in
addition, by cooking in various ways, it has
been more or less fully prepared to become the
food of man. In any case, it must, at least, be
parched, as in the variety of the offering which
is last mentioned in the chapter (vv. 14-16).
With these fundamental facts before us, we
can now see what must have been the primary
and distinctive significance of the meal-offering,
considered as an act of worship. As the burnt-
offering represented the consecration of the life,
the person, to God, so the meal-offering repre-
sented the consecration of the fruit of his
labours.
If it be asked, why it was that when man's
labours are so manifold, and their results so di-
verse, the product of the cultivation of the soil
should be alone selected for this purpose, for
this, several reasons may be given. In the first
place, of all the occupations of man, the cultiva-
tion of the soil is that of by far the greatest
number, and so, in the nature of the case, must
continue to be; for the sustenance of man, so
far as he is at all above the savage condition,
comes, in the last analysis, from the soil. Then,
in particular, the Israelites of those days of
Moses were about to become an agricultural
nation. Most natural and suitable, then, it was
that the fruit of the activities of such a people
should be symbolised by the product of their
fields. And since even those who gained their
living in other ways than by the cultivation of
the ground, must needs purchase with their
earnings grain and oil, the meal-offering would,
no less for them than for others, represent the
consecration to God of the fruit of their la-
bour.
I-eviticusii. 1-16.]
THE MEAL-OFFERING.
'53
The meal-offering is no longer an ordinance of
worship, but the duty which it signified remains
in full obligation still. Not only, in general, are
we to surrender our persons without reserve to
the Lord, as in the burnt-offering, but unto Him
must also be consecrated all our works.
This is true, first of all, regarding our religious
service. Each of us is sent into the world to do
a certain spiritual work among our fellow-m.en.
This work and all the result of it is to be offered
as a holy meal-offering to the Lord. A German
writer has beautifully set forth this significance
of the meal-offering as regards Israel. " Israel's
bodily calling was the cultivation of the ground
in the land given him by Jehovah. The fruit of
his calling, under the Divine blessing, was corn
and wine, his bodily food, which nourished and
sustained his bodily life. IsraeFs spiritual call-
ing was to work in the field, of the kingdom of
God, in the vineyard of his Lord; this work was
Israel's covenant obligation. Of this, the fruit
was the spiritual bread, the spiritual nourishment,
which should sustain and develop his spiritual
life." * And the calling of the spiritual Israel,
which is the Church, is still the same, to labour
in the field of the kingdom of God, which is the
world of men; and the result of this work is still
the same, namely, with the Divine blessing,
spiritual fruit, sustaining and developing the
spiritual life of men. And in the meal-of¥ering
we are reminded that the fruit of all our spiritual
labours is to be offered to the Lord.
The reminder might seem unneedful, as indeed
it ought to be; but it is not. For it is sadly pos-
sible to call Christ " Lord," and, labouring in
His field, do in His name many wonderful
works, yet not really unto Him. A minister of
the Word may with steady labour drive the
ploughshare of the law, and sow continually the
undoubted seed of the Word in the Master's
field; and the apparent result of his work may be
large, and even real, in the conversion of men
to God, and a great increase of Christian zeal
and activity. And yet it is quite possible that a
man do this, and still do it for himself, and not
for the Lord; and when success comes, begin to
rejoice in his evident skill as a spiritual husband-
man, and in the praise of man which this brings
him; and so, while thus rejoicing in the fruit of
his labours, neglect to bring of this good corn
and wine which he has raised for a daily meal-
offering in consecration to the Lord. Most sad
is this, and humiliating, and yet sometimes it so
comes to pass.
And so, indeed, it may be in every department
of religious activity. The present age is with-
out its like in the wonderful variety of its enter-
prise in matters benevolent and religious. On
every side we see an ever-increasing army of
labourers driving their various work in the field
of the world. City Missions of every variety,
Poor Committees with their free lodgings and
soup-kitchens. Young Men's Christian Associa-
tions, Blue Ribbon Societies, the White Cross
Army and the Red Cross Army, Hospital Work,
Prison Reform, and so on; — there is no enumer-
ating all the diverse improved methods of
spiritual husbandry around us, nor can any one
rightly depreciate the intrinsic excellence of all
this, or make light of the work or of its good
results. But for all this, there are signs that
many need to be reminded that all such labour in
<iod's field, however God may graciously make
* Kurtz, "Der Alt-testamentliche Opfercultus," p. 243.
17— Vol. I.
use of it, is not necessarily labour for God; that
labour for the good of men is not therefore of
necessity labour consecrated to the Lord. For
can we believe that from all this the meal-offer-
ing is always brought to Him? The ordinance
of this offering needs to be remembered by us all
in connection with these things. The fruit of
all these our labours must be offered daily in
solemn consecration to the Lord,
But the teaching of the meal-offering reaches
further than to what we call religious labours.
For in that it was appointed that the offering
should consist of man's daily food, Israel was
reminded that God's claim for full consecration
of all our activities covers everything, even to
the very food we eat. There are many who con-
secrate, or think they consecrate, their religious
activities; but seem never to have understood
that the consecration of the true Israelite must
cover the secular life as well, — the labour of the
hand in the field, in the shop, the transactions of
the office or on 'Change, and all their results, as
also the recreations which we are able to com-
mand, the very food and drink which we use, — in
a word, all the results and products of our la-
bours, even in secular things. And to bring this
idea vividly before Israel, it was ordered that the
meal-offering should consist of food, as the most
common and universal visible expression of the
fruit of man's secular activities. The New Testa-
ment has the same thought (i Cor. x. 31):
" Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
do all to the glory of God."
And the offering was not to consist of any
food which one might choose to bring, but of
corn and oil, variously prepared. Not to speak
yet oT any deeper reason for this selection, there
is one which lies quite on the surface. For these
were the most common and universal articles of
the food of the people. There were articles of
food, then as now, which were only to be seen
on the tables of the rich; but grain, in some
form, was and is a necessity for all. So also the
oil, which was that of the olive, was something
which in that part of the world, all, the poor no
less than the rich, were wont to use continually
in the preparation of their food; even as it is
used to-day in Syria, Italy, and other countries
where the olive grows abundantly. Hence it
appears that that was chosen for the offering
which all, the richest and the poorest alike,
would be sure to have; with the evident intent,
that no one might be able to plead poverty as
an excuse for bringing no meal-offering to the
Lord.
Thus, if this ordinance of the meal-offering
taught that God's claim for consecration covers
all our activities and all their result, even to the
very food that we eat, it teaches also that this
claim for consecration covers all persons. From
the statesman who administers the affairs of an
Empire to the day-labourer in the shop, or mill,
or field, all alike are hereby reminded that the
Lord requires that the work of every one shall
be brought and offered to Him in holy consecra-
tion.
And there was a further prescription, although
not mentioned here in so many words. In some
offerings, barley-meal was ordered, but for this
offering the grain presented, whether parched, in
the ear, or ground into meal, must be only wheat.
The reason for this, and the lesson which it
teaches, are plain. For wheat, in Israel, as still
in most lands, was the best and most valued of
254
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
the grains. Israel must not only offer unto God
of the fruit of their labour, but the best result of
their labours. Not only so, but when the offer-
ing was in the form of meal, cooked or un-
cooked, the best and finest must be presented.
That, in other words, must be offered which
represented the most of care and labour in its
preparation, or the equivalent of this in purchase
price. Which emphasises, in a slightly different
form, the same lesson as the foregoing. Out of
the fruit of our several labours and occupations
we are to set apart especially for God, not only
that which is best in itself, the finest of the
wheat, but that which has cost us the most labour.
David finely represented this thought of the meal-
offering when he said, concerning the cattle for
his burnt-offerings, which Araunah the Jebusite
would have him accept without price: " I will
not offer unto the Lord my God of that which
doth cost me nothing."
But in the meal-offering it was not the whole
product of his labour that the Israelite was di-
rected to bring, but only a small part. How
could the consecration of this small part repre-
sent the consecration of all? The answer to this
question is given by the Apostle Paul, who calls
attention to the fact that in the Levitical sym-
bolism it was ordained that the consecration of
a part should signify the consecration of the
whole. For he writes (Rom. xi. i6), " If the
first-fruit is holy, then the lump " — the whole
from which the first-fruit is taken — " is also
holy;" that is, the consecration of a part signifies
and symbolically expresses the consecration of
the whole from which that part is taken. The
idea is well illustrated by a custom in India, ac-
cording to vv'hich, when one visits a man oi dis-
tinction, he will offer the guest a silver coin; an
act of social etiquette which is intended to ex-
press the thought that all he has is at the service
of the guest, and is therewith offered for his use.
And so in the meal-offering. By offering to
God, in this formal way, a part of the product of
his labour, the Israelite expressed a recognition
of His claim upon the whole, and professed a
readiness to place, not this part merely, but the
whole, at God's service.
But in the selection of the materials, we are
pointed toward a deeper symbolism, by the in-
junction that in certain cases, at least, frankin-
cense should be added to the offering. But this
was not of man's food, neither was it, like the
meal, and cakes, and oil, a product of man's
labour. Its effect, naturally, was to give a grate-
ful perfume to the sacrifice, that it might be, even
in a physical sense, " an odour of a sweet smell."
The symbolical meaning of incense, in which the
frankincense was a chief ingredient, is very
clearly intimated in Holy Scripture. It is sug-
gested in David's prayer (Psalm cxli. 2): " Let
my prayer be set forth as incense; the lifting up
of my hands, like the evening oblation." So,
in Luke i. 10, we read of the whole multitude of
the people praying without the sanctuary, while
the priest Zacharias was offering incense within.
And, finally, in the Apocalypse, this is expressly
declared to be the symbolical significance of in-
cense; for we read (v. 8), that the four-and-
twenty elders " fell down before the Lamb, hav-
ing . . . golden bowls full of incense, which are
the prayers of the saints." So then, without
doubt, we must understand it here. In that
frankincense was to be added to the meal-offer-
ing, it is signified that this offering of the fruit
of our labours to the Lord must ever be accom-
panied by prayer; and, further, that our prayers,
thus offered in this daily consecration, are most
pleasing to the Lord, even as the fragrance of
sweet incense unto man.
But if the frankincense, in itself, had thus a
symbolical meaning, it is not unnatural to infer
the same also with regard to other elements of
the sacrifice. Nor is it, in view of the nature of
the symbols, hard to discover what that should
be.^
For inasmuch as that product of labour is se-
lected for the offering, which is the food by
which men live, we are reminded that this is to
be the final aspect under which all the fruit of
our labours is to be regarded; namely, as fur-
nishing and supplying for the need of the many
that which shall be bread to the soul. In the
highest sense, indeed, this can only be said of
Him who by His work became the Bread of Life
for the world, who was at once " the Sower " and
" the Corn of Wheat " cast into the ground; and
yet, in a lower sense, it is true that the work of
feeding the multitudes with the bread of life is
the work of us all; and that in all our labours
and engagements we are to keep this in mind as
our supreme earthly object. Just as the products
of human labour ar: most diverse, and yet all
are capable of being exchanged in the market
for bread for the hungry, so are we to use all
the products of our labour with this end in
view, that they may be offered to the Lord as
cakes of fine meal for the spiritual sustenance
of man.
And the oil, too, which entered into every form
of the meal-offering, has in Holy Scripture a
constant and invariable symbolical meaning. It
is the uniform symbol of the Holy Spirit of God.
Isaiah Ixi. i is decisive on this point, where in
prophecy the Alessiah speaks thus: "The Spirit
of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord
God hath anointed me to preach good tidings."
Quite in accord with this, we find that when
Jesus reached thirty years of age, — the time for
beginning priestly service, — He was set apart for
His work, not as the Levitical priests, by anoint-
ing with symbolical oil. but by the anointing with
the Holy Ghost descending on Him at His bap-
tism. So, also, in the Apocalypse, the Church is
symbolised by seven golden candlesticks, or
lamp-stands, supplied with oil after the manner
of that in the temple, reminding us that as the
lamp can give light only as supplied with oil,
so, if the Church is to be a light in the world,
she must be continually supplied with the Spirit
of God. Hence, the injunction that the meal of
the offering be kneaded with oil, and that, of
whatever form the offering be, oil should be
poured upon it. is intended, according to this
usage, to teach us, that in all work which shall
be offered so as to be acceptable to God, must
enter, as an inworking and abiding agent, the
life-giving Spirit of God.
It is another direction as to these meal-offer-
ings, as also regarding all offerings made by fire,
that into them should never enter leaven (ver.
11). The symbolical significance of this prohibi-
tion is familiar to all. For in all leaven is a prin-
ciple of decay and corruption, which, except its
continued operation be arrested betimes in our
preparation of leavened food, will soon make
that in which it works offensive to the taste.
Hence, in Holy Scripture, leaven, without a
single exception, is the established symbol of
Leviticus ii. 1-16.]
THE MEAL-OFFERING.
255
spiritual corruption. It is this, both as con-
sidered in itself, and in virtue of its power of
self-propagation in the leavened mass. Hence
the Apostle Paul, using familiar symbolism,
charged the Corinthians (i Cor. v. 7) that they
" purge out from themselves the old leaven; and
that they keep festival, not with the leaven of
malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened
bread of sincerity and truth." Thus, in this pro-
hibition is brought before us the lesson, that we
take heed to keep out of those works which we
present to God for consumption on His altar the
leaven of wickedness in every form. The pro-
hibition, in the same connection, of honey (ver.
11) rests upon the same thought; namely, that
honey, like leaven, tends to promote fermenta-
tion and decay in that with which it is mixed.
The Revised Version — in this case doubtless to
be preferred to the other — brings out a striking
qualification of this universal prohibition of
leaven or honey, in these words (ver. 12) : " As
an oblation of first-fruits ye shall ofifer them unto
the Lord; but they shall not come up for a sweet
savour on the altar."
\ Thus, as the prohibition of leaven and honey
from the meal-offering burned by fire upon the
altar reminds us that the Holy One demands ab-
solute freedom from all that is corrupt in the
works of His people; on the other hand, this
gracious permission to offer leaven and honey in
the first-fruits (which were not burned on the
altar) seems intended to remind us that, never-
theless, from the Israelite in covenant with God
through atoning blood. He is yet graciously
pleased to accept even offerings in which sinful
imperfection is found, so that only, as in the
offering of first-fruits, there be the hearty recog-
nition of His rightful claim, before all others, to
the first and best we have.
In ver. 13 we have a last requisition as to the
material of the meal-offering: " Every oblation
of thy meal-offering shalt thou season with salt."
As ieaven is a principle of impermanence and de-
cay, so salt, on the contrary, has the power of
conservation from corruption. Accordingly, to
this day, among the most diverse peoples, salt
is the recognised symbol of incorruption and un-
changing perpetuity. Among the Arabs of to-
day, for example, when a compact or covenant
is made between different parties, it is the cus-
tom that each eat of salt, which is passed around
on the blade of a sword: by which act they re-
gard themselves as bound to be true, each to the
other, even at the peril of life. In like manner,
in India and other Eastern countries, the usual
word for perfidy and breach of faith is, literally,
" unfaithfulness to the salt:" and a man will say.
" Can you distrust me? Have I not eaten of
your salt? " That the symbol has this recog-
nised meaning in the meal-offering is plain from
the words which follow (ver. 13) : " Neither shalt
thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God
to be wanting from thy meal-offering." In the
meal-offering, as in all offerings made by fire,
the thought was this: that Jehovah and the
Israelite, as it were, partake of salt together, in
token of the eternal permanence of the holy cove-
nant of salvation into which Israel has entered
with God.
Herein we are taught, then, that by the con-
secration of our labours to God we recognise the
relation between the believer and his Lord, as not
occasional and temporary, but eternal and in-
corruptible. In all our consecration of our
works to God, we are to keep this thought in
mind: " I am a man with whom God has entered
into an everlasting covenant, ' a covenant of
salt' "
Three varieties of the meal-offering were pre-
scribed: the first (vv. 1-3), of uncooked meal;
the second (,vv. 4-11). of the same fine meal and
oil, variously prepared by cooking; the third (vv.
14-16), of the first and best ears of the new grain,
simply parched in the fire. If any special sig-
nificance is to be recognised in this variety of the
offerings, it may possibly be found in this, that
one form might be suited better than another to
persons of different resources. It has been sup-
posed that the different implements named — the
oven, the baking-pan or plate, the frying-pan —
represent, respectively, what different classes of
the people might be more or less likely to have.
This thought more certainly appears in the per-
mission even of parched grain, which then, as
still in the East, while used more or less by all,
was especially the food of the poorest of the
people; such as might even be too poor to own
so much as an oven or a baking-pan.
In any case, the variety which was permitted
teaches us, that whatever form the product of our
labour may take, as determined either by our
poverty or our riches, or by whatever reason,
God is graciously willing to accept it, so the oil,
frankincense, and salt be not wanting. It is our
privilege, as it is our duty, to oft'er of it in con-
secration to our redeeming Lord, though it be
no more than parched corn. The smallness or
meanness of what we have to give, need not keep
us back from presenting our meal-offering.
If we have rightly understood the significance
of this oft'ering, the ritual which is given will
now easily yield us its lessons. As in the case
of the burnt-offering, the meal-offering also must
be brought unto the Lord by the offerer himself.
The consecration of our works, like the conse-
cration of our persons, must be our own volun-
tary act. Yet the offering must be delivered
through the mediation of the priest; the offerer
must not presume himself to lay it on the altar.
Even so still. In this, as in all else, the Heav-
enly High Priest must act in our behalf with
God. We do not, by our consecration of our
works, therefore become able to dispense with
His offices as Mediator between us and God.
This is the thought of many, but it is a great
mistake. No offering made to God, except in
and through the appointed Priest, can be ac-
cepted of Him.
It was next directed that the priest, having re-
ceived the offering at the hand of the worshipper,
should make a twofold use of it. In the burnt-
offering the whole was to be burnt; but in the
meal-offering only a small part. The priest was
to take out of the offering, in each case, " a
memorial thereof, and burn it on the altar"; and
then it is added (vv. 3-10), " that which is left of
the meal offering " — which was always much the
larger part — " shall be Aaron's and his sons'."
The small part taken out by the priest for the
altar was burnt with fire; and its consumption by
the fire of the altar, as in the other offerings,
symbolised God's gracious acceptance and ap-
propriation of the offering.
But here the question naturally arises, if the
total consecration of the worshipper and his full
acceptance by God. in the case of the burnt-
offering, was signified by the burning of the
whole, how is it that, in this case, where also we
256
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
must think of a consecration of the whole, yet
only a small part was offered to God in the fire
of the altar? But the difficulty is only in ap-
pearance. For, no less than in the burnt-offer-
ing, all of the meal-offering is presented to God,
and all is no less truly accepted by Him. The
difference in the two cases is only in the use to
which God puts the offering. A part of the
meal-offering is burnt on the altar as " a me-
morial," to signify that God takes notice of and
graciously accepts the consecrated fruit of our
labours. It is called " a memorial " in that, so to
speak, it reminded the Lord of the service and
devotion of His faithful servant. The thought is
well illustrated by the words of Nehemiah (v.
19), who said: "Think upon me, O Lord, for
good, according to all that I have done for this
people;" and by the word of the angel to Cor-
nelius (Acts X. 4): "Thy prayers and thine alms
are gone up for a memorial before God;" for a
memorial in such wise as to procure to him a
gracious visitation.
The remaining and larger portion of the meal-
offering was given to the priest, as being the
servant of God in the work of His house. To
this service he was set apart from secular occu-
pations, that he might give himself wholly to the
duties of this ofifice. In this he must needs be
supported; and to this end it was ordained by
God that a certain part of the various offerings
should be given him, as we shall see more fully
hereafter.
In striking contrast with this ordinance, which
gave the largest part of the meal-offering to the
priest, is the law that of the frankincense he must
take nothing; " all " must go up to God, with
the " memorial," in the fire of the altar (vv. 2,
16). But in consistency with the symbolism it
could not be otherwise. For the frankincense
was the emblem of prayer, adoration, and praise;
of this, then, the priest must take naught for
himself. The manifest lesson is one for all who
preach the Gospel. Of the incense of praise
which may ascend from the hearts of God's
people, as they minister the Word, they must
take none for themselves. " Not unto us, O
Lord, but unto Thy name be the glory."
Such then was the meaning of the meal-offer-
ing. It represents the consecration unto God
by the grace of the Holy Spirit, with prayer and
praise, of all the work of our hands; an offering
with salt, but without leaven, in token of our
unchanging covenant with a holy God. And
God accepts the offerings thus presented by His
people, as a savour of a sweet smell, with which
He is well pleased. We have called this conse-
cration a duty; is it not rather a most exalted
privilege?
Only let us remember, that although our con-
secrated offerings are accepted, we are not ac-
cepted because of the offerings. Most instruc-
tive it is to observe that the meal-offerings were
not to be offered alone; a bloody sacrifice, a
burnt-offering or sin-offering, must always pre-
cede. How vividly this brings before us the
truth that it is only when first our persons have
been cleansed by atoning blood, and thus and
therefore consecrated unto God, that the conse-
cration and acceptance of our works is possible.
We are not accepted because we consecrate our
works, but our consecrated works themselves are
accepted because first we have been " accepted
in the Beloved " through faith in the blood of
the holy Lamb of God.
The Daily Meal-Offering.
Leviticus vi. 14-23.
"And this is the law of the meal-offering: the sons of
Aaron shall offer it before the Lord, before the altar.
And he shall take up therefrom his handful, of the fine
flour of the meal-offering and of the oil thereof, and
all the frankincense which is upon the meal-offering,
and shall burn it upon the altar for a sweet savour, as
the memorial thereof, unto the Lord. And that which
is left thereof shall" Aaron and his sons eat: it shall
be eaten without leaven in a holy place : in the court of
the tent of meeting they shall eat it. It shall not be
baken with leaven. I have given it as their portion of My
offerings made by fire ; it is most holy, as the sin-offering,
and as the guilt-offering. Every male among the children
of Aaron .shall eat of it, as a due for ever throughout your
generations, from the offerings of the Lord made by fire :
whosoever toucheth them shall be holy. And the Lord
spake unto Moses, saying. This is the oblation of Aaron
and of his sons, which they shall offer unto the Lord in
the day when he is anointed ; the tenth part of an ephah
of fine'flour for a meal-offering perpetually, half of it in
the morning, and half thereof in the evening. On a bak-
ing-pan it shall be made witti oil ; when it is soaked, thou
Shalt bring it in : in baken pieces shalt thou offer the
meal-offering for a sweet savour unto the Lord. And the
anointed priest that shall be in his stead from among his
sons shall offer it : by a statute for ever it shall be wholly
burnt unto the Lord. And every meal-offering of the
priest shall be wholly burnt : it shall not be eaten." .
As there were not only the burnt-offerings of
the individual Israelite, but also a daily burnt-
offering, morning and evening, presented by the
priest as the representative of the collective na-
tion, so also with the meal-offering. The law
concerning this daily meal-offering is given in
chap. vi. 19. The amount in this case was pre-
scribed, being apparently the amount regarded
as a day's portion of food — " the tenth part of
an ephah of fine flour," half of which was to be
offered in the morning and half in the evening,
made on a baking pan with oil, " for a sweet
savour unto the Lord." Unlike the meal-offer-
ing of the individual, it is said, " by a statute for
ever, it shall be wholly burnt unto the Lord. . .
Every meal-offering of the priest shall be wholly
burnt; it shall not be eaten." This single varia-
tion from the ordinance of chap. ii. is simply an
application of the principle which governs all
the sacrifices except the peace-offering, that he
who offered any sacrifice could never himself eat
of it; and as the priest in this case was the
offerer, the symbolism required that he should
himself have nothing of the offering, as being
wholly given by him to the Lord. And this
meal-offering was to be presented, not merely,
as some have inferred from ver. 20, on the day
of the anointing of the high priest, but, as is
expressly said, " perpetually."
The typical meaning of the meal-offering, and,
in particular, of this daily meal-offering, which,
as we learn from Exod. xxx. 39, 40, was offered
with the daily burnt-offering, is very clear.
Every meal-ottering pointed to Christ in His
consecration of all His works to the Father.
And as the daily burnt-offering presented by
.A.aron and his sons typified our heavenly High
Priest as offering His person in daily consecra-
tion unto God in our behalf, so, in the daily
meal-offering, wholly burnt upon the altar, we
see Him in like manner offering unto God in
perfect consecration, day by day, perpetually, all
His works for our acceptance. To the believer,
often sorely oppressed with the sense of the im-
perfection of his own consecration of his daily
works, in that because of this the Father is not
glorified by him as He should be. how exceed-
ingly comforting this view of Christ! For that
which, at the best, we do so imperfectly and in-
Leviticus iii. 1-17.]
THE PEACE-OFFERING.
257
terruptedly, He does in our behalf perfectly, and
with never-failing constancy; thus at once per-
fectly glorifying the Father, and also, through
the virtue of the boundless merit of this conse-
cration, constantly procuring for us daily grace
unto the life eternal.
CHAPTER V.
THE PEACE-OFFERING.
Leviticus iii. 1-17; vii. 11-34; xix. 5-8; xxii.
21-25.
In chap. iii. is given, though not with com-
pleteness, the law of the peace-offering. The
alternative rendering of this term, " thank-oflfer-
ing " (marg. R. V.), precisely expresses only one
variety of the peace-oflfering; and while it is
probably impossible to find any one word that
shall express in a satisfactory way the whole con-
ception of this ofifering, it is not easy to find one
better than the familiar term which the Revisers
have happily retained. As will be made clear in
the sequel, it was the main object of this offering,
as consisting of a sacrifice terminating in a fes-
tive sacrificial meal, to express the conception of
friendship, peace, and fellowship with God as
secured by the shedding of atoning blood.
Like the burnt-offering and the meal-offering,
the peace-offering had come down from the times
before Moses. We read of it, though not ex-
plicitly named, in Gen. xxxi. 54, on the occasion
of the covenant between Jacob and Laban,
wherein they jointly took God as witness of
their covenant of friendship; and, again, in Exod.
xviii. 12, where " Jethro took a burnt-offering
and sacrifices for God; and Aaron came and all
the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses'
father-in-law before God." Nor was this form
of sacrifice, any more than the burnt-offering,
confined to the line of Abraham's seed. Indeed,
scarcely any religious custom has from the most
remote antiquity been more universally observed
than this of a sacrifice essentially connected with
a sacrificial meal. An instance of the heathen
form of this sacrifice is even given in the Penta-
teuch, where we are told (Exod. xxxii. 6) how
the people, having made the golden calf, wor-
shipped it with peace-offerings, and " sat down
to eat and to drink " at the sacrificial meal which
was inseparable from the peace-offering; while
in I Cor. x. Paul refers to like sacrificial feasts
as common among the idolaters of Corinth.
It hardly needs to be again remarked that there
is nothing in such facts as these to trouble the
faith of the Christian, any more than in the gen-
eral prevalence of worship and of prayer among
heathen nations. Rather, in all these cases alike,
are we to see the expression on the part of man
of a sense of need and want, especially, in this
case, of friendship and fellowship with God; and,
seeing that the conception of a sacrifice culmi-
nating in a feast was, in truth, most happily
adapted to symbolise this idea, surely it were
nothing strange that God should base the ordi-
nances of His own worship upon such universal
conceptions and customs, correcting in them
only, as we shall see, what might directly or in-
directly misrepresent truth. Where an alphabet,
so to speak, is thus already found existing,
whether in letters or in symbols, why should the
Lord communicate a new and unfamiliar sjrm-
bolism, which, because new and unfamiliar,
would have been, for that reason, far less likely
to be understood?
The plan of chap. iii. is very simple; and there
is little in its phraseology requiring explanation.
Prescriptions are given for the offering of peace-
offerings, first, from the herd (vv. 1-5) ; then,
from the flock, whether of the sheep (vv. 6-1 1)
or of the goats (vv. 12-16). After each of these
three sections it is formally declared of each
offering that it is " a sweet savour," " an offering
made by fire," or " the food of the offering made
by fire unto the Lord." The chapter then closes
with a prohibition, specially occasioned by the
directions for this sacrifice, of all use by Israel
of fat or blood as food.
The regulations relating to the selection of the
victim for the offering differ from those for the
burnt-offering in allowing a greater liberty of
choice. A female was permitted, as well as a
male; though recorded instances of the observ-
ance of the peace-offering indicate that the male
was even here preferred when obtainable. The
offering of a dove or a pigeon is not, however,
mentioned as permissible, as in the case of the
burnt-offering. But this is no exception to the
rule of greater liberty of choice, since these were
excluded by the object of the offering as a sacri-
ficial meal, for which, obviously, a small bird
would be insufficient. Ordinarily, the victim
must be without blemish; and yet, even in this
matter, a larger liberty was allowed (chap. xxii.
22) in the case of those which were termed " free-
will offerings," where it was permitted to offer
even a bullock or a lamb which might have
" some part superfluous or lacking." The lati-
tude of choice thus allowed finds its sufficient
explanation in the fact that while the idea of
representation and expiation had a place in the
peace-offering as in all bloody offerings, yet this
was subordinate to the chief intent of the sacri-
fice, which was to represent the victim as food
given by God to Israel in the sacrificial meal.
It is to be observed that only such defects are
therefore allowed in the victim as could not pos-
sibly affect its value as food. And so even al-
ready, in these regulations as to the selection of
the victim, we have a hint that we have now to
do with a type, in which the dominant thought
is not so much Christ, the Holy Victim, our
representative, as Christ the Lamb of God, the
food of the soul, through participation in which
we have fellowship with God.
As before remarked, the ritual acts in the
bloody sacrifices are, in all, six, each of which,
in the peace-offering, has its proper place. Of
these, the first four, namely, the presentation,
the laying on of the hand, the killing of the vic-
tim, and the sprinkling of the blood, are precisely
*he same as in the burnt-offering, and have the
same symbolic and typical significance. In both
the burnt-offering and the peace-offering, the
innocent victim typified the Lamb of God, pre-
sented by the sinner in the act of faith to God as
an atonement for sin through substitutionary
death; and the sprinkling of the blood upon the
altar signifies in this, as in the other, the appli-
cation of that blood Godward by the Divine
Priest acting in our behalf, and thereby procur-
ing for us remission of sin, redemption through
the blood of the slain Lamb.
In the other two ceremonies, namely, the
burning and the sacrificial meal, the peace-offer-
ing stands in strong contrast with the burnt-
258
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
offering. In the burnt-offering all was burned
upon the altar; in the peace-offering all the fat,
and that only. The detailed directions which are
given in the case of each class of victims are in-
tended simply to direct the selection of those
parts of the animal in which the fat is chiefly
found. They are precisely the same for each,
except in the case of the sheep. With regard to
such a victim, the particular is added, according
to King James's version, " the whole rump;" but
the Revisers have with abundant reason cor-
rected this translation, giving it correctly as
" the fat tail entire." The change is an instruc-
tive one, as it points to the idea which deter-
mined this selection of all the fat for the offering
by fire. For the reference is to a special breed
of sheep which is still found in Palestine, Arabia,
and North Africa. With these, the tail grows to
an immense size, sometimes weighing fifteen
pounds or more, and consists almost entirely of
a rich substance, in character between fat and
marrow. By the Orientals in the regions where
this variety of sheep is found it is still esteemed
as the most valuable part of the animal for food.
And thus, just as in the meal-offering the Israel-
ite was required to bring out of all his grain the
best, and of his meal the finest, so in the peace-
offering he is required to bring the fat, and in the
case of the sheep this fat tail, as the best and
richest parts, to be burnt upon the altar to Je-
hovah. And the burning, as in the whole burnt-
sacrifice, was, so to speak, the visible Divine ap-
propriation of that which was placed upon the
altar, the best of the offering, as appointed to be
" the food of God." If the symbolism, at first
thought, perplex any, we have but to remember
how frequently in Scripture " fat " and " fat-
ness " are used as the symbol of that which is
richest and best; as, e. g., where the Psalmist
says, " They shall be abundantly satisfied with
the fatness of Thy house;" and Isaiah. " Come
unto Me, and let your soul delight itself in fat-
ness." Thus when, in the peace-offering, of
which. the larger part was intended for food, it
is ordered that the fat should be given to God
in the fire of the altar, the same lesson is taught
as in the meal-offering, namely, God is ever to
be served first and with the best that we have.
" All the fat is the Lord's."
In the burnt-offering, the burning ended the
ceremonial: in the nature of the case, since all
was to be burnt, the object of the sacrifice was
attained when the burning was completed. But
in the case of the peace-offering, to the burning
of the fat upon the altar now followed the culmi-
nating act of the ritual, in the eating of the sac-
rifice. In this, however, we must distinguish
from the eating by the offerer and his household,
the eating by the priests; of which only the first-
named properly belonged to the ceremonial oi
the sacrifice. The assignment of certain parts of
the sacrifice to be eaten by the priests has the
same meaning as in the meal-offering. These
portions were regarded in the law as given, not
by the offerer, but by God. to His servants the
priests; that they might eat them, not as a cere-
monial act, but as their appointed sustenance
from His table whom they served. To this we
shall return in a subsequent chapter, and there-
fore need not dwell upon it here.
This eating of the sacrifice by the priests has
thus not yet taken us beyond the coiiception of
the meal-offering, with a part of which they, in
like manner, by God's arrangement, were fed.
Quite different, however, is the sacrificial eating
by the offerer which follows. He had brought
the appointed victim; it had been slain in his be-
half: the blood had been sprinkled for atonement
on the altar; the fat had been taken off and
burned upon the altar; the thigh and breast hud
been given back by God to the officiating priest;
and now, last of all, the offerer himself receives
back from God, as it were, the remainder of the
flesh of the victim, that he himself might eat it
before Jehovah. The chapter before us gives no
directions as to this sacrificial eating; these are
given in Deut. xii. 6, 7, 17, 18. to which passage,
in order to the full understanding of that which
is most distinctive in the peace-offering, we must
refer. In the two verses last named, we have a
regulation which covers, not only the peace-
offerings, but with them all other sacrificial eat-
ings, thus: "Thou mayest not eat within thy
gates the tithe of thy corn, or of thy wine, or of
thy oil, or the firstlings of thy herd or of thy
flock, nor any of thy vows which thou vowest,
nor thy free-will offerings, nor the heave-offering
of thy hand: but thou shalt eat them before the
Lord thy God in the place which the Lord thy
God shall choose, thou and thy son. and thy
daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-
servant, and the Levite that is within thy gates;
and thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God
in all that thou puttest thy hand unto."
In these directions are three particulars; the
offerings were to be eaten, by the offerer, not at
his own home, but before Jehovah at the central
sanctuary; he was to include in this sacrificial
feast all the members of his family, and any Le-
vite that might be stopping with him; and he
was to make the feast an occasion of holy joy
before the Lord in the labour of his hands.
What was now the special significance of all
this? As this was the special characteristic of
the peace-offering, the answer to this question
will point us to its true significance, both for
Israel in the first place, and then for us as well,
as a type of Him who was to come.
It is not hard to perceive the significance of a
feast as a symbol. It is a natural and suitable
expression of friendship and fellowship. He
who gives the feast thereby shows to the guests
his friendship toward them, in inviting them to
partake of the food of his house. And if, in any
case, there has been an interruption or breach of
friendship, such an invitation to a feast, and asso-
ciation in it of the formerly alienated parties, is
a declaration on the part of him who gives the
feast, as also of those who accept his invitation,
that the breach is healed, and that where there
was enmity, is now peace.
So natural is this symbolism that, as above re-
marked, it has been a custom very widely spread
among heathen peoples to observe sacrificial
feasts, very like to this peace-offering of the He-
brews, wherein a victim is first offered to some
deity, and its flesh then eaten by the offerer and
his friends. Of such sacrificial feasts we read in
ancient Babylonia and Assyria, in Persia, and,
in modern times, among the Arabs, Hindoos,
and Chinese, and various native races of the
American continent; always having the same
symbolic intent and meaning — namely, an ex-
pression of desire after friendship and intercom-
munion with the deity thus worshipped. The
existence of this custom in Old Testament days
is recognised in Isa. Ixv. 11 (R. V.). where God
charges the idolatrous Israelites with preparing
Leviticus iii. 1-17.]
THE PEACE-OFFERING.
259
" a table for the p:od Fortune." and filling up
" mingled wine unto (the goddess) Destiny " —
certain Babylonian (?) deities; and in the New
Testament, as already remarked, the Apostle
Paul refers to the same custom among the idola-
trous Greeks of Corinth.
And because this symbolic meaning of a feast
is as suitable and natural as it is universal, we
find that in the symbolism of Holy Scripture,
eating and drinking, and especially the feast, has
been appropriated by the Holy Spirit to express
precisely the same ideas of reconciliation, friend-
ship, and intercommunion between the giver of
the feast and the guest, as in all the great heathen
religions. We meet this thought, for instance,
in Psalm xxiii. 5: " Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of my enemies;" and in
Psalm xxxvi. 8, where it is said of God's people:
" They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fat-
ness of Thy house;" and again, in the grand
prophecy in Isaiah xxv., of the final redemp-
tion of all the long-estranged nations, we read
that when God shall destroy in Mount Zion
" the veil that is spread over all nations, and
swallow up death for ever," then " the Lord of
hosts shall make unto all peoples a feast of fat
things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things
full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined."
And in the New Testament, the symbolism is
taken up again, and used repeatedly by our Lord,
as, for example, in the parables of the Great
Supper (Luke xiv. 15-24) and the Prodigal Son
(Luke XV. 23), the Marriage of the King's Son
(Matt. xxii. 1-14), concerning the blessings of
redemption; and also in that ordinance of the
Holy Supper, which He has appointed to be a
continual reminder of our relation to Himself,
and means for the communication of His grace,
through our symbolic eating therein of the flesh
of the slain Lamb of God.
Thus, nothing in the Levitical symbolism is
better certified to us than the meaning of the
feast of the peace-offering. Employing a sym-
bol already familiar to the world for centuries,
God ordained this eating of the peace-offering in
Lsrael, to be the symbolic expression of peace
and fellowship with Himself. In Israel it was
to be eaten " before the Lord," and, as well it
might be, " with rejoicing."
But, just at this point, the question has been
raised: How are we to conceive of the sacrificial
feast of the peace-offering? Was it a feast
oflFered and presented by the Israelite to God. or
a feast given by God to the Israelite? In other
words, in this feast, who was represented as host,
and who as guest? Among other nations than
the Hebrews, it was the thought in such cases
that the feast was given by the worshipper to
his god. This is well illustrated by an Assyrian
inscription of Esarhaddon, who, in describing his
palace at Nineveh, says: " I filled with beauties
the great palace of my empire, and I called it
' the Palace which rivals the World.' Ashur.
Ishtar of Nineveh, and the gods of Assyria, all
of them, I feasted within it. Victims, precious
and beautiful, I sacrificed before them, and I
caused them to receive my gifts."
But here we come upon one of the most strik-
ing and instructive contrasts between the heathen
conception of the sacrificial feast and the same
symbolism as used in Leviticus and other
Scripture. In the heathen sacrificial feasts, it is
man who feasts God; in the peace-ofifering of
Leviticus, it is God who feasts man. Some have
indeed denied that this is the conception of the
peace-offering, but most strangely. It is true
that the offerer, in the first instance, had brought
the victim; but it seems to be forgotten by such,
that prior to the feasting he had already given
the victim to God to be offered in expiation for
sin. From that time the victim was no longer,
any part of it, his own property, but God's. God
having received the offering, now directs what
use shall be made of it; a part shall be burned
upon the altar; another part He gives to the
priests, His servants; with the remaining part
He now feasts the worshipper.
And as if to make this clearer yet, while Esar-
haddon, for example, gives his feast to the gods,
not in their temples, but in his own palace, as
himself the host and giver of the feast, the
Israelite, on the contrary, — that he might not,
like the heathen, complacently imagine himself
to be feasting God, — is directed to eat the peace-
offering, not at his own house, but at God's
house. In this way God was set forth as the
host, the One who gave the feast, to whose
house the Israelite was invited, at whose table
he was to eat.
Profoundly suggestive and instructive is this
contrast between the heathen custom in this
offering, and the Levitical ordinance. For do
we not strike here one of the deepest points of
contrast between all of man's religion, and the
Gospel of God? Man's idea always is, until
taught better by God, " I will be religious and
make God my friend, by doing something, giv-
ing something for God." God, on the contrary,
teaches us in this symbolism, as in all Scripture,
the exact reverse; that we become truly religious
by taking, first of all, with thankfulness and joy.
what He has provided for us. A breach of
friendship between man and God is often im-
plied in the heathen rituals, as in the ritual of
Leviticus; as also, in both, a desire for its re-
moval, and renewed fellowship with God. Bui
in the former, man ever seeks to attain to this
intercommunion of friendship by something that
he himself will do for God. He will feast God,
and thus God shall be well pleased. But God's
way is the opposite! The sacrificial feast at
which man shall have fellowship with God is
provided not by man for God, but by God for
man. and is to be eaten, not in our house, but
spiritually partaken in the presence of the invisi-
ble God.
We can now perceive the teaching of the
peace-offering for Israel. In Israel, as among all
the nations, was the inborn craving after fellow-
ship and friendship with God. The ritual of the
peace-offering taught him how it was to be ob-
tained, and how communion might be realised.
The first thing was for him to bring and present
a divinely-appointed victim; and then, the laying
of the hand upon his head with confession of sin;
then, the slaying of the victim, the sprinkling of
its blood, and the offering of its choicest parts to
God in the altar fire. Till all this was done, till
in symbol expiation had been thus made for the
Israelite's sin, there could be no feast which
should speak of friendship and fellowship with
God. But this being first done. God now, in
token of His free forgiveness and restoration to
favour, invites the Israelite to a joyful feast in
His own house.
What a beautiful symbol! Who can fail to
appreciate its meaning v/hen once pointed out?
Let us imagine that through some fault of ours
26o
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
a dear friend has become estranged; we used to
eat and drink at his house, but there has been
none of that now for a long time. We are
troubled, and perhaps seek out one who is our
friend's friend and also our friend, to whose
kindly interest we entrust our case, to reconcile
to us the one we have ofifended. He has gone to
mediate; we anxiously await his return; but or
ever he has come back again, comes an invita-
tion from him who was estranged, just in the old
loving way, asking that we will eat with him at
his house. Any one of us would understand
this; we should be sure at once that the mediator
had healed the breach, that we were forgiven,
and were welcome as of old to all that our
friend's friendship had to give.
But God is the good Friend whom we have
estranged; and the Lord Jesus, His beloved Son,
and our own Friend as well, is the Mediator;
and He has healed the breach; having made ex-
piation for our sin in offering His own body as
a sacrifice. He has ascended into heaven, there
to appear in the presence of God for us; He has
not ' yet returned. But meantime the message
comes down from Him to all who are hungering
after peace with God: "The feast is made; and
ye all are invited; come! all things are now
ready! " And this is the message of the Gospel.
It' is the peace-offering translated into words.
Can we hesitate to accept the invitation? Or, if
we have sent in our acceptance, do we need to
be told, as in Deuteronomy, that we are to eat
" with rejoicing."
And now we may well observe another cir-
cumstance of profound typical significance.
When the Israelite came to God's house to eat
before Jehovah, he was fed there with the flesh
of the slain victim. The flesh of that very victim
whose blood had been given for him on the altar,
now becomes his food to sustain the life thus re-
deemed. Whether the Israelite saw into the full
meaning of this, we may easily doubt; but it
leads us on now to consider, in the clearer light
of the New Testament, the deepest significance
of the peace-ofifering and its ritual, as typical of
our Lord and our relation to Him.
That the victim of the peace-offering, as of all
the bloody offerings, was intended to typify
Christ, and that the death of that victim, in the
peace-offering, as in all the bloody offerings,
foreshadowed the death of Christ for our sins, —
this needs no further proof. And so, again, as
the burning of the whole burnt-offering repre-
sented Christ as accepted for us in virtue of His
perfect consecration to the Father, so the peace-
offering, in that the fat is burned, represents
Christ as accepted for us, in that He gave to God
in our behalf the very best He had to offer. For
in that incomparable sacrifice we are to think not
only of the completeness of Christ's consecra-
tion for us, but also of the supreme excellence of
that which He offered unto God for us. All that
was best in Him, reason, affection, and will, as
well as the members of His holy body, — nay, the
Godhead as well as the Manhood, in the holy
mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation, He
offered for us unto the Father.
This, however, has taken us as yet but little
beyond the meaning of the burnt-offering. The
closing act of the ritual, the sacrificial eating,
however, reaches in its typical significance far
beyond this or any of the bloody offerings.
First, in that he who had laid his hand upon
the victim, and for whom the blood had been
sprinkled, is now invited by God to feast in HTs
house, upon food given by himself, the food of
the sacrifice, which is called in the ritual " the
bread of God," the eating of the peace-offering
symbolically teaches us that if we have indeed
presented the Lamb of God as our peace, not
only has the Priest sprinkled for us the blood, so
that our sin is pardoned, but, in token of friend-
ship now restored, God invites the penitent be-
liever to sit down at His own table, — in a word,
to joyful fellowship with Himself! Which
means, if our weak faith but take it in, that the
Almighty aud Most Holy God now invites us to
fellowship in all the riches of His Godhead;
places all that He has at the service of the believ-
ing sinner, redeemed by the blood of the slain
Lamb. The prodigal has returned; the Father
will now feast him with the best that He has.
Fellowship with God through reconciliation by
the blood of the slain Lamb, — this then is the
first thing shadowed forth in this part of the
ritual of the peace-offering. It is a sufficiently
wonderful thought, but there is truth yet more
wonderful veiled under this symbolism.
For when we ask. what then was the bread or
food of God. of which He invited him to par-
take who brought the peace-offering, and learn
that it was the flesh of the slain victim; here
we meet a thought which goes far beyond atone-
ment by the shedding of blood. The same vic-
tim whose blood was shed and sprinkled in
atonement for sin is now given by God to be the
redeemed Israelite's food, by which his life shall
be sustained! Surely we cannot mistake the
meaning of this. For the victim of the altar and
the food of the table are one and the same.
Even so He who offered Himself for our sins
on Calvary, is now given by God to be the food
of the believer; who now thus lives by "eating
the flesh " of the slain Lamb of God. Does this
imagery, at first thought, seem strange and un-
natural? So did it also seem strange to the Jews,
when in reply to our Lord's teaching they won-
deringly asked (John vi. 52), " How can this
man give us His flesh to eat? " And yet so
Christ spoke; and when He had first declared
Himself to the Jews as the Antitype of the
manna, the true Bread sent down from heaven.
He then went on to say, in words which far tran-
scended the meaning of that type (John vi. 51),
" The bread which I will give is My flesh, for the
life of the world." How the light begins now
to flash back from the Gospel to the Levitic-il
law, and from this, again, back to the Gospel!
In the one we read, " Ye shall eat the flesh of
your peace-offerings before the Lord with joy;"
in the other, the word of the Lord Jesus con-
cerning Himself (John vi. 33, 55, 57): "The
bread of God is that which cometh down out of
heaven, and giveth life unto the world. . . My
flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink in-
deed. . . As the living Father sent Me, and I
live because of the Father, so he that eateth Me,
he also shall live because of Me." And now
the Shekinah light of the ancient tent of meeting
begins to illumine even the sacramental table,
and as we listen to the words of Jesus, " Take,
eat! this is My body which was broken for you,"
we are reminded of the feast of the peace-offer-
ings. The Israel of God is to be fed with the
flesh of the sacrificed Lamb which became their
peace.
Let us hold fast then to this deepest thought
of the peace-offering, a truth too little under-
Leviticus iii. i6, 17.]
THE PEACE-OFFERING.
261
stood even by many true believers. The very
Christ who died for our sins, if we have by faith
accepted His atonement and have been for His
sake forgiven, is now given us by God for the
sustenance of our purchased life. Let us make
use of Him, daily feeding upon Him, that so we
may live and grow unto the life eternal!
But there is yet one thought more concerning
this matter, which the peace-offering, as far as
was possible, shadowed forth. Although Christ
becomes the bread of God for us only through
His offering of Himself first for our sins, as our
atonement, yet this is something quite distinct
from atonement. Christ became our sacrifice
once for all; the atonement is wholly a fact of
the past. But Christ is now still, and will ever
continue to be unto all His people, the bread or
food of God, by eating whom they live. He was
the propitiation, as the slain victim; but, in
virtue of that, He is now become the flesh of the
peace-offering. Hence He must be this, not as
dead, but as living, in the present resurrection
life of His glorified humanity. Here evidently is
a fact which could not be directly symbolised in
the peace-offering without a miracle ever re-
peated. For Israel ate of the victim, not as liv-
ing, but as dead. It could not be otherwise.
And yet there is a regulation of the ritual (chap,
vii. 15-18; xix. 6, 7) which suggests this phase of
truth as clearly as possible without a miracle.
It was ordered that none of the flesh of the
peace-offering should be allowed to remain be-
yond the third day; if any then was left uneaten,
it was to be burned with fire. The reason for
this lies upon the surface. It was doubtless that
there might be no possible beginning of decay;
and thus it was secured that the flesh of the vic-
tim with which God fed the accepted Israelite
should be the flesh of a victim that was not to
see corruption. But does not this at once re-
mind us how it was written of the Antitype,
" Thou wilt not suffer Thy Holy One to see cor-
ruption "? while, moreover, the extreme limit
of time allowed further reminds us how it was
precisely on the third day that Christ rose from
the dead in the incorruptible life of the resur-
rection, that so He might through all time con-
tinue to be the living bread of His people.
And thus this special regulation points us not
indistinctly toward the New Testament truth
that Christ is now unto us the bread of God, not
merely as the One who died, but as the One
who, living again, was not allowed to see cor-
ruption. For so the Apostle argues (Rom. v.
11), that "being justified by faith," and so hav-
ing " peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ," our peace-offering, having been thus
" reconciled by His death, we shall now be saved
by His life." And thus, as we appropriate Christ
crucified as our atonement, so by a like faith we
are to appropriate Christ risen as our life, to be
for us as the flesh of the peace-offering, our
nourishment and strength by which we live.
The Prohibition of Fat and Blood.
Leviticus iii. 16, 17; vii. 22-27; xvii. 10-16.
"And the priest shall burn them upon the altar : it is
the food of the offering made by fire, for a sweet savour :
all the fat is the Lord's. It shall be a perpetual statute
throughout your generations in all your dwellings, that
ye shall eat neither fat nor blood. . . . And the Lord
spake unto Moses, saying. Speak unto the children of
Israel, saying, Ye shall eat no fat, of ox, or sheep, or goat.
And the fat of that which dieth of itself, and the fat of
that which is torn of beasts, may be used for any other
service ; but ye shall in no wise eat of it. For whosoever
eateth the fat of the beast, of which men offer an offering
made by fire unto the Lord, even the soul that eateth it
shall be cut off from his people. And ye shall eat no man-
ner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of
your dwellings. Whosoever it be that eateth any blood,
that soul shall be cut off from his people. . . . And what-
soever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the
strangers that sojourn among them, that eateth any man-
ner of blood ; I will set Mjr face against that soul that
eateth blood, and will cut him oft^ from among his people.
For the life of the flesh is in the blood : and 1 have given
it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls :
for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the
life. Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul
of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that
sojourneth among you eat blood. And whatsoever man
there be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that
sojourn among them, which taketh in hunting any beast
or fowl that may be eaten ; he shall pour out the blood
thereof, and cover it with dust. For as to the life of all
flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof:
therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat
the blood of no manner of flesh : for the life of all flesh is
the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.
And every soul that eateth that which dieth of itself, or
that which is torn of beasts, whether he be homeborn or a
stranger, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in
water, and be unclean until the even : then shall he be
clean. But if he wash them not, nor bathe his flesh, then
he shall bear his iniquity."
The chapter concerning the peace-offering
ends (vv. 16, 17) with these words: "All the fat
is the Lord's. It shall be a perpetual statute for
you throughout your generations, that ye shall
eat neither fat nor blood."
To this prohibition so much importance was
attached that in the supplemental " law of the
peace-offering " (vii. 22-27) it is repeated with
added explanation and solemn warning, thus:
" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying. Speak
unto the children of Israel, saying. Ye shall eat
no manner of fat, of ox, or of sheep, or of goat.
And the fat of the beast that dieth of itself, and
the fat of that which is torn with beasts, may be
used for any other service: but ye shall in no
wise eat of \i. For whosoever eateth the fat of
the beast, of which men offer an offering made
by fire unto the Lord, even the soul that eateth
it shall be cut off from his people. And ye shall
eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or
of beast, in any of your dwellings. Whosoever
it be that eateth any blood, that soul shall be cut
off from his people."
From which it appears that this prohibition of
the eating of fat referred only to the fat of such
beasts as were used for sacrifice. With these,
however, the law was absolute, whether the ani-
mal was presented for sacrifice, or only slain for
food. It held good with regard to these animals,
even when, because of the manner of their death,
they could not be used for sacrifice. In such
cases, though the fat might be used for other
purposes, still it must not be used for food.
The prohibition of the blood as food appears
from xvii. 10 to have been absolutely universal;
it is said, " Whatsoever man there be of the
house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn
among them, that eateth any manner of blood, I
will set My face against that soul that eateth
blood, and will cut him off from among his
people."
The reason for the prohibition of the eating
of blood, whether in the case of the sacrificial
feasts of the peace-offerings or on other occa-
sions, is given (xvii. ii, 12), in these words:
" For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I
have given it to you upon the altar to make
atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that
262
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
maketh atonement by reason of the life. There-
fore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul
of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger
that sojourneth among you eat blood."
And the prohibition is then extended to in-
clude not only the blood of animals which were
used upon the altar, but also such as were taken
in hunting, thus (ver. 13) : " And whatsoever
man there be of the children of Israel, or of the
strangers that sojourn among them, which taketh
in hunting any beast or fowl that may be eaten,
he shall pour out the blood thereof, and cover it
with dust," as something of peculiar sanctity;
and then the reason previously given is repeated
with emphasis (ver. 14) : " For as to the life of
all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life
thereof: therefore I said unto the children of
Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of
flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof;
whosoever eateth it shall be cut of?."
And since, when an animal died from natural
causes, or through being torn of a beast, the
blood would be drawn from the flesh either not
at all or but imperfectly, as further guarding
against the possibility of eating blood, it is
ordered (vv. 15, 16) that he who does this shall
be held unclean: " Every soul that eateth that
which dieth of itself, or that which is torn of
beasts, whether he be home-born or a stranger,
he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in
water, and be imclean until the even. But if he
wash them not nor bathe his flesh, then he shall
bear his iniquity."
These passages explicitly state the reason for
the prohibition by God of the use of, blood for
food to be the fact that, as the vehicle of the life,
it has been appointed by Him as the means of
expiation for sin upon the altar. And the rea-
son for the prohibition of the fat is similar;
namely, its appropriation for God upon the altar,
as in the peace-offerings, the sin-off^erings, and
the guilt-offerings; "all the fat is the Lord's."
Thus the Israelite, by these two prohibitions,
was to be continually reminded, so often as he
partook of his daily food, of two things: by the
one. of atonement by the blood as the only
ground of acceptance; and by the other, of God's
claim on the man redeemed by the blood, for the
consecration of his best. Not only so, but by the
frequent repetition, and still more by the heavy
penalty attached to the violation of these laws,
he was reminded of the exceeding importance
that these two things had in the mind of God.
If he eat the blood of any animal claimed by God
for the altar, he should be cut off from his
people; that is, outlawed, and cut off from all
covenant privilege as a citizen of the kingdom
of God in Israel. And even though the blood
were that of the beast taken in the chase, still
ceremonial purification was required as the con-
dition of resuming his covenant position.
Nothing, doubtless, seems to most Christians
of our day more remote from practical religion
than these regulations touching the fat and the
blood which are brought before us with such ful-
ness in the law of the peace-offering and else-
where. And yet nothing is of more present-day
importance in this law than the principles which
underlie these regulations. For as with type, so
with antitype. No less essential to the admis-
sion of the sinful man into that blessed fellow-
ship with a reconciled God, which the peace-
offering typified, is the recognition of the su-
preme sanctity of the precious sacrificial blood of
the Lamb of God; no less essential to the life
of happy communion with God, is the ready
consecration of the best fruit of our life to Him.
Surely, both of these, and especially the first,
are truths for our time. For no observing man
can fail to recognise the very ominous fact that
a constantly increasing number, even of pro-
fessed preachers of the Gospel, in so many words
refuse to recognise the place which propitiatory
blood has in the Gospel of Christ, and to admit
its pre-eminent sanctity as consisting in this, that
it was given on the altar to make atonement for
our souls. Nor has the present generation out-
grown the need of the other reminder touching
the consecration of the best to the Lord. How
many there are, comfortable, easy-going Chris-
tians, whose principle — if one might speak in the
idiom of the Mosaic law — would rather seem to
be, ever to give the lean to God, and keep the
fat, the best fruit of their life and activity, for
themselves! Such need to be most urgently and
solemnly reminded that in spirit the warning
against the eating of the blood and the fat is in
full force. It was written of such as should
break this law, " that soul shall be cut off from
his people." And so in the Epistle to the He-
brews (x. 26-29) we find one of its most solemn
warnings directed to those who " count this
blood of the covenant," the blood of Christ, " an
unholy (i. c, common) thing;" as exposed by
this, their undervaluation of the sanctity of the
blood, to a " sorer punishment " than overtook
him that " set at naught Moses' law," even the
retribution of Him who said, " Vengeance i?
Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
And so in this law of the peace-offerings,
which ordains the conditions of the holy feast of
fellowship with a reconciled God. we find these
two things made fundamental in the symbolism:
full recognition of the sanctity of the blood as
that which atones for the soul; and the full con-
secration of the redeemed and pardoned soul to
the Lord. So was it in the symbol; and so shall
it be when the sacrificial feast shall at last re-
ceive its most complete fulfilment in the com-
munion of the redeemed with Christ in glory.
There will be no differences of opinion then and
there, either as to the transcendent value of that
precious blood which made atonement, or as to
the full consecration which such a redemption
requires from the redeemed.
Thank-Offerings, Vows, and Freewill
Offerings.
Leviticus vii. 11-21.
"And this is the law of the sacrifice of peace-offerings
which one shall offer unto the Lord. If he offer it for a
thanksgivings, then he shall offer with the sacrifice of
thanksgiving unleavened cakes mingled with oil, and
unleavened wafers anointed with oil, and cakes mingled
with oil, of fine flour soaked. With cakes of leavened
bread he shall offer his oblation with the sacrifice of his
peace-offerings for thanksgiving. And of it he shall offer
one out of each oblation for an heave-offering unto the
Lord ; it shall be the priest's that sprinkleth the blood of
the peace-offerings. And the flesh of the sacrifice of his
peace-offerings for thanksgiving shall be eaten on the day
of his oblation ; he shall not leave any of it until the
morning. But if the sacrifice of his oblation be a vow, or
a freewill offering, it shall be eaten on the day that he
offereth his sacrifice : and on the morrow that which
remaineth of it shall be eaten : but that which remaineth
of the flesh of the sacrifice on the third day shall be burnt
with fire. And if any of the flesh of the sacrifice of his
peace-offerings be eaten on the third day. it shall not be
accepted, neither shall it be imputed unto him that offereth
Leviticus vii. 11-21.]
THE PEACE-OFFERING.
263
it : it shall be an abomination, and the soul that eateth of
it shall bear his iniquity. And the flesh that toucheth any
unclean thing- shall not be eaten ; it shall be burnt with
fire. And as for the flesh, everyone that is clean shall eat
thereof : but the soul that eateth of the flesh of the sacri-
fice of peace-ort'erings, that pertain unto the Lord, having
his uncleanness upon him, that soul shall be cut oft' from
his people. And when any one shall touch any unclean
thing, the uncleanness of man, or an unclean beast, or any
unclean abomination, and eat of the flesh of the sacrifice
of peace-offerings, that soul shall be cut off from his
people."
According to this supplemental section on the
law of the peace-offerings, these were of three
kinds; namely, "sacrifices of thanksgiving,"
"vows," and "freewill-offerings." The first were
offered in token of gratitude for mercies re-
ceived; as in Psalm cxvi. 16, 17, where we read:
"Thou hast loosed my bonds; I will offer to
Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving." The second,
like these, were offered also in grateful return
for prayer answered and mercy received, but with
the difference that they were promised before,
upon the condition of the prayer for mercy being
granted. Lastly, the freewill-offerings were
those which had no special occasion, but were
merely the spontaneous expression of the love of
the offerer to God, and his desire to live in
friendship and fellowship with Him. It is ap-
parently these freewill-offerings that we are to
recognise in the many instances recorded where
the peace-offering was presented in connection
with supplication for special help and favour
from God; as e. g., when (Judges xx. 26) Israel
supplicated mercy from God after their disas-
trous defeat in the civil war with the tribe of
Benjamin; and when David entreated the Lord
(2 Sam. xxiv. 25) for the staying of the plague
in Israel.
With not only the thank-offering, but all
peace-offerings, as is clear from Num. xv. 2-4,
a full meal-offering, consisting of three kinds of
unleavened cakes, was to be offered, of each of
which, one was to be presented as a heave-offer-
ing, with the heave-shoulder of the sacrifice, to
the Lord (vii. 12). For the sacrificial feast, in
which the offerer, his family, and friends were to
partake, he was also to bring cakes of leavened
bread, which, however, though eaten before God
by the offerer, might not be presented unto God
for a heave-offering, nor come upon the altar
(ver. 13).
From what we have already seen, the spirit-
ual meaning of this will be clear. Thus in
symbol the Israelite offered unto God, with his
life, the fruit of the labour of his hands, in grati-
tude to Him, and expressed his happy conscious-
ness of friendship and fellowship with God
through atonement, by feasting before Him.
The leavened bread is offered simply, as Bahr
suggests, as the usual accompaniment to a feast;
though regard is still had to the fact, never once
forgotten in Holy Scripture, that leaven is never-
theless an element and symbol of corruption; so
that however the reconciled Israelite may eat his
leavened bread before God, yet it cannot be
allowed to come upon the altar of the Most Holy
One.
Two slight differences appear in the ritual for
the different kinds of peace-offerings. First, in
the case of the freewill-offering, a single excep-
tion is allowed to the general rule that the victim
must be without blemish, in the permission to
offer what, otherwise perfect, might have " any-
thing superfluous or lacking " in its parts (xxii.
23); a circumstance which could not affect its
fitness as the symbol of spiritual food. For a
vow (and, we may infer, for a thank-offering
also) such a victim, however, could not be
offered; evidently because it would seem pecu-
liarly unsuitable, where the object of the offering
was to make in some sense a return for the al-
ways perfect and most gracious gifts of God,
that anything else than the absolutely perfect
should be offered. In the case of the thank-
offering, again, an exception is made to the gen-
eral regulation permitting the eating of the offer-
ing on the first and second days, requiring that all
be eaten on the day that it is presented, or else
be burnt with fire (vii. 15). We need seek for
no spiritual meaning in this. A sufficient reason
for this special restriction in this case is probably
to be found in the consideration that as this was
the most common variety of the offering, there
was the most danger that the flesh, by some
oversight, might be kept too long. The flesh of
the victim offered to God, the type of the Vic-
tim of Calvary, must on no account be allowed
to see corruption; and to this end every needed
precaution must be taken, that by no chance it
shall remain unconsumed on the third day.
It is easy to connect the special characteristics
of these several varieties of the peace-offering
with the great Antitype. So may we use Him
as our thank-offering; for what more fitting as
an expression of gratitude and love to God for
mercies received, than renewed and special fel-
lowship with Him through feeding upon Christ
as the slain Lamb? So also we may thus use
Christ in our vows; as when, supplicating mercy,
we promise and engage that if our prayer be
heard we will renewedly consecrate our service
to the Lord, as in the meal-offering, and anew
enter into life-giving fellowship with Him
through feeding by faith on the flesh of the
Lord. And it is beautifully hinted in the per-
mission of the use of leaven in this feast of the
peace-offering, that while the work of the be-
liever, as presented to God in grateful acknowl-
edgment of His mercies, is ever affected with the
taint of his native corruption, so that it cannot
come upon the altar where satisfaction is made
for sin, yet God is graciously pleased, for the
sake of the great Sacrifice, to accept such imper-
fect service offered to Him, and make it in turn
a blessing to us, as we offer it in His presence,
rejoicmg in the work of our hands before Him.
But there was one condition without which the
Israelite could not have communion with God
in the peace-offering. He must be clean! even
as the flesh of the peace-offering must be clean
also. There must be in him nothing which
should interrupt covenant fellowship with God;
as nothing in the type which should make it an
unfit symbol of the Antitype. For it was
ordered (vii. 19-21), as regards every possible
occasion of uncleanness, thus: "The flesh that
toucheth any unclean thing shall not be eaten;
it shall be burnt with fire. As' for the flesh,
every one that is clean shall eat thereof; but the
soul that eateth of the flesh of the sacrifice of
peace-offerings, that pertain unto the Lord, hav-
ing his imcleanness upon him, that soul shall be
cut off from his people. And when any one shall
touch any unclean thing, the uncleanness of man,
or an imclean beast, or any unclean abomination,
and eat of the flesh of the sacrifice of peace-
offerings, that soul shall be cut off from his
people."
In such cases, he must first go and purify him-
264
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
self, as provided in the law; and then, and then
only, presume to come to eat before the Lord.
And so Israel was ever impressively reminded
that he who would have fellowship with God,
and eat in happy fellowship with Him at His
table, must keep himself pure. So by the spirit
of these commands are we no less warned that
we take not encouragement from God's grace, in
providing for us the flesh of the Lamb as our
food, to be careless in walk and life. If we will
use Christ as our peace-offering, we must keep
ourselves " unspotted from the world;" must
hate " even the garment spotted by the flesh,"
remembering ever that it is written in the New
Testament (i Peter i. 15, 16), with direct refer-
ence to the typical law of Leviticus: "As He
which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also
holy in all manner of living; because it is writ-
ten. Ye shall be holy; for I am holy."
CHAPTER VI.
THE SIN-OFFERING.
Leviticus iv. 1-35.
Both in the burnt-of!'ering and in the peace-
offering, Israel was taught, as we are, that all
consecration and all fellowship with God must
begin with, and ever depends upon, atonement
made for sin. But this was not the dominant
thought in either of these oflferings; neither did
the atonement, as made in these, have reference
to particular acts of sin. For such, these offer-
ings were never prescribed. They remind us
therefore of the necessity of atonement, not so
much for what we do or fail to do, as for what
we are.
But the sin even of true believers, whether
then or now, is more than sin of nature. The
true Israelite was liable to be overtaken in some
overt act of sin; and for all such cases was
ordained, in this section of the law (iv. i-v. 13),
the sin-offering; an offering which should bring
out into sole and peculiar prominence the
thought revealed in other sacrifices more im-
perfectly, that in order to pardon of sin, there
must be expiation. There was indeed a limita-
tion to the application of this offering; for if a
man, in those days, sinned wilfully, presumptu-
ously, stubbornly, or, as the phrase is, " with a
high hand," there was no provision made in the
law for his restoration to covenant standing.
" He that despised Moses' law died without
mercy under two or three witnesses;" he was
"cut off from his people." But for sins of a
lesser grade, such as resulted not from a spirit
of wilful rebellion against God, but were miti-
gated in their guilt by various reasons, especially
ignorance, rashness, or inadvertence, God made
provision, in a typical way, for their removal by
means of the atonement of the sin- and the guilt-
offerings. By means of these, accompanied also
with full restitution of the wrong done, when
such restitution was possible, the guilty one
might be restored in those days to his place as an
accepted citizen of the kingdom of God.
No part of the Levitical law is more full of
deep, heart-searching truth than the law of the
sin-offering. First of all, it is of consequence to
observe that the sins for which this chief atoning
sacrifice was appointed, were, for the most part,
sins of ignorance. For so runs the general state-
ment with which this section opens (ver. 2) : " jf
any one shall sin imwittingly. in any of tl:e
things which the Lord hath commanded not to
be done, and shall do any of them." And to
these are afterwards added sins committed
through rashness, the result rather of heat and
hastiness of spirit than of deliberate purpose of
sin; as, for instance, in chap. v. 4: "Whatsoever
it be that a man shall utter rashly with an oath,
and it be hid from him." Besides these, in the
same section (vv. 1-4), as also in all the cases
mentioned under the guilt-offering, and the
special instance of a wrong done to a slave-girl
(xix. 21), a number of additional offences are
mentioned which all seem to have their special
palliation, not indeed in the ignorance of the
sinner, but in the nature of the acts themselves,
as admitting of reparation. For all such it was
also ordained that the offender should bring a
sin- (or a guilt-) offering, and that by this, atone-
ment being made for him, his sin might be for-
given.
All this must have brought before Israel, and
is meant to bring before us, the absolute equity
of God in dealing with His creatures. We think
often of His stern justice in that He so unfail-
ingly takes note of every sin. But here we may
learn also to observe His equity in that He notes
no less carefully every circumstance that may
palliate our sin. We thankfully recognise in
these words the spirit of Him of whom it was
said (Heb. v. 2, marg.) that in the days of His
flesh He could " reasonably bear with the igno-
rant;" and who said concerning those who know
not their Master's will and do it not (Luke xii.
48), that their "stripes" shall be "few;" and
who, again, with equal justice and mercy, said of
His disciples' fault in Gethsemane (Matt. xxvi.
41), "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh
is weak." We do well to note this. For in
these days we hear it often charged against the
holy religion of Christ, that it represents God as
essentially and horribly unjust in consigning all
unbelievers to one and the same unvarying pun-
ishment, the eternal lake of fire; and as thus
making no difference between those who have
sinned against the utmost light and knowledge,
wilfully and inexcusably, and those who may
have sinned through ignorance, or weakness of
the flesh. To such charges as these we have
simply to answer that neither in the Old Testa-
ment nor in the New is God so revealed. We
may come back to this book of Leviticus, and
declare that even in those days when law reigned,
and grace and love were less clearly revealed
than now, God made a difference, a great differ-
ence, between some sins and others; He visited,
no doubt, wilful and defiant sin with condign
punishment; but, on the other hand, no less
justly than mercifully, He considered also every
circumstance which could lessen guilt, and or-
dained a gracious provision for expiation and
forgiveness. The God revealed in Leviticus, like
the God revealed in the Gospel, the God " with
whom we have to do," is then no hard and un-
reasonable tyrant, but a most just and equitable
King. He is no less the Most Just, that He is
the Most Holy; but, rather, because He is most
holy, is He therefore most just. And because
God is such a God, in the New Testament also it
is plainly said that ignorance, as it extenuates
guilt, shall also ensure mitigation of penalty;
and in the Old Testament, that while he who sins
presumptuously and with a high hand against
Leviticus iv. 1-35.] THE SIN-OFFERING. 265
God, shall " die without mercy under two or chapter might rejoin to this, that the Israelite
three witnesses," on the other hand, he who sins was only obliged to bring a sin-offering, when
unwittingly, or in some sudden rash impulse, afterward he came to the knowledge of his sin
doing that of which he afterward truly repents; as sin; but, in case he never came to that knowl-
or who, again, has sinned, if knowingly, still in edge, was not then his sin passed by without an
such a way as admits of some* adequate repara- atoning sacrifice? To this question, the ordi-
tion of the wrong, — all these things shall t^e nance which we find in chapter xvi. is the deci-
judged palliation of his guilt; and if he confess sive answer. For therein it was provided that
his sin, and make all possible reparation for it, once every year a very solemn sin-of¥ering
then, if he present a sin- or a guilt-ofifering, should be offered by the high priest, for all the
atonement may therewith be made, and the sin- multitudinous sins of Israel, which were not
ner be forgiven. atoned for in the special sin-ofTerings of each
This then is the first thing which the law con- day. Hence it is strictly true that no sin in
cerning the sin-ofifering brings before us: it calls Israel was ever passed over without either
our attention to the fact that the heavenly King penalty or shedding of blood. And so the law
and Judge of men is righteous in all His ways, keeps it ever before us that our unconsciousness
and therefore will ever make all the allowance of sinning does not alter the fact of sin, or the
that strict justice and righteousness demand, for fact of guilt, nor remove the obligation to sufifer
whatever may in any way palliate our guilt. because of sin; and that even the sin of which we
But none the less for this do we need also to are quite ignorant, interrupts man's peace with
heed another intensely practical truth which the God and harmony with him. Thus the best of
law of the sin-offering brings before us: namely, us must take as our own the words of the Apostle
that while ignorance or other circumstances may Paul (i Cor. iv. 4, R. V.): "I know nothing
palliate guilt, they do not and cannot nullify it. against myself; yet am I not hereby justified; He
We may have sinned without a suspicion that that judgeth me is the Lord."
we were sinning, but here we are taught that Nor does the testimony of this law end here,
there can be no pardon without a sin-offering. We are by it taught that the guilt of sins un-
We may have sinned through weakness or sud- recognised as sins at the time of their committal,
den passion, but still sin is sin, and we must cannot be cancelled merely by penitent confes-
have a sin-offering before we can be forgiven. sion when they become known. Confession
We may observe, in passing, the bearing of must indeed, be made, according to the law, as
this teaching of the law on the question so much one condition of pardon, but, besides this, the
discussed in our day, as to the responsibility of guilty man must bring his sin-offering,
the heathen for the sins which they commit What truths can be more momentous and vital
through ignorance. In so far as their ignorance than these! Can any one say, in the light of
is not wilful and avoidable, it doubtless greatly such a revelation, that all in this ancient law of
diminishes their guilt; and the Lord Himself has the sin-offering is now obsolete, and of no con-
said of such that their stripes shall be few. And cern to us? For how many there are who are
yet more than this He does not say. Except we resting all their hopes for the future on the fact
are prepared to cast aside the teaching alike of that they have sinned, if at all, then ignorantly;
Leviticus and the Gospels, it is certain that their or that they "have meant to do right;" or that
ignorance does not cancel their guilt. That the they have confessed the sin when it was known,
ignorance of any one concerning moral law can and have been very sorry. And yet, if this law
s icure his exemption from the obligation to teach anything, it teaches that this is a fatal mis-
suffer for his sin, is not only against the teaching take, and that such hopes rest on a foundation of
of all Scripture, but is also contradicted by all sand. If we would be forgiven, we must in-
that we can see about us of God's government of deed confess our sin and we must repent; but
the world. For when does God ever suspend this is not enough. We must have a sin-ofTer-
the operation of physical laws, because the man ing; we must make use of the great Sin-Offering
vho violates them does not know that he is which that of Leviticus typified; we must tell our
breaking them? And so also, will we but open compassionate High Priest how in ignorance, or
our eyes, we may see that it is with moral law. in the rashness of some unholy, overmastering
The heathen, for example, are ignorant of many impulse, we sinned, and commit our case to Him,
moral laws; but do they therefore escape the ter- that He may apply the precious blood in our
rible consequences of their law-breaking, even in behalf with God.
this present life, where we can see for ourselves It is a third impressive fact, that after we in-
how God is dealing with them? And is there elude all the cases for which the sin-offering was
any reason to think it will be different in the life provided, there still remain many sins for the
hereafter? forgiveness of which no provision was made. It
Does it seem harsh that men should be pun- was ordered elsewhere, for instance (Numb.
ished even for sins of ignorance, and pardon be xxxv. 31-33) that no satisfaction should be taken
impossible, even for these, without atonement? for the life of a murderer. He might confess
It would not seem so, would men but think more and bewail his sin, and be never so sorry, but
deeply. For beyond all question, the ignorance there was no help for him; he must die the death,
of men as to the fundamental law of God, to So was it also with blasphemy; so with adultery,
love Him with all the heart, and our neighbour and with many other crimes. This exclusion of
as ourselves, which is the sum of all law, has its so many cases from the merciful provision of the
reason, not in any lack of light, but in the evil typical offering had a meaning. It was intended,
heart of man, who everywhere and always, until not only to emphasise to the conscience the ag-
he is regenerated, loves self more than he loves gravated wickedness of such crimes, but also to
God. The words of Christ (John iii. 20) apply: develop in Israel the sense of need for a more
''He that doeth evil cometh not to the light;" adequate provision, a better sacrifice than any
not even to the light of nature. the Levitical law could offer: blood which should
And yet, one who should look only at this cleanse, not merely in a ceremonial and sacra-
266
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
mental way, but really and effectively; and not
only from some sins, but from all sins.
The law of the sin-offering is introduced by
phraseology different from that which is used in
the case of the preceding offerings. In the case
of each of these, the language used implies that
the Israelites were familiar with the offering be-
fore its incorporation into the Levitical sacrificial
system. The sin-offering, on the other hand, is
introduced as a new thing. And such, indeed, it
was. While, as we have seen, each of the offer-
ings before ordered had been known and used,
both by the Shemitic and the other nations, since
long before the days of Moses, before this time
there is no mention anywhere, in Scripture or
out of it, of a sacrifice corresponding to the sin-
or the guilt-offering. The significance of this
fact is apparent so soon as we observe what was
the distinctive conception of the sin-offering, as
contrasted with the other offerings. Without
question, it was the idea of expiation of guilt by
the sacrifice of a substituted victim. This idea,
as we have seen, was indeed not absent from the
other bloody offerings; but in those its place was
secondary and subordinate. In the ritual of the
sin-offering, on the contrary, this idea was
brought out into almost solitary prominence; —
sin pardoned on the ground of expiation made
through the presentation to God of the blood of
an innocent victim.
The introduction of this new sacrifice, then,
marked the fact that the spiritual training of
man, of Israel in particular, herewith entered on
a new stadium; which was to be distinguished by
the development, in a degree to that time with-
out a precedent, of the sense of sin and of guilt,
and the need therefore of atonement in order to
pardon. This need had not indeed been unfelt
before; but never in any ritual had it received so
full expression. Not only is the idea of expia-
tion by the shedding of blood almost the only
thought represented in the ritual of the offering,
but in the order afterward prescribed for the dif-
ferent sacrifices, the sin-offering, in all cases
where others were offered, must go before them
all; before the burnt-offering, the meal-offering,
the peace-offering. So again, this new law in-
sists upon expiation even for those sins which
have the utmost possible palliation and excuse,
in that at the time of their committal the sinner
knew them not as sins; and thus teaches that
even these so fatally interrupt fellowship with
the holy God, that only such expiation can re-
store the broken harmony. What a revelation
was this law, of the way in which God regards
sin! and of the extremity, in consequence, of the
sinner's need!
Most instructive, too, were the circumstances
under which this new offering, with such a
special purpose, embodying such a revelation of
the extent of human guilt and responsibility, was
first ordained. For its appointment followed
quickly upon the tremendous revelation of the
consuming holiness of God upon Mount Sinai.
It was in the light of the holy mount, quaking
and flaming with fire, that the eye of Moses was
opened to receive from God this revelation of
His will, and he was moved by the Holy Ghost
to appoint for Israel, in the name of Jehovah, an
offering which should differ from all other offer-
ings in this — that it should hold forth to Israel,
in solitary and unprecedented prominence, this
one thought, that " without shedding of blood
there is no remission of sin," not even of £.:ns
which are not known as sins at the time of their
committal.
Our own generation, and even the Church of
to-day, greatly needs to consider the significance
of this fact. The spirit of our age is much more
inclined to magnify the greatness and majesty of
man, than the infinite greatness and holy majesty
of God. Hence many talk lightly of atonement,
and cannot admit its necessity to the pardon of
sin. But can we doubt, with this narrative be-
fore us, that if men saw God more clearly as He
is, there would be less talk of this kind? When
Moses saw God on Mount Sinai, he came down
to ordain a sin-offering even for sins of igno-
rance! And nothing is more certain, as a fact
of human experience in all ages, than this, that
the more clearly men have perceived the unap-
proachable holiness and righteousness of God,
the more clearly tBey have seen that expiation
of our sins, even of our sins of ignorance, by
atoning blood, is the most necessary and funda-
mental of all conditions, if we will have pardon
of sin and peace with a Holy God.
Man is indeed slow to learn this lesson of the
sin-offering. It is quite too humbling and abas-
ing to our natural, self-satisfied pride, to be
readily received. This is strikingly illustrated
by the fact that it is not until late in Israel's his-
tory that the sin-offering is mentioned in the
sacred record; while even from that first men-
tion till the Exile, it is mentioned only rarely.
This fact is indeed often in our day held up as
evidence that the sin-offering was not of Mosaic
origin, but a priestly invention of much later
days. But the fact is quite as well accounted for
by the spiritual obtuseness of Israel. The whole
narrative shows that they were a people hard of
heart and slow to learn the solemn lessons of
Sinai; slow to apprehend the holiness of God,
and the profound spiritual truth set forth in the
institution of the sin-offering. And yet it was
not wholly unobserved, nor did every individual
fail to learn its lessons. Nowhere in heathen
literature do we find such a profound conviction
of sin, such a sense of responsibility even for sins
of ignorance, as in some of the earliest Psalms,
and the earlier prophets. The self-excusing
which so often marks the heathen confessions,
finds no place in the confessions of those Old
Testament believers, brought up under the moral
training of that Sinaitic law which had the sin-
offering as its supreme expression on this sub-
ject. " Search me, O God, and try my heart;
and see if there be in me any wicked way "
(Psalm cxxxix. 23, 24); " Cleanse Thou me from
secret sins" (Psalm xix. 12); "Against Thee
only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy
sight " (Psalm li. 4). Such words as these, with
many other like prayers and confessions, bear
witness to the deepening sense of sin, till at the
last the sin-offering teaches, as its own chief les-
son, its own inadequacy for the removal of guilt,
in those words of the prophetic Psalm (xl. 6),
from the man who mourned iniquities more than
the hairs of his head: " Sin-offering Thou hast
not required."
But, according to the Epistle to the He-
brews, we are to regard David in these words,
speaking by the Holy Ghost, as typifying Christ;
for we thus read, x. 5-10: " When He cometh
into the world He saith, Sacrifice and offering
Thou wouldst not, but a body didst Thou prepare
for Me; in whole burnt-offerings and sin-oft'er-
ings Thou hadst no pleasure. Then said I, Lo,
Leviticus iv. 3-28.]
THE SIN-OFFERING.
267
I am come (in the roll of the book it is written
of Me) to do Thy will, O God."
Which words are then expounded thus: " Say-
inpf above. Sacrifices and offerings, and whole
burnt-ofterings and sacrifices for sin Thou
wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein (the
which are offered according to the law) ; then
hath He said, Lo, I am come to do Thy will.
He taketh away the first that He may establish
the second. By which will we have been sanc-
tified through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all."
And so, as the deepest lesson of the sin-offer-
ing, we are taught to see in it a type and
prophecy of Christ, as the true and one eternally
efifectual sin-offering for the sins of His people;
who. Himself at once High Priest and Victim,
offering Himself for us, perfects us for ever, as
the old sin-offering could not, giving us there-
fore " boldness to enter into the holy place by
the blood of Jesus." May we all have grace by
faith to receive and learn this deepest lesson of
this ordinance, and thus in the law of the sin-
offering discover Him who in His person and
work became the Fulfiller of this law.
Graded Responsibility.
Leviticus iv. 3, 13, 14, 22, 23, 27, 28.
" If the anointed priest shall sin so as to bring guilt on
the people ; then let him offer for his sin, whicli he hath
sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord
for a sin-offering. . . And if the whole congregation of
Israel shall err, and the thing be hid from the eyes of the
assembly, and they have dcme any of the things which
the Lord hath commanded not to be done, and are guilty;
when the sin wherein they have sinned is known, then the
assembly shall offer a young bullock for a sin-offering,
and bring it before the tent of meeting. . . When a
ruler sinneth, and doeth unwittingly any one of all the
things which the Lord his God hath commanded not to be
done, and is guilty ; if his sin, wherein he hath sinned, be
made known to him, he shall bring for his oblation a
goat, a male without blemish. . . And if any one of the
common people sin unwittingly, in doing any of the things
which the Lord hath commanded not to be done, and be
guilty ; if this sin, which he hath sinned, be made known
to him, then he shall bring for his oblation a goat, a
female without blemish, for his sin which he hath sinned."
The law concerning the sin-offering is given in
four sections, of which the last, again, is di-
vided into two parts, separated by the division of
the chapter. These four sections respectively
treat of — first, the law of the sin-offering for the
"anointed priest" (vv. 3-12); secondly, the law
for the offering for the whole congregation (vv.
13-21); thirdly, that for a ruler (vv. 22-26); and
lastly, the law for an offering made by a private
person, one of " the common people " (iv. 27-v.
16). In this last section we have, first, the gen-
eral law (iv. 27-35), and then are added (v. 1-16)
special prescriptions having reference to various
circumstances under which a sin-offering should
be offered by one of the people. Under this last
head are mentioned first, as requiring a sin-
offering, in addition to sins of ignorance or in-
advertence, which only were mentioned in the
preceding chapter, also sins due to rashness or
weakness (vv. 1-4): and then are appointed, in
the second place, certain variations ia the ma-
terial of the offering, allowed out of 'regard to
the various ability of different offerers (vv. 5-16).
In the law as given in chap, iv., it is to be ob-
served that the selection of the victim prescribed
is determined by the position of the persons who
might have occasion to present the offering.
For the whole congregation, the victim must be
a bullock, the most valuable of all; for the high
priest, as the highest religious official of the
nation, and appointed also to represent them be-
fore God, it must also be a bullock. For the
civil ruler, the offering must be a he-goat — an
offering of a value less than that of the victim
ordered for the high priest, but greater than that
of those which were prescribed for the common
people. For these, a variety of offerings were
appointed, according to their several ability. If
possible, it must be a female goat or lamb, or, if
the worshipper could not bring that, then two
turtle doves, or two young pigeons. If too poor
to bring even this small offering, then it was ap-
pointed that, as a substitute for the bloody offer-
ing, he might bring an offering of fine flour,
without oil or frankincense, to be burnt upon the
altar.
Evidently, then, the choice of the victim was
determined by two considerations: first, the rank
of the person who sinned, and, secondly, his
ability. As regards the former point, the law as
to the victim for the sin-offering was this: the
higher the theocratic rank of the sinning person
might be, the more costly offering he must bring.
No one can well miss of perceiving the meaning
of this. The guilt of any sin in God's sight is
proportioned to the rank and station of the
offender. What truth could be of more practical
and personal concern to all than this?
In applying this principle, the law of the sin-
offering teaches, first, that the guilt of any sin is
the heaviest, when it is committed by one who
is placed in a position of religious authority.
For this graded law is headed by the case of the
sin of the anointed priest, that is, the high priest,
the highest functionary in the nation.
We read (ver. 3) : " If the anointed priest
shall sin so as to bring guilt on the people, then
let him offer- for his sin which he hath com-
mitted, a young bullock without blemish, unto
the Lord, for a sin-offering."
That is, the high priest, although a single in-
dividual, if he sin, must bring as large and valu-
able an offering as is required from the whole
congregation. For this law there are two evi-
dent reasons. The first is found in the fact that
in Israel the high priest represented before God
the entire nation. When he sinned it was as if
the whole nation sinned in him. So it is said
that by his sin he " brings guilt on the people "
— a very weighty matter. And this suggests a
second reason for the costly offering that was
required from him. The consequences of the sin
of one in such a high position of religious au-
thority must, in the nature of the case, be much
more serious and far-reaching than in the case
of any other person.
And here we have another lesson as pertinent
to our time as to those days. As the high priest,
so, in modern time, the bishop, minister, or
elder, is ordained as an officer in matters of re-
ligion, to act for and with men in the things of
God. For the proper administration of this
high trust, how indispensable that such a one
shall take heed to maintain unbroken fellowship
with God! Any shortcoming here is sure to im-
pair by so much the spiritual value of his own
ministrations for the people to whom he minis-
ters. And this evil consequence of any unfaith-
fulness of his is the more certain to follow, be-
cause, of all the members of the community, his
example has the widest and most effective in-
268
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
fluence; in whatever that example be bad or
defective, it is sure to do mischief in exact pro-
portion to his exalted station. If then such a
one sin, the case is very grave, and his guilt pro-
portionately heavy.
This very momentous fact is brought before us
in an impressive way in the New Testament,
where, in the epistles to the Seven Churches of
Asia (Rev. ii., iii.), it is " the angel of the
church," the presiding officer of the church in
each city, who is held responsible for the spiritual
state of those committed to his charge. No
wonder that the Apostle James wrote (James
iii. i): "Be not many teachers, my brethren,
knowing that we shall receive heavier judg-
ment." Well may every true-hearted minister
of Christ's Church tremble, as here in the law
of the sin-ofifering he reads how the sin of the
ofificer of religion may bring guilt, not only on
himself, but also " on the whole people "! Well
may he cry out with the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. ii.
16): "Who is sufficient for these things?" and,
like him, beseech those to whom he ministers,
" Brethren, pray for us! "
With the sin of the high priest is ranked that
of the congregation, or the collective nation. It
is written (vv. 13, 14) : " If the whole congrega-
tion of Israel shall err, and the thing be hid from
the eyes of the assembly, and they have done
any one of the things which the Lord hath com-
manded not to be done, and are guilty, then the
assembly shall offer a young bullock for a sin-
offering."
Thus Israel was taught by this law, as we are,
that responsibility attaches not only to each in-
dividual person, but also to associations of indi-
viduals in their corporate character, as nations,
communities, and — we may add — all Societies
and Corporations, whether secular or religious.
Let us emphasise it to our own consciences, as
another of the fundamental lessons of this law:
there is individual sin; there is also such a thing
as a sin by " the whole congregation." In other
words, God holds nations, communities — in a
word, all associations and combinations of men
for whatever purpose, no less under obligation
in their corporate capacity to keep His law than
as individuals, and will count them guilty if they
break it, even through ignorance.
Never has a generation needed this reminder
more than our own. The political and social
principles which, since the French Revolution in
the end of the last century, have been, year by
year, more and more generally accepted among
the nations of Christendom, are everywhere
tending to the avowed or practical denial of this
most important truth. It is a maxim ever more
and more extensively accepted as almost axio-
matic in our modern democratic communities,
that religion is wholly a concern of the indi-
vidual; and that a nation or community, as such,
should make no distinction between various re-
ligions as false or true, but maintain an absolute
neutrality, even between Christianity and idol-
atry, or theism and atheism. It should take
little thought to see that this modern maxim
stands in direct opposition to the principle
assumed in this law of the sin-offering; namely,
I that a community or nation is as truly and di-
rectly responsible to God as the individual in
the nation. But this corporate responsibility
the spirit of the age squarely denies.
Not that all, indeed, in our modern so-called
Christian nations have come to this. But no one
will deny that this is the mind of the vanguarc
of nineteenth century liberalism in religion and
politics. Many of our political leaders in all
lands make no secret of their views on the sub-
ject. A purely secular state is everj'-where held
up, and that with great plausibility and persua-
siveness, as the ideal of political government; the
goal to the attainment of which all good citizens
should unite their efforts. And, indeed, in some
parts of Christendom the complete attainment of
this evil ideal seems not far away.
It is not strange, indeed, to see atheists, agnos-
tics, and others who deny the Christian faith,
maintaining this position; but when we hear men
who call themselves Christians— in many cases,
even Christian ministers — advocating, in one
form or another, governmental neutrality in re-
ligion as the only right basis of government, one
may well be amazed. For Christians are sup-
posed to accept the Holy Scriptures as the law
of faith and of morals, private and public; and
where in all the Scripture will any one find such
an attitude of any nation or people mentioned,
but to be condemned and threatened with the
judgment of God?
Will any one venture to say that this teaching
of the law of the sin-ofifering was only intended,
like the offering itself, for the old Hebrews? Is
it not rather the constant and most emphatic
teaching of the whole Scriptures, that God dealt
with all the ancient Gentile nations on the same
principle? The history which records the over-
throw of those old nations and empires does so,
even professedly, for the express purpose of call-
ing the attention of men in all ages to this prin-
ciple, that God deals with all nations as under ob-
ligations to recognise Himself as King of nations,
and submit in all things to His authority. So it
was in the case of Moab, of Ammon, of Nineveh,
and Babylon; in regard to each of which we are
told, in so many words, that it was because they
refused to recognise this principle of national
responsibility to the one true God, which was
brought before Israel in this part of the law of
the sin-offering, that the Divine judgment came
upon them in their utter national overthrow.
How awfully plain, again, is the language of the
second Psalm on this same subject, where it is
precisely this national repudiation of the supreme
authority of God and of His Christ, so increas-
ingly common in our day, which is named as the
ground of the derisive judgment of God, and is
made the occasion of exhorting all nations, not
merely to belief in God, but also to the obedient
recognition of His only-begotten Son, the Mes-
siah, as the only possible means of escaping the
future kindling of His wrath.
No graver sign of our times could perhaps be
named than just this universal tendency in
Christendom, in one way or another, to repudiate
that corporate responsibility to God which is
assumed as the basis of this part of the law of
the sin-offering. There can be no worse omen
for the future of an individual than the denial of
his obligations to God and to His Son, our
Saviour; and there can be no worse sign for the
future of Christendom, or of any nation in
Christendom, than the partial or entire denial of
national ooligation to God and to His Christ.
What it shall mean in the end, what is the future
toward which these popular modern principles
are conducting the nations, is revealed in Scrip-
ture with startling clearness, in the warning that
the world is vet to see one who shall be in a
Leviticus iv, 3-28.]
THE SIN-OFFERING.
269
peculiar and eminent sense " the Antichrist " (i
John ii. 18); who shall deny both the Father and
Son, and be " the Lawless One," and the " Man
of Sin," in that He shall " set Himself forth as
God " (2 Thess. ii. 3-8) ; to whom authority will
be given " over every tribe, and people, and
tongue, and nation" (Rev. xiii. 7).
The nation, then, as such, is held responsible
to God! So stands the law. And, therefore, in
Israel, if the nation should sin, it was ordained
that they also, like the high priest, should bring
a bullock for a sin-oflfering, the most costly vic-
tim that was ever prescribed. This was so or-
dained, no doubt, in part because of Israel's own
priestly station as a " kingdom of priests and a
holy nation," exalted to a position of peculiar
dignity and privilege before God, that they might
mediate the blessings of redemption to all
nations. It was because of this fact that, if they
sinned, their guilt was peculiarly heavy.
The principle, however, is of present-day ap-
plication. Privilege is the measure of responsi-
bility, no less now than then, for nations as well
as for individuals. Thus national sin, on the
part of the British or American nation, or in-
deed with any of the so-called Christian nations,
is certainly judged by God to be a much more
evil thing than the same sin if committed, for
example, by the Chinese or Turkish nation, who
have had no such degree of Gospel light and
knowledge.
And the law in this case evidently also implies
that sin is aggravated in proportion to its uni-
versality. It is bad, for example, if in a com-
munity one man commit adultery, forsaking his
own wife; but it argues a condition of things far
worse when the violation of the marriage rela-
tion becomes common; when the question can
actually be held open for discussion whether
marriage, as a permanent union between one
man and one woman, be not " a failure," as de-
bated not long ago in a leading London paper;
and when, as in many of the United States of
America and other countries of modern Christen-
dom, laws are enacted for the express purpose of
Ifgalising the violation of Christ's law of mar-
nage, and thus shielding adulterers and adulter-
Cises from the condign punishment their crime
deserves. It is bad, again, when individuals in
a State teach doctrines subversive of morality;
but it evidently argues a far deeper depravation
of morals when a whole community unite in ac-
cepting, endowing, and upholding such in their
vork.
Next in order comes the case of the civil ruler.
For him it was ordered: " When a ruler sinneth,
and doeth unwittingly any of the things which
the Lord his God hath commanded not to be
done, and is guilty: if his sin, wherein he hath
sinned, be made known to him, he shall bring
for his oblation a goat, a male without blemish "
(ver. 22). Thus, the ruler was to bring a victim
of less value than the high-priest or the collec-
tive congregation; but it must still be of more
value than that of a private person; for his re-
sponsibility, if less than that of the officer of
religion, is distinctly greater than that of a man
in private life.
And here is a lesson for modern politicians, no
lass than for rulers of the olden time in Israel.
^Vhile there are many in our Parliaments and
1 ke governing bodies in Christendom who cast
their every vote with the fear of God before their
*yes, yet, if there be any truth in the general
18— Vol. L
opinion of men upon this subject, there are many
in such places who, in their voting, have before
their eyes the fear of party more than the fear of
God; and who, when a question comes before
them, first of all consider, not what would the
law of absolute righteousness, the law of God,
require, but how will a vote, one way or the
other, in this matter, be likely to affect their
party? Such certainly need to be emphatically
reminded of this part of the law of the sin-oflfer-
ing, which held the civil ruler specially respon-
sible to God for the execution of his trust. For
so it is still; God has not abdicated His throne
in favour of the people, nor will He waive His
crown-rights out of deference to the political
necessities of a party.
Nor is it only those who sin in this particular
way who need the reminder of their personal
responsibility to God. All need it who either
are or may be called to places of greater or less
governmental responsibility; and it is those who
are the most worthy of such trust who will be the
first to acknowledge their need of this warning.
For in all times those who have been lifted to
positions of political power have been under
peculiar temptation to forget God, and become
reckless of their obligation to Him as His minis-
ters. But under the conditions of modern life,
in many countries of Christendom, this is true as
perhaps never before. For now it has come to
pass that, in most modern communities, those
who make and execute laws hold their tenure of
office at the pleasure of a motley army of voters,
Protestants and Romanists, Jews, atheists, and
what not, a large part of whom care not the least
for the will of God in civil government, as re-
vealed in Holy Scripture. Under such condi-
tions, the place of the civil ruler becomes one of
such special trial and temptation that we do well
to remember in our intercessions, with peculiar
sympathy, all who in such positions are seeking
to serve supremely, not their party, but their
God, and so best serve their country. It is no
wonder that the temptation too often to many
becomes overpowering, to silence conscience
with plausible sophistries, and to use their office
to carry out in legislation, instead of the will of
God, the will of the people, or rather, of that
particular party which put them in power.
Yet the great principle affirmed in this law of
the sin-oflfering stands, and will stand for ever,
and to it all will do well to take heed; namely,
that God will hold the civil ruler responsible, and
more heavily responsible than any private per-
son, for any sin he may commit, and especially
for any violation of law in any matter committed
to his trust. And there is abundant reason for
this. For the powers that be are ordained of
God, and in His providence are placed in au-
thority; not as the modern notion is, for the
purpose of executing the will of their constitu-
ents, whatever that will may be, but rather the
unchangeable will of the Most Holy God, the
Ruler of all nations, so far as revealed, concern-
ing the civil and social relations of men. Nor
must it be forgotten that this eminent responsi-
bility attaches to them, not only in their official
acts, but in all their acts as individuals. No dis-
tinction is made as to the sin for which the
ruler must bring his sin-ofTering, whether public
and official, or private and personal. Of what-
soever kind the sin may be, if committed by a
ruler. God holds him specially responsible, as
being a ruler; and reckons the guilt of that sin,
270
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
even if a private offence, to be heavier than if it
had been committed by one of the common
people. And this, for the evident reason that, as
in the case of the high priest, his exalted posi-
tion gives his example double influence and
eflfect. Thus, in all ages and all lands, a corrupt
king or nobility have made a corrupt court; and
a corrupt court or corrupt legislators are sure to
demoralise all the lower ranks of society. But
however it may be under the governments of
men, under the equitable government of the
Most Holy God, high station can give no im-
munity to sin. And in the day to come, when
the Great Assize is set, there will be many who
in this world stood high in authority, who will
learn, in the tremendous decisions of that day, if
not before, that a just God reckoned the guilt of
their sins and crimes in exact proportion to their
rank and station.
Last of all. in this chapter, comes the law of
the sin-offering for one of the common people,
of which the first part is given vv. 27-35. The
victim which is appointed for those who are best
able to give, a female goat, is yet of less value
than those ordered in the cases before given; for
the responsibility and guilt in the case of such is
less. The first prescription for a sin-offering by
one of the common people is introduced by
these words: — " If any one of the common
people sin unwittingly, in doing any of the things
which the Lord hath commanded not to be done,
and be guilty; if his sin, which he hath sinned,
be made known to him, then he shall bring for
his oblation a goat, a female without blemish,
for his sin which he hath sinned " (vv. 27, 28).
In case of his inability to bring so much as
this, offerings of lesser value are authorised in
the section following (v. 5-13), to which we shall
attend hereafter.
Meanwhile it is suggestive to observe that this
part of the law is expanded more fully than any
other part of the law of the sin-offering. We are
hereby reminded that if none are so high as to
be above the reach of the judgment of God, but
are held in that proportion strictly responsible
for their sin; so, on the other hand, none are of
station so low that their sins shall therefore be
o\; ;"ookcd. The common people, in all lands,
are the great majority of the population; but no
one is to imagine that, because he is a single in-
dividual, of no importance in a multitude, he
shall therefore, if he sin, escape the Divine eye,
as it were, in a crowd. Not so. We may be of
the very lowest social station; the provision in
chapter v. 11 regards the case of such as might
be so poor as that they could not even buy two
doves. Men may judge the doings of such poor
folk of little or no consequence; but not so God.
With Him is no respect of persons, either of rich
or poor. From all alike, from the anointed high
priest, who ministers in the Holy of Holies,
down to the common people, and among these,
again, from the highest down to the very lowest,
poorest, and meanest in rank, is demanded, even
for a sin of ignorance, a sin-oft'ering for atone-
ment.
What a solemn lesson we have herein concern-
ing the character of God! His omniscience,
which not only notes the sin of those who are in
some conspicuous position, but also each indi-
vidual sin of the lowest of the people! His ab-
solute equity, exactlj' and accurately grading re-
sponsibility for sin committed, in each case, ac-
cording to the rank and influence of him who
commits it! His infinite holiness, which cannot
pass by without expiation even the transient act
or word of rash hands or lips, not even the sin
not known as sin by the sinner; a holiness which,
in a word, unchangeably and unalterably re-
quires from every human being, nothing less
than absolute moral perfection like His own!
CHAPTER VII.
THE RITUAL OF THE SIN-OFFERING.
Leviticus iv. 4-35; v. 1-13; vi. 24-30.
According to the Authorised Version (v. 6, 7),
it might seem that the section, v. 1-13, referred
not to the sin-offering, but to the guilt-offering,
like the latter part of the chapter; but, as sug-
gested in the margin of the Revised Version, in
these verses we may properly read, instead of
" guilt-offering." " for his guilt." That the lat-
ter rendering is to be preferred is clear when we
observe that in vv. 6, 7, 9 this offering is called
a sin-offering; that, everywhere else, the victim
for the guilt-offering is a ram; and, finally, that
the estimation of a money value for the victim,
which is the most characteristic feature of the
guilt-offering, is absent from all the offerings de-
scribed in these verses. We may safely take it
therefore as certain that the marginal reading
should be adopted in ver. 6, so that it will read,
" he shall bring for his guilt unto the Lord;"
and understand the section to contain a further
development of the law of the sin-offering. In
the law of the preceding chapter we have the
direction for the sin-offering as graded with refer-
ence to the rank and station of the offerer; in this
section we have the law for the sin-offering for
the common people, as graded with reference to
the ability of the offerer.
The specifications (v. 1-5) indicate several
cases under which one of the common people
was required to bring a sin-offering as the con-
dition of forgiveness. As an exhaustive list
would be impossible, those named are taken as
illustrations. The instances selected are signifi-
cant as extending the class of offences for which
atonement could be made by a sin-offering, be-
yond the limits of sins of inadvertence as given
in the previous chapter. For however some
cases come under this head, we cannot so reckon
sins of rashness (ver. 4), and still less, the failure
of the witness placed under oath to tell the whole
truth as he knows it. And herein it is graciously
intimated that it is in the heart of God to mul-
tiply His pardons; and, on condition of the pres-
entation of a sin-offering, to forgive also those
sins in palliation of which no such excuse as in-
advertence or ignorance can be pleaded. It is a
faint foreshadowing, in the law concerning the
type, of that which should afterward be declared
concerning the great Antitype (i John i. 7),
" The blood of Jesus . . . cleanseth from all
sm.
When we look now at the various prescriptions
regarding the ritual of the offering which are
given in this and the foregoing chapter, it is
plain that the numerous variations from the
ritual of the other sacrifices were intended to
withdraw the thought of the sinner from all other
aspects in which sacrifice might be regarded,
and centre his mind upon the one thought of
sacrifice as expiating sin, through the substitu-
Leviticusiv.4-35-vi.24-3o.] RITUAL OF THE SIX-OFFERING.
271
tion of an innocent life for the guilty. In many
particulars, indeed, the ritual agrees with that of
the sacrifices before prescribed. The victim
must be brought by the guilty person to be
offered to God by the priest; he must, as in other
cases of bloody offerings, then lay his hand on
the head of the victim, and then (a particular not
mentioned in the other cases) he must confess
the sin which he has committed, and then and
thus entrust the victim to the priest, that he may
apply its blood for him in atonement before God.
The priest then slays the victim, and now comes
that part of the ceremonial which by its varia-
tions from the law of other offerings is empha-
sised as the most central and significant in this
sacrifice.
The Sprinkling of the Blood.
Leviticus iv. 6, 7, 16-18, 25, 30; v. 9.
"And the priest shall dip his finger in the blood, and
sprinkle of the blood seven times before the Lord, before
the veil of the sanctuary. And the priest shall put of the
blood upon the horns of the altar of sweet incense before
the Lord, which is in the tent of meeting ; and all the
blood of the bullock shall he pour out at the base of the
altar of burnt offering, which is at the door of the tent of
meeting. . . And the anointed priest shall bring of the
blood of the bullock to the tent of meeting, and the
priest shall dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle
it seven times before the Lord, before the veil. And
he shall put of the blood upon the horns of the altar
which is before the Lord, that is in the tent of meeting,
and all the blood shall he pour out at the base of the
altar of burnt offering, which is at the door of the tent
of meeting. . . And the priest shall take of the blood of
the sin offering with his finger, and put it upon the horns of
the altar of burnt offermg", and the blood thereof shall he
pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering. . . And
the priest shall take of the blood thereof with his finger,
and put it upon the horns of the altar of burnt offering,
and all the blood thereof shall he pour out at the base of
the altar. . . And he shall sprinkle of the blood of the
sin offering upon the side of the altar ; and the rest of the
blood shall be drained out at the base of the altar ; it is a
sin offering "
In the case of the burnt-ofifering and of the
peace-ofTering, in which the idea of expiation,
although not absent, yet occupied a secondary
place in their ethical intent, it sufficed that the
blood of the victim, by whomsoever brought, be
applied to the sides of the altar. But in the sin-
oflering, the blood must not only be sprinkled on
the sides of the altar of burnt-ofifering, but, even
in the case of the common people, be applied to
the horns of the altar, its most conspicuous and,
in a sense, most sacred part. In the case of a
sin committed by the whole congregation, even
this is not enough; the blood must be brought
even into the Holy Place, be applied to the horns
of the altar of incense, and be sprinkled seven
times before the Lord before the veil which hung
immediately before the mercy seat in the Holy
of Holies, the place of the Shekinah glory. And
in the great sin-oflfering of the high priest once
a year for the sins of all the people, yet more
was required. The blood was to be taken even
within the veil, and be sprinkled on the mercy
seat itself over the tables of the broken law.
These several cases, according to the sym-
bolism of these several parts of the tabernacle,
differ in that atoning blood is brought ever
more and more nearly into the immediate pres-
ence of God. The horns of the altar had a
sacredness above the sides: the altar of the
Holy Place before the veil, a sanctity beyond that
of the altar in the outer court; while the Most
Holy Place, where stood the ark, and the mercy-
seat, was the very place of the most immediate
and visible manifestation of Jehovah, who is
often described in Holy Scripture, with reference
to the ark, the mercy-seat, and the overhanging
cherubim, as the God who " dwelleth between
the cherubim."
From this we may easily understand the sig-
nificance of the different prescriptions as to the
blood in the case of different classes. A sin
committed by any private individual or by a
ruler, was that of one who had access only to the
outer court, where stood the altar of burnt-offer-
ing; for this reason, it is there that the blood
must be exhibited, and that on the most sacred
and conspicuous spot in that court, the horns of
the altar where God meets with the people. But
when it was the anointed priest that had sinned,
the case was different. In that he had a peculiar
position of nearer access to God than others, as
appointed of God to minister before Him in the
Holy Place, his sin is regarded as having defiled
the Holy Place itself; and in that Holy Place
must Jehovah therefore see atoning blood ere
the priest's position before God can be re-
established.
And the same principle required that also in
the Holy Place must the blood be presented for
the sin of the whole congregation. For Israel
in its corporate unity was " a kingdom of
priests," a priestly nation; and the priest in the
Holy Place represented the nation in that ca-
pacity. Thus because of this priestly office of
the nation, their collective sin was regarded as
defiling the Holy Place in which, through their
representatives, the priests, they ideally minis-
tered. Hence, as the law for the priests, so is
the law for the nation. For their corporate sin
the blood must be applied, as in the case of the
priest who represented them, to the horns of the
altar in the Holy Place, whence ascended the
smoke of the incense which visibly symbolised
accepted priestly intercession, and, more than
this, before the veil itself; in other words, as
near to the very mercy-seat itself as it was per-
mitted to the priest to go; and it must be sprin-
kled there, not once, nor twice, but seven times,
in token of the re-establishment, through the
atoning blood, of God's covenant of mercy, of
which, throughout the Scripture, the number
seven, the number of sabbatic rest and covenant
fellowship with God. is the constant symbol.
And it is not far to seek for the spiritual
thought which underlies this part of the ritual.
For the tabernacle was represented as the earthly
dwelling-place, in a sense, of God; and just as
the defiling of the house of my fellow-man may
be regarded as an insult to him who dwells in the
house, so the sin of the priest and of the priestly
people is regarded as, more than that of those
outside of this relation, a special affront to the
holy majesty of Jehovah, criminal just in pro-
portion as the defilement approaches more nearly
the innermost shrine of Jehovah's manifestation.
But though Israel is at present suspended from
its priestly position and function among the
nations of the earth, the Apostle Peter (i Peter
ii. 5) reminds us that the body of Christian be-
lievers now occupies Israel's ancient place, being
now on earth the " royal priesthood," the " holy
nation." Hence this ritual solemnly reminds us
that the sin of a Christian is a far more evil thing
than the sin of others; it is as the sin of the
prie.'^t, and defiles the Holy Place, even though
unwittingly committed; and thus, even more im-
272
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
peratively than other sin, demands the exhibition
of the atoning blood of the Lamb of God, not
now in the Holy Place, but more than that, in
the true Holiest of all, where our High Priest is
now entered. And thus, in every possible way,
with this elaborate ceremonial of sprinkling of
blood does the sin-offering emphasise to our own
consciences, no less than for ancient Israel, the
solemn fact affirmed in the Epistle to the He-
brews (ix. 22), " Without shedding of blood
there is no remission of sin."
Because of this, we do well to meditate much
and deeply on this symbolism of the sin-offering,
which, more than any other in the law, has to do
with the propitiation of our Lord for sin. Espe-
cially docs this use of the blood, in which the
significance of the sin-ofTering reached its su-
preme expression, claim our most reverent at-
tention. For the thought is inseparable from the
ritual, that blood of the slain victim must be
presented, not before the priest, or before the
oflferer, but before Jehovah. Can any one mis-
take the evident significance of this? Does it
not luminously hold forth the thought that
atonement bv sacrifice has to do, not only with
man, but with God?
There is cause enough in our day for insisting
on this. Many are teaching that the need for
the shedding of blood for the remission of sin,
lies only in the nature of man; that, so far as
concerns God, sin might as well have been par-
doned without it; that it is only because man is
so hard and rebellious, so stubbornly distrusts
the Divine love, that the death of the Holy Vic-
tim of Calvary became a necessity. Nothing
less than such a stupendous exhibition of the
love of God could suffice to disarm his enmity
to God and win him back to loving trust. Hence
the need of the atonement. That all this is true,
no one will deny; but it is only half the truth,
and the less momentous half, — which indeed is
hinted in no ofTering, and in the sin-offering
least of all. Such a conception of the matter as
completely fails to account for this part of the
symbolic ritual of the bloody sacrifices, as it fails
to agree with other teachings of the Scriptures.
If the only need for atonement in order to pardon
is in the nature of the sinner, then why this con-
stant insistence that the blood of the sacrifice
should always be solemnly presented, not before
the sinner, but before Jehovah? We see in this
fact most unmistakably set forth, the very solemn
truth that expiation by blood as a condition of
forgiveness of sin is necessary, not merely be-
cause man is what he is, but most of all because
God is what He is. Let us then not forget that
the presentation unto God of an expiation for
sin, accomplished by the death of an appointed
substitutionary victim, was in Israel made an in-
dispensable condition of the pardon of sin. Is
this, as many urge, against the love of God? By
no means! Least of all will it so appear, when
we remember who appointed the great Sacrifice,
and, above all, who came to fulfil this type.
God does not love us because atonement has
been made, but atonement has been made be-
cause the Father loved us, and sent His Son to
be the propitiation for our sins.
God is none the less just, that He is love; and
none the less holy, that He is merciful: and in
His nature, as the Most Just and Holy One, lies
this necessity of the shedding of blood in order
to the forgiveness of sin, which is impressively
symbolised in the unvarying ordinance of the
Levitical law, that as a condition of the remis-
sion of sin, the blood of the sacrifice must be
presented, not before the sinner, but before Je-
hovah. To this generation of ours, with its so
exalted notions of the greatness and dignity of
man, and its correspondingly low conceptions
of the ineffable greatness and majesty of the
Most Holy God, this altar truth may be most
distasteful, so greatly does it magnify the evil of
sin; but just in that degree is it necessary to the
humiliation of man's proud self-complacency,
that, whether pleasing or not, this truth be faith-
fully held forth.
Very instructive and helpful to our faith are
the allusions to this sprinkling of Blood in the
New Testament. Thus, in the Epistle to the
Hebrews (xii. 24), believers are reminded that
they are come " unto the blood of sprinkling,
that speaketh better than that of Abel." The
meaning is plain. For we are told (Gen. iv. 10),
that the blood of Abel cried out against Cain
from the ground; and that its cry for vengeance
was prevailing; for God came down, arraigned
the murderer, and visited him with instant judg-
ment. But in these words we are told that the
sprinkled blood of the holy Victim of Calvary,
sprinkled on the heavenly altar, also has a voice,
and a voice which " speaketh better than that of
Abel;" better, in that it speaks, not for ven-
geance, but for pardoning mercy; better, in that
it procures the remission even of a penitent mur-
derer's guilt; so that, "being now justified
through His blood " we may all " be saved from
wrath through Him " (Rom. v. 9). And, if we
are truly Christ's, it is our blessed comfort to
remember also that we are said (i Peter i. 2) to
have been chosen of God unto the sprinkling of
this precious blood of Jesus Christ; words which
remind us, not only that the blood of a Lamb
" without blemish and without spot " has been
presented unto God for us, but also that the rea-
son for this distinguishing mercy is found, not
in us, but in the free love of God, who chose us
in Christ Jesus to this grace.
And as in the burnt-offering, so in the sin-
offering, the blood was to be sprinkled by the
priest. The teaching is the same in both cases.
To present Christ before God, laying the hand
of faith upon His head as our sin-offering, this
is all we can do or are required to do. With the
sprinkling of the blood we have nothing to dol
In other words, the effective presentation of the
blood before God is not to be secured by some
act of our own; it is not something to be pro-
cured through some subjective experience, other
or in addition to the faith which brings the Vic-
tim. As in the type, so in the Antitype, the
sprinkling of the atoning blood — that is, its ap-
plication God-ward as a propitiation — is the
work of our heavenly Priest. And our part in
regard to it is simply and only this, that we en-
trust this work to Him. He will not disappoint
us; He is appointed of God to this end, and He
will see that it is done.
In a sacrifice in which the sprinkling of the
blood occupies such a central and essential place
in the symbolism, one would anticipate that this
ceremony would never be dispensed with. Very
strange it thus appears, at first sight, to find that
to this law an exception was made. For it was
ordained (ver. 11) that a man so poor that "his
means suffice not " to bring even two doves or
young pigeons, might bring, as a substitute, an
offering of fine flour. From this, some have
Leviticusiv.4-35-vi.24-3o.] RITUAL OF THE SIN-OFFERING.
273
hastened to infer that the shedding of the blood,
and therewith the idea of substituted life, was not
essential to the idea of reconciliation with God;
but with little reason. Most illogical and un-
reasonable it is to determine a principle, not
from the general rule, but from an exception;
especially when, as in this case, for the exception
a reason can be shown, which is not inconsistent
with the rule. For had no such exceptional
offering been permitted in the case of the ex-
tremely poor man, it would have followed that
there would have remained a class of persons in
Israel whom God had excluded from the provi-
sion of the sin-ofTering, which He had made the
in.separable condition of forgiveness. But two
truths were to be set forth in the ritual; the one,
atonement by means of a life surrendered in ex-
piation of guilt; the other, — as in a similar way
in the burnt-offering, — the sufificiency of God's
gracious provision for even the neediest of sin-
ners. Evidently, here was a case in which some-
thing must be sacrificed in the symbolism. One
of these truths may be perfectly set forth; both
cannot be, with equal perfectness; a choice must
therefore be made, and is made in this excep-
tional regulation, so as to hold up clearly, even
though at the expense of some distinctness in the
other thought of expiation, the unlimited suffi-
ciency of God's provision of forgiving grace.
And yet the prescriptions in this form of the
offering were such as to prevent any one from
confounding it with the meal-offering, which
typified consecrated and accepted service. The
oil and the frankincense which belonged to the
latter are to be left out (ver. 11); incense, which
typifies accepted prayer, — thus reminding us of
the unanswered prayer of the Holy Victim when
He cried upon the cross, " My God! My God!
why hast Thou forsaken Me? " and oil, which
typifies the Holy Ghost, — reminding us, again,
how from the soul of the Son of God was mys-
teriously withdrawn in that same hour all the
conscious presence and comfort of the Holy
Spirit, which withdrawment alone could have
wrung from His lips that unanswered prayer.
And, again, whereas the meal for the meal-offer-
ing had no limit fixed as to quantity, in this case
the amount is prescribed — " the tenth part of an
ephah " (ver. 11); an amount which, from the
story of the manna, appears to have represented
the sustenance of one full day. Thus it was or-
dained that if, in the nature of the case, this sin-
offering could not set forth the sacrifice of life
by means of the shedding of blood, it should at
least point in the same direction, by requiring
that, so to speak, the support of life for one day
shall be given up, as forfeited by sin.
All the other parts of the ceremonial are in
this ordinance made to take a secondary place,
or are omitted altogether. Not all of the offer-
ing is burnt upon the altar, but only a part; that
part, however, the fat, the choicest; for the same
reason as in the peace-offering. There is, in-
deed, a peculiar variation in the case of the
offering of the two young pigeons, in that, of
the one, the blood only was used in the sacrifice,
while the other was wholly burnt like a burnt-
offering. But for this variation the reason is
evident enough in the nature of the victims. For
in the case of a small creature like a bird, the fat
would be so insignificant in quantity, and so dififi-
cult to separate with thoroughness from the flesh,
that the ordinance must needs be varied, and a
second bird be taken for the burning, as a substi-
tute for the separated fat of larger animals. The
symbolism is not essentially affected by the
variation. What the burning of the fat means
in other offerings, that also means the burning of
the second bird in this case.
The Eating and the Burning of the Sin-
Offering without the Camp.
Leviticus iv. 8-12, 19-21, 26, 31; v. 10, 12.
" And all the fat of the bullock of the sin offering he
shall take off from it ; the fat that covereth the inwards,
and all the fat that is upon the inwards, and the tw^o kid-
neys, and the fat that is upon them, which is by the loins,
and the caul upon the liver, with the kidneys, shall he take
away, as it is taken off from the ox of the sacrifice of
peace offerings : and the priest shall burn them upon the
altar of burnt offering. And the skin of the bullock, and
all its flesh, with its head, and with its legs, and its in-
wards, and its dung, even the whole bullock shall he carry
forth without the camp unto a clean place, where the
ashes are poured out, and burn it on wood with fire : where
the ashes are poured out shall it be burnt. . . And all the
fat thereof shall he take off from it, and burn it upon the
altar. Thus shall he do with the bullock ; as he did with
the bullock of the sin offering, so shall he do with this :
and the priest shall make atonement for them, and they
shall be forgiven. And he shall carry forth the bullock
without the camp, and burn it as he burned the first
bullock : it is the sin offering for the assembly. . . And
all the fat thereof shall he burn upon the altar, as the fat
of the sacrifice of peace offerings : and the priest shall
make atonement for him as concerning his sin, and he
shall be forgiven. . . And all the fat thereof shall he
take away, as the fat is taken away from off the sacrifice
of peace offerings ; and the priest shall burn it iipon the
altar for a sweet savour unto the Lord ; and the priest
shall make atonement for him, and he shall be for-
given. . . And he shall offer the second for a burnt offer-
ing, according to the ordinance : and the priest shall
make atonement for him as concerning his sin which he
hath sinned, and he shall be forgiven. . . And he shall
bring it to the priest, and the priest shall take his handful
of it as the memorial thereof, and burn it on the altar,
upon the offerings of the Lord made by fire : it is a sin
offering."
In the ritual of the sin-offering, sacrificial
meal, such as that of the peace-offering, wherein
the offerer and his house, with the priest and the
Levite, partook together of the flesh of the sacri-
ficed victim, there was none. The eating of the
flesh of the sin-offerings by the priests, pre-
scribed in chap. vi. 26, had, primarily, a differ-
ent intention and meaning. As set forth else-
where (vii. 35), it was " the anointing portion of
Aaron and his sons;" an ordinance expounded
by the Apostle Paul to this effect, that (i Cor. ix.
13) they which wait upon the altar should " have
their portion with the altar." Yet not of all the
sin-offerings might the priest thus partake.
For when he was hiinself the one for whom the
offering was made, whether as an individual, or
as included in the congregation, then it is plain
that he for the time stood in the same position
before God as the private individual who had
sinned. It was a universal principle of the law
that because of the peculiarly near and solemn
relation into which the expiatory victim had
been brought to God, it was " most holy," and
therefore he for whose sin it is offered could not
eat of its flesh. Hence the general law is laid
down (vi. 30) : " No sin offering, whereof any of
the blood is brought into the tent of meeting to
make atonement in the holy place, shall be eaten;
it shall be burnt with fire."
And yet, although, because the priests could
not eat of the flesh, it must be burnt, it could not
be burnt upon the altar; not, as some have fan-
cied, because it was regarded as unclean, which
is directly contradicted by the statement that it
is " most holy," but because so to dispose of it
2 74
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
would have been to confound the sin-offering
with the burnt-offering, which had, as we have
seen, a specific symbolic meaning, quite distinct
from that of the sin-offering. It must be so dis-
posed of that nothing shall divert the mind of the
worshipper from the fact that, not sacrifice as
representing full consecration, as in the burnt-
offering, but sacrifice as representing expiation,
is set forth in this offering. Hence it was or-
dained that the flesh of these sin-offerings for
the anointed priest, or for the congregation,
which included him, should be " burnt on wood
with fire without the camp" (iv. ii, 12, 21).
And the more carefully to guard against the pos-
sibility of confounding this burning of the flesh
of the sin-offering with the sacrificial burning of
the victims on the altar, the Hebrew uses here,
and in all places where this burning is referred
to, a verb wholly distinct from that which is
used of the burnings on the altar, and which, un-
like that, is used of any ordinary burning of any-
thing for any purpose.
But this burning of the victim without the
camp was not therefore empty of all typical sig-
nificance. The writer of the Epistle to the He-
brews calls our attention to the fact that in this
part of the appointed ritual there was also that
which prefigured Christ and the circumstances of
His death. For we read (Heb. xiii. 10-12), after
an exhortation to Christians to have done with
the ritual observances of Judaism regarding
meats: — "We," that is, we Christian believers,
" have an altar," — the cross upon which Jesus
suffered, — " whereof they have no right to eat
which serve the tabernacle;" i. e., they who ad-
here to the now effete Jewish tabernacle service,
the unbelieving Israelites, derive no benefit from
this sacrifice of ours. " For the bodies of those
beasts whose blood is brought into the Holy
Place by the high priest as an offering for sin,
are burned without the camp;" the priesthood
are debarred from eating them, according to the
law we have before us. And then attention is
called to the fact that in this respect Jesus ful-
filled this part of the type of the sin-offering,
thus: " Wherefore Jesus also, that He might
sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered
without the camp." That is, as Alford inter-
prets (Comm. sub. loc), in the circumstance that
Jesus suffered without the gate, is seen a visible
adumbration of the fact that He suffered outside
the camp of legal Judaism, and thus, in that He
suffered for the sin of the whole congregation of
Israel, fulfilled the type of this sin-offering in
this particular. Thus a prophecy is discovered
here which perhaps we had not else discerned,
concerning the manner of the death of the anti-
typical victim. He should suffer as a victim for
the sin of the whole congregation, the priestly
people, who should for that reason be debarred,
in fulfilment of the type, from that benefit of His
death which had else been their privilege. And
herein was accomplished to the uttermost that
surrender of His whole being to God, in that,
in carrying out that full consecration, " He,
bearing His cross, went forth," not merely out-
side the gate of Jerusalem, — in itself a trivial cir-
cumstance,—but, as this fitly symbolised, out-
side the congregation of Israel, to suffer. In
other words, His consecration of Himself to
God in self-sacrifice found its supreme expres-
sion in this, that He voluntarily submitted to be
cast out from Israel, despised and rejected of
men, even of the Israel of God.
And so this burning of the flesh of the sin-
■'f'ering of the highest grade in two places, the
tat upon the altar, in the court of the congrega-
t on. and the rest of the victim outside the camp.
set forth prophetically the full self-surrender of
the Son to the Father, as the sin-offering, in a
double aspect: in the former, emphasising simply,
as in the peace-offering. His surrender of all that
was highest and best in Him, as Son of God 'and
Son of man, unto the Father as a Sin-offering; in
the latter, foreshowing that He should also, in a
special manner, be a sacrifice for the sin of the
congregation of Israel, and that His consecration
should receive its fullest exhibition and most
complete expression in that He should die out-
side the camp of legal Judaism, as an outcast
from the congregation of Israel.
Accordingly we find that this part of the type
of the sin-offering was formally accomplished
when the high priest, upon Christ's confession
before the Sanhedrim of His Sonship to God,
declared Him to be guilty of blasphemy; an
offence for which it had been ordered by the
Lord (Lev. xxiv. 14) that the guilty person
should be taken " without the camp " to suffer
for his sin.
In the light of these marvellous correspond-
ences between the typical sin-offering and the
self-offering of the Son of God, what a profound
meaning more and more appears in those words
of Christ concerning Moses: " He wrote of Me."
The Sanctity of the Sin-Offering.
Leviticus vi. 24-30.
" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying. Speak unto
Aaron and to his sons, saying, This is the law of the sin
offering : in the place where the burnt offering is killed
shall the sin offering be killed before the Lord : it is most
holy. The priest that offereth it for sin shall eat it : in a
holy place shall it be eaten, in the court of the tent of
meeting. Whatsoever shall touch the flesh thereof shall
be holy : and when there is sprinkled of the blood thereof
upon any garment, thou shalt wash that whereon it was
sprinkled in a holy place. But the earthen vessel wherein
it is sodden shall be broken: end if it be sodden in a
brasen vessel, it shall be scoured, and rinsed in water.
Every male among the priests shall eat thereof : it is
most holy. And no sin offering, whereof any of the blood
is brought into the tent of meeting to make atonement in
the holy place, shall be eaten : it shall be burnt with fire."
In chap. vi. 24-30 we have a section which is
supplemental to the law of the sin-offering, in
which, with some repetition of the laws previ-
ously given, are added certain special regula-
tions, in fuller exposition of the peculiar sanctity
attaching to this offering. As in the case of
other offerings called " most holy," it is ordered
that only the males among the priests shall eat
of it; among whom, the officiating priest takes
the precedence. Further, it is declared that
everything that touches the offering shall be re-
garded as " holy," that is, as invested with the
sanctity attaching to every person or thing
specially devoted to the Lord.
Then by way of application of this principle to
two of the most common cases in which it could
apply, it is ordered, first (ver. 27), with regard
to any garment which should be sprinkled with
the blood, " thou shalt wash that whereon it was
sprinkled in a holy place;" that so by no chance
should the least of the blood which had been
shed for the remission of sin, come into contact
with anything unclean and unholy. And then,
again, inasmuch as the flesh which should be
Leviticusiv.4-35-vi. 24-30.] RITUAL OF THE SIN-OFFERING.
275
eaten by the priest must needs be cooked, and
the vessel used by this contact became holy, it
is commanded (ver. 28) that, if a brazen vessel,
" it shall be scoured " and " then rinsed w^ith
water;" that in no case should a vessel in which
might remain the least of the sacrificial flesh, be
iised for any profane purpose, and so the holy
flesh be defiled. And because when an (un-
glazed) earthen vessel was used, even such
scouring and rinsing could not so cleanse it, but
that something of the juices of the holy flesh
should be absorbed into its substance, therefore,
in order to preclude the possibility of its ever
being used for any common purpose it is di-
rected (ver. 28) that it shall be broken.*
By such regulations as these, it is plain that
even in those days of little light the thoughtful
Israelite would be impressed with the feeling that
in the expiation of sin he came into a peculiarly
near .■snd solemn relation to the holiness of God,
even though he might not be able to formulate
his thought more exactly. In modern times,
however, strange to say, these very regulations
with regard to the sin-ofifering, when it has
been taken as typical of Christ, have been used
as an argument against the New Testament
teaching as to the expiatory nature of His death
as a true satisfaction to the holy justice of God
for the sins of men. For it is argued, that if
■Christ was really, in a legal sense, regarded as a
sinner, because standing in the sinner's place, to
receive in His person the wrath of God against
the sinner's sin, it could not have been ordered
that the blood and the flesh of the typical ofifer-
ing should be thus regarded as of peculiar and
pre-eminent holiness. Rather, we are told,
should we, for example, have read in the ritual.
'" No one, and, least of all. the priests, shall eat
of it; for it is most unclean." An extraordinary
argument and conclusion! For surely it is an
utter misapprehension both of the so-called
^' orthodox " view of the atonement, and of the
New Testament teaching on the subject, to
represent it as involving the suggestion that
Christ, when for us " made sin," and sufifering
as our substitute, thereby must have been for
the time Himself unclean. Surely, according to
the constant use of the word, in imputation of
sin, of any sin, to any one, there is no convey-
ance of character; it is only implied that such
person is, for whatsoever reason, justly or un-
justly, treated as if he were guilty of that sin
which is imputed to him. Imputing falsehood
to a man who is truth itself, does not make him
a liar, though it does involve treating him as if
he were. Just so it is in this case.
There is, then, in these regulations which em-
phasise the peculiar holiness of the sin-ofTering,
nothing which is inconsistent with the strictest
juridical view of the great atonement which in
type it represented. On the contrary, one can
hardly think of anything which should more
effectively represent the great truth of the in-
comparable holiness of the victim of Calvary,
than just this strenuous insistence that the blood
* A striking parallel to this ordinance is found in a caste
■cu.stom in North India, where the caste Hindoo, as I have
often seen, if he give you a drink of water in a vessel, will
only use an earthen vessel, which, immediately after you
have drunk, he break.s, to preclude the possibility of its
accidental use thereafter, by which ceremonial ' defile-
ment might be contracted. For the Hindoo does not re-
gard it as possible so to cleanse a metallic vessel as to
remove the defilement thus caused ; and as he could not
afford to throw it away, he will give one to drink in the
■cheap earthen vessel, or else no drink at all.
and the flesh of the typical victim should be
treated as of the most peculiar sanctity. If,
when we see the victim of the sin-offering slaiw
and its blood presented before God, we behold
a vivid representation of Christ, the Lamb of
God, "made sin in our behalf;" so when, in
these regulations, we see how the flesh and
blood of the ofifered victim is treated as of the
most pre-eminent sanctity, we are as impress-
ively reminded how it is written (2 Cor. v. 21)
that it was " Him who knew no sin," that God
" made to be sin on our behalf." Thus does the
type, in order that nothing might be wanting in
this law of the offering, insist in every possible
way on the holiness of the great Victim who be-
came the Antitype; and most of all in the sin-
ofifering, because in this, where, not consecra-
tion of the person or the works, or the imparta-
tion and fellowship of the life of Christ, but ex-
piation, was the central idea of the sacrifice,
there was a special need for emphasising, in an
exceptional way, this thought; that the Victim
who bore our sins, although visibly laden with
the curse of God, was none the less all the time
Himself " most "holy;" so that in that unfathom-
able mystery of Calvary, never was He more
truly and really the well-beloved Son of the
Father than when He cried out in the extremity
of His anguish as " made sin for us," " My God,
My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? "
How wonderfully adapted in all its details was
this law of the sin-ofifering, not only for the
education of Israel, but, if we will meditate upon
these things, also for our own! How the truths
which underlie this law should humble us, even
in proportion as they exalt to the uttermost the
inefifable majesty of the holiness of God! And,
if we will but yield to their teachings, how
mightily should they constrain us, in grateful
recognition of the love of the Holy One who
was " made sin in our behalf," and of the love of
the Father who sent Him for this end, to accept
Him as our Sin-ofTering, set forth in the consum-
mation of the ages, " to put away sin by the sac-
rifice of Himself." No more are offered the sin-
offerings of the law of" Moses:
" But Christ, the heavenly Lamb,
Takes all our sins away ;
A sacrifice of nobler name,
And richer blood, than they."
If, then, the law of the Levitical sin-ofifering
abides in force no longer, this is not because
God has changed, or because the truths which it
set forth concerning sin. and expiation, and par-
don, are obsolete, but only because the great
Sin-offering which the ancient sacrifice typified,
has now appeared. God hath " taken away the
first, that He may establish the second " (Heb.
X. 9). We have thus to do with the same God
as the Israelite. Now, as then, He takes account
of all our sins, even of sins committed " unwit-
tingly;" He reckons guilt with the same abso-
lute impartiality and justice as then; He pardons
sin, as then, only when the sinner who seeks
pardon, presents a sin-ofifering. But He has
now Himself provided the Lamb for this offer-
ing, and now in infinite love invites us all, with-
out distinction, with whatsoever sins we may be
burdened, to make free use of the all-sufficient
and most efficient blood of His well-beloved
Son. Shall we risk neglecting this Divine pro-
vision, and undertake to deal with God by-and-
bye, in the great day of judgment, on our own
276
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
merits, without a sacrifice for sin? God forbid!
Rather let us go on to say in the words of that
old hymn:
" My faith would lay her hand
On that dear Head of Thine,
While like a penitent I stand,
And there confess my sin."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GUILT-OFFERING.
Leviticus v. 14; vi. 7; vii. 1-7.
As in the English version, so also in the He-
brew, the special class of sins for which the
guilt-offering * is prescribed, is denoted by a dis-
tinct and specific word. That word, like the
English " trespass," its equivalent, always has
reference to an invasion of the rights of others,
especially in respect of property or service. It
is used, for instance, of the sin of Achan (Josh.
vii. i), who had appropriated spoil from Jericho,
which God had commanded to be set apart for
Himself. Thus, also, the neglect of God's serv-
ice, and especially the worship of idols, is often
described by this same word, as in 2 Chron.
xxviii. 22, xxix. 6, and many other places. The
reason is evident; for idolatry involved a with-
holding from God of those tithes and other
offerings which He claimed from Israel, and thus
became, as it were, an invasion of the Divine
rights of property. The same word is even ap-
plied to the sin of adultery (Numb. v. 12, 27),
apparently from the same point of view, inas-
much as the woman is regarded as belonging to
her husband, who has therefore in her certain
sacred rights, of which adultery is an invasion.
Thus, while every " trespass " is a sin, yet every
sin is not a " trespass." There are, evidently,
many sins of which this is not a characteristic
feature. But the sins for which the guilt-ofifer-
ing is prescribed are in every case sins which
may, at least, be specially regarded under this
particular point of view, to wit, as trespasses on
the rights of God or man in respect of owner-
ship; and this gives us the fundamental thought
which distinguishes the guilt-oflfering from all
others, namely, that for any invasion of the
rights of another in regard to property, not only
must expiation be made, in that it is a sin, but
also satisfaction, and, so far as possible, plenary
reparation of the wrong, in that the sin is also
trespass.
From this it is evident that, as contrasted with
the burnt-offering, which pre-eminently sym-
bolised full consecration of the person, and the
peace-offering, which symbolised fellowship with
God, as based upon reconciliation by sacrifice,
the guilt-offering takes its place, in a general
sense, with the sin-offering, as, like that, specially
designed to effect the reinstatement of an of-
fender in covenant relation with God. Thus, like
the latter, and unlike the former offerings, it
* It is to be regretted that the Revisers had not allowed
in this case the rendering " trespass-offering " to stand,
as in the Authorised Version. For, unlike the more
generic term "guilt," our word "trespass " very precisely
indicates the class of offences for which this particular
offering was ordained. It is indeed true that the Hebrew
word so rendered is quite distinct from that rendered
" trespass ; " yet, in this instance, by the attempt to rep-
resent this fact in English, more has been lost than
gained.
was only prescribed with reference to specific in-
stances of failure to fulfil some particular obliga-
tion toward God or man. So also, as the ex-
press condition of an acceptable offering, the
formal confession of such sin was particularly-
enjoined. And, finally, unlike the burnt-offering,
which was wholly consumed upon the altar, or
the peace-offering, of the flesh of which, with
certain reservations, the worshipper himself par-
took, in the case of the guilt-offering, as in the
sin-offering, the fat parts only were burnt on the
altar, and the remainder of the victim fell to the
priests, to be eaten by them alone in a holy
place, as a thing " most holy." The law is given
in the following words (vii. 2-y) : " He shall offer
of it all the fat thereof; the fat tail, and the fat
that covereth the inwards, and the two kidneys,
and the fat that is on them, which is by the loins,
and the caul upon the liver, with the kidneys,
shall he take away: and the priest shall burn
them upon the altar for an offering made by fire
unto the Lord: it is a guilt-offering. Every
male among the priests shall eat thereof: it shall
be eaten in a holy place: it is most holy. As is
the sin-offering, so is the guilt-offering: there is
one law for them: the priest that maketh atone-
ment therewith, he shall have it."
But while, in a general way, the guilt-offering
was evidently intended, like the sin-offering, to
signify the removal of sin from the conscience
through sacrifice, and thus may be regarded as
a variety of the sin-offering, yet the ritual pre-
sents some striking variations from that of the
latter. These are all explicable from this con-
sideration, that whereas the sin-offering repre-
sented the idea of atonement by sacrifice, re-
garded as an expiation of guilt, the guilt-offering
represented atonement under the aspect of a
satisfaction and reparation for the wrong com-
mitted. Hence, because the idea of expiation
here fell somewhat into the background, in order
to give the greater prominence to that of repara-
tion and satisfaction, the application of the
blood is only made, as in the burnt-offering and
the peace-offering, by sprinkling " on the altar
(of burnt-offering) round about " (vii. i).
Hence, again, we find that the guilt-offering
always had reference to the sin of the individual,
and never to the congregation; because it was
scarcely possible that every individual in the
whole congregation should be guilty in such in-
stances as those for which the guilt-offering is
prescribed.
Again, we have another contrast in the restric-
tion imposed upon the choice of the victim for
the sacrifice. In the sin-offering, as we have
seen, it was ordained that the offering should be
varied according to the theocratic rank of the
offender, to emphasise thereby to the conscience
gradations of guilt, as thus determined; also, it
was permitted that the offering might be varied
in value according to the ability of the offerer, in
order that it might thus be signified in symbol
that it was the gracious will of God that nothing
in the personal condition of the sinner should
exclude any one from the merciful provision of
the expiatory sacrifice. But it was no less im-
portant that another aspect of the matter should
be held forth, namely, that God is no respecter
of persons; and that, whatever be the condition
of the offender, the obligation to plenary satisfac-
tion and reparation for trespass committed, can-
not be modified in any way by the circumstances
of the offender. The man who, for example, has
Leviticus v. 14-vii. 1-7.]
THE GUILT-OFFERING.
277
defrauded his neighbour, whether of a small sum
or of a large estate, abides his debtor before
God, under all conceivable conditions, until resti-
tution is made. The obligation of full payment
rests upon every debtor, be he poor or rich, until
the last farthing is discharged. Hence, the sacri-
ficial victim of the guilt-offering is the same,
whether for the poor man or the rich man, " a
ram of the flock."
It was " a ram of the flock," because, as con-
trasted with the ewe or the lamb, or the dove
and the pigeon, it was a valuable offering. And
yet it is not a bullock, the most valuable offer-
ing known to the law, because that might be
hopelessly out of the reach of many a poor man.
The idea of value must be represented, and yet
not so represented as to exclude a large part of
the people from the provisions of the guilt-offer-
ing. The ram must be " without blemish," that
naught may detract from its value, as a symbol
of full satisfaction for the wrong done.
But most distinctive of all the requisitions
touching the victim is this, that, unlike all other
victims for other offerings, the ram of the guilt-
offering must in each case be definitely appraised
by the priest. The phrase is (v. 15), that it
must be " according to thy estimation in silver
by shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary."
This expression evidently requires, first, that the
offerer's own estimate of the value of the victim
shall not be taken, but that of the priest, as
representing God in this transaction; and, sec-
ondly, that its value shall in no case fall below
a certain standard; for the plural expression, " by
shekels," implies that the value of the ram shall
not be less than two shekels. And the shekel
must be of full weight; the standard of valuation
must be God's, and not man's, " the shekel of the
sanctuary."
Still more to emphasise the distinctive thought
of this sacrifice, that full satisfaction and repara-
tion for all offences is with God the universal
and unalterable condition of forgiveness, it was
further ordered that in all cases where the tres-
pass was of such a character as made this pos-
sible, that which had been unjustly taken or kept
back, whether from God or man, should be re-
stored " in full;" and not only this, but inasmuch
as by this misappropriation of what was not his
own, the offender had for the time deprived an-
other of the use and enjoyment of that which be-
longed to him, he must add to that of which he
had defrauded him " the fifth part more," a
double tithe. Thus the guilty person was not
allowed to have gained even any temporary ad-
vantage from the use for a while of that which
he now restored; for "the fifth part more"
would presumably quite overbalance all con-
ceivable advantage or enjoyment which he might
have had from his fraud. How admirable in all
this the exact justice of God! How perfectly
adapted was the guilt-offering, in all these par-
ticulars, to educate the conscience, and to pre-
clude any possible wrong inferences from the
allowance which was made, for other reasons,
for the poor man, in the expiatory offerings for
sin!
The arrangement of the law of the guilt-offer-
ing is very simple. It is divided into two sec-
tions, the first of which (v. 14-19) deals with
cases of trespass " in the holy things of the
Lord," things which, by the law or by an act of
consecration, were regarded as belonging in a
special sense to Jehovah; the second section, on
the other hand (vi. 1-7), deals with cases of tres-
pass on the property rights of man.
The first of these, again, consists of two parts.
Verses 14-16 give the law of the guilt-offering as
applied to cases in which a man, through inad-
vertence or unwittingly, trespasses in the holy
things of the Lord, but in such manner that the
nature and extent of the trespass can afterward
be definitely known and valued; verses 17-19 deal
with cases where there has been trespass such as
to burden the conscience, and yet such as, for
whatsoever reason, cannot be precisely measured.
By " the holy things of the Lord " are intended
such things as, either by universal ordinance or
by voluntary consecration, were regarded as be-
longing to Jehovah, and in a special sense His
property. Thus, under this head would come
the case of the man who, for instance, should
unwittingly eat the flesh of the firstling of his
cattle, or the flesh of the sin-offering, or the
shew-bread; or should use his tithe, or any part
of it, for himself. Even though he did this un-
wittingly, yet it none the less disturbed the man's
relation to God; and therefore, when known, in
order to his reinstatement in fellowship with
God, it was necessary that he should make full
restitution with a fifth part added, and besides
this, sacrifice a ram, duly appraised, as a guilt-
offering. In that the sacrifice was prescribed
over and above the restitution, the worshipper
was reminded that, in view of the infinite majesty
and holiness of God, it lies not in the power of
any creature to nullify the wrong God-ward, even
by fullest restitution. For trespass is not only
trespass, but is also sin; an offence not only
against the rights of Jehovah as Owner, but also
an affront to Him as Supreme King and Law-
giver.
And yet, because the worshipper must not be
allowed to lose sight of the fact that sin is of the
nature of a debt, a victim was ordered which
should especially bring to mind this aspect of the
matter. For not only among the Hebrews, but
among the Arabs, the Romans and other ancient
peoples, sheep, and especially rams, were very
commonly used as a medium of payment in case
of debt, and especially in paying tribute.
Thus we read (2 Kings iii. 4), that Mesha, king
of Moab, rendered imto the king of Israel " an
hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thou-
sand rams, with the wool," in payment of tribute;
and, at a later day, Isaiah (xvi. i, R. V.) delivers
to Moab the mandate of Jehovah: " Send ye the
lambs for the ruler of the land . . . unto the
mount of the daughter of Zion."
And so the ram having been brought and pre-
sented by the guilty person, with confession of
his fault, it was slain by the priest, like the sin-
offering. The blood, however, was not applied
to the horns of the altar of burnt-offering, still
less brought into the Holy Place, as in the case
of the sin-offering: but (vii. 2) was to be sprin-
kled " upon the altar round about," as in the
burnt-offering. The reason of this difference in
the application of the blood, as above remarked,
lies in this, that, as in the burnt-offering, the idea
of sacrifice as symbolising expiation takes a
place secondary and subordinate to another
thought; in this case, the conception of sacrifice
as representing satisfaction for trespass.
The next section (vv. 17-19) does not expressly
mention sins of trespass; for which reason some
have thought that it was essentially a repetition
of the law of the sin-offering. But that it is not
278
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
to be so regarded is plain from the fact that the
victim is still the same as for the guilt-ofifering,
and from the explicit statement (ver. 19) that
this " is a guilt-ofifering." The inference is
natural that the prescription still has reference to
"trespass in the holy things of the Lord"; and
the class of cases intended is probably indicated
by the phrase, " though he knew if not." In
the former section, the law provided for cases in
which though the trespass had been done unwit-
tingly, yet the ofifender afterward came to know
of the trespass in its precise extent, so as to give
an exact basis for the restitution ordered in such
cases. But it is quite supposable that there
might be cases in which, although the ofifender
was aware that there had been a probable tres-
pass, such as to burden his conscience, he yet
knew not just how much it was. The ordinance
is only in so far modified as such a case would
make necessary; where there was no exact
knowledge of the amount of trespass, obviously
there the law of restitution with the added fifth
could not be applied. Yet, none the less, the
man is guilty; he " bears his iniquity," that is, he
is liable to the penalty of his fault; and in order
to the re-establishment of his covenant relation
with God, the ram must be ofifered as a guilt-
ofTering.
It is suggestive to observe the emphasis which
is laid upon the necessity of the guilt-of¥ering,
even in such cases. Three times, reference is ex-
plicitly made to this fact of ignorance, as not
affecting the requirement of the guilt-ofifering:
(ver. 17) "Though he knew it not, yet is he
guilty, and shall bear his iniquity;" and again
(ver. 18), with special explicitness, " The priest
shall make atonement for him concerning the
thing wherein he erred unwittingly and knew it
not;" and yet again (ver. 19), " It is a guilt-
ofifering: he is certainly guilty before the Lord."
The repetition is an urgent reminder that in this
case, as in all others, we are never to forget that
however our ignorance of a trespass at the time,
or even lack of definite knowledge regarding its
nature and extent, may afifect the degree of our
guilt, it cannot affect the fact of our guilt, and
the consequent necessity for satisfaction in order
to acceptance with God.
The second section of the law of the guilt-
offering (vi. 1-7) deals with trespasses against
man, as also, like trespasses against Jehovah, re-
quiring, in order to forgiveness from God, full
restitution with the added fifth, and the offering
of the ram as a guilt-offering. Five cases are
named (vv. 2, 3), no doubt as being common,
typical examples of sins of this character.
The first case is trespass upon a neighbour's
rights in " a matter of deposit;" where a man has
entrusted something to another to keep, and he
has either sold it or unlawfully used it as if it
were his own. The second case takes in all fraud
in s " bargain," as when, for example, a man sells
goods, or a piece of land, representing them to
be better than they really are, or asking a price
larger than he knows an article to be really
worth. The third instance is called " robbery;"
by which we are to understand any act or
process, even though it should be under colour
of legal forms, by means of which a man may
manage unjustly to get possession of the prop-
erty of his neighbour, without giving him due
equivalent therefor. The fourth instance is
called " oppression " of his neighbour. The
English word contains the same image as the
Hebrew word, which is used, for instance, of the
unnecessary retention of the wages of the
employe by the employer (xix. 13) ; it may be ap-
plied to all cases in which a man takes advantage
of another's circumstances to extort from him
any thing or any service to which he has no
right, or to force upon him something which it
is to the poor man's disadvantage to take. The
last example of offences to which the law of the
guilt-offering applied, is the case in which a man
finds something and then denies it to the right-
ful owner. The reference to false swearing
which follows, as appears from ver. 5. refers not
merely to lying and perjury concerning this last-
named case, but equally to all cases in which a
man may lie or swear falsely to the pecuniary
damage of his neighbour. It is mentioned not
merely as aggravating such sin, but because in
swearing touching any matter, a man appeals to
God as witness to the truth of his words; so that
by swearing in these cases he represents God as
a party to his falsehood and injustice.
In all these cases, the prescription is the same
as in analogous offences in the holy things of Je-
hovah. First of all, the guilty man must confess
the wrong which he has done (Numb. v. 7), then
restitution must be made of all of which he has
defrauded his neighbour, together with one-fifth
additional. But while this may set him right
with man, it has not yet set him right with God.
He must bring his guilt-offering unto Jehovah
(vv. 6, 7) ; "a ram without blemish out of the
flock, according to the priest's estimation, for a
guilt-offering, unto the priest: and the priest shall
make atonement for him before the Lord, and
he shall be forgiven: concerning whatsoever he
doeth so as to be guilty thereby."
And this completes the law of the guilt-offer-
ing. It was thus prescribed for sins which in-
volve a defrauding or injuring of another in re-
spect to material things, whether God or man,
whether knowingly or unwittingly. The law
was one and unalterable for all; the condition of
pardon was plenary restitution for the wrong
done, and the offering of a costly sacrifice, ap-
praised as such by the priest, the earthly repre-
sentative of God, in the shekel of the sanctuary,
" a ram without blemish out of the flock."
There are lessons from this ordinance, so plain
that, even in the dim light of those ancient days,
the Israelite might discern and understand them.
And they are lessons which, because man and
his ways are the same as then, and God the same
as then, are no less pertinent to all of us to-day.
Thus we are taught by this law that God claims
from man. and especially from His own people,
certain rights of property, of which He will not
allow Himself to be defrauded, even through
man's forgetfulness or inadvertence. In a later
day Israel was sternly reminded of this in the
burning words of Jehovah by the prophet
Malachi (iii. 8, 9): " Will a man rob God? yet ye
rob me. But ye say. Wherein have we robbed
thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed
with the curse; for ye rob me. even this whole
nation." Nor has God relaxed His claim in the
present dispensation. For the Apostle Paul
charges the Corinthian Christians (2 Cor. viii.
7). in the name of the Lord, with regard to their
gifts, that as they abounded in other graces, so
they should " abound in this grace also." And
this is the first lesson brought before us in the
law of the guilt-offering. God claims His tithe.
Leviticus v. 14-vii. 1-7.]
THE GUILT-OFFERING.
279
His first-fruit, and the fulfilment of all vows. It
was a lesson for that time; it is no less a lesson
for our time.
And the guilt-ofTering further reminds us that
as God has rights, so man also has rights, and
that Jehovah, as the King and Judge of men, will
exact the satisfaction of those rights, and will
pass over no injury done by man to his neigh-
bour in material things, nor forgive it unto any
man, except upon condition of the most ample
material restitution to the injured party.
Then, yet again, if the sin-offering called espe-
cially for faith in an expiatory sacrifice as the
condition of the Divine forgiveness, the guilt-
oflfering as specifically called also for repentance,
as a condition of pardon, no less essential. Its
unambiguous message to every Israelite was the
same as that of John the Baptist at a later day
(Matt. iii. 8, 9) : " Bring forth fruit worthy of re-
pentance: and think not to say within yourselves,
We have Abraham to our father."
The reminder is as much needed now as in the
days of Moses. How specific and practical the
selection of the particular instances mentioned as
cases for the application of the inexorable law of
the guilt-of?ering! Let us note them again, for
they are not cases peculiar to Israel or to the
fifteenth century before Christ. "If any one . . .
deal falsely with his neighbour in a matter of de-
posit;" as, e. g., in the case of moneys entrusted
to a bank or railway company, or other corpora-
tion; for there is no hint that the law did not
apply except to individuals, or that a man might
be released from these stringent obligations of
righteousness whenever in some such evil busi-
ness he was associated with others; the guilt-
offering must be forthcoming, with the amplest
restitution, or there is no pardon. Then false
dealing in a " bargain " is named, as involving
the same requirement; as when a man prides
himself on driving " a good bargain," by getting
something unfairly for less than its value, tak-
ing advantage of his neighbour's straits; or by
selling something for more than its value, taking
advantage of his neighbour's ignorance, or his
necessity. Then is mentioned " robbery;" by
which word is covered not merely that which
goes by the name in polite circles, but all cases
in which a man takes advantage of his neigh-
bour's distress or helplessness, perhaps by means
of some technicality of law, to " strip " him, as
the Hebrew word is, of his property of any kind.
And next is specified the pian who may " have
oppressed his neighbour," especially a man or
woman who serves him, as the usage of the word
suggests; grinding thus the face of the poor;
paying, for instance, less for labour than the law
of righteousness and love demands, because the
poor man must have work or starve with his
house. What sweeping specifications! And all
such in all lands and all ages, are solemnly re-
minded in the law of the guilt-offering that in
these their sharp practices they have to reckon
not with man merely, but with God; and that it
is utterly vain for a man to hope for the forgive-
ness of sin from God, offering or no offering, so
long as he has in his pocket his neighbour's
money. For all such, full restoration with
the added fifth, according to the law of the
theocratic kingdom, was the unalterable condi-
tion of the Divine forgiveness; and we shall find
that this law of the theocratic kingdom will also
be the law applied in the adjudications of the
great white throne.
Furthermore, in that it was particularly en-
joined that in the estimation of the value of the
guilt-offering, not the shekel of the people, often
of light weight, but the full weight "shekel of the
sanctuary " was to be held the invariable stand-
ard; we, who are so apt to ease things to our
consciences by applying to our conduct the prin-
ciples of judgment current among men, are
plainly taught that if we will have our trespasses
forgiven, the reparation and restitution which we
make must be measured, not by the standard of
men, but by that of God, which is absolute
righteousness.
Yet again, in that in the case of all such tres-
passes on the rights of God or man it was or-
dained that the offering, unlike other sacrifices
intended to teach other lessons, should be one
and the same, whether the offender were rich or
poor; we are taught that the extent of our moral
obligations or the conditions of their equitable
discharge are not determined by a regard to our
present ability to make them good. Debt is
debt by whomsoever owed. If a man have ap-
propriated a hundred pounds of another man's
money, the moral obligation of that debt can-
not be abrogated by a bankrupt law, allowing
him to compromise at ten shillings in the pound.
The law of man may indeed release him from
liability to prosecution, but no law can discharge
such a man from the unalterable obligation to
pay penny for penny, farthing for farthing.
There is no bankrupt law in the kingdom of
God. This, too, is evidently a lesson quite as
much needed by Gentiles and nominal Christians
in the nineteenth century after Christ, as by He-
brews in the fifteenth century before Christ.
But the spiritual teaching of the guilt-offering
is not yet exhausted. For. like all the other
offerings, it pointed to Christ. He is " the end
of the law unto righteousness" (Rom. x. 4), as
regards the guilt-offering, as in all else. As the
burnt-offering prefigured Christ the heavenly
Victim, in one aspect, and the peace-offering,
Christ in another aspect, so the guilt-offering
presents to our adoring contemplation yet an-
other view of His sacrificial work. While, as
our burnt-offering. He became our righteousness
in full self-consecration; as our peace-offering,
our life; as our sin-offering, the expiation for our
sins; so, as our guilt-offering. He made satisfac-
tion and plenary reparation in our behalf to the
God on whose inalienable rights in us, by our
sins we had trespassed without measure.
Nor is this an over-refinement of exposition.
For in Isa. liii. 10, where both the Authorised
and the Revised Versions read, " shall make his
soul an offering for sin," the margin of the latter
rightly calls attention to the fact that in the He-
brew the word here used is the very same which
through all this Levitical law is rendered " guilt-
offering." And so we are expressly told by this
evangelic prophet, that the Holy Servant of Je-
hovah, the suffering Messiah, in this His sacri-
ficial work should make His soul " a guilt-
offering." He became Himself the complete and
exhaustive realisation of all that in sacrifice
which was set forth in the Levitical guilt-
offering.
A declaration this is which holds forth both
the sin for which Christ atoned, and the Sacri-
fice itself, in a very distinct and peculiar light.
In that Christ's sacrifice was thus a guilt-offering
in the sense of the law. we are taught that, in one
aspect, our sins are regarded by God, and should
28o
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
therefore be regarded by us, as debts which are
due from us to God. This is, indeed, by no
means the only aspect in which sin should be
regarded; it is, for example, rebellion, high
treason, a deadly affront to the Supreme Majesty,
which must be expiated with the blood of the
sin-offering. But our sins are also of the nature
of debts. That is, God has claims on us for
service which we have never met; claims for a
portion of our substance which we have often
withheld, or given grudgingly, trespassing thus
in " the holy things of the Lord." Just as the
servant who is set to do his master's work, if,
instead, he take that time to do his own work, is
debtor to the full value of the service of which
his master is thus defrauded, so stands the case
between the sinner and God. Just as with the
agent who fails to make due returns to his prin-
cipal on the moneys committed to him for in-
vestment, using them instead for himself, so
stands the case between God and the sinner who
has used his talents, not for the Lord, but for
himself, or has kept them laid up, unused, in a
napkin. Thus, in the New Testament, as the
correlate of this representation of Christ as a
guilt-offering, we find sin again and again set
forth as a debt which is owed from man to God.
So, in the Lord's prayer we are taught to pray,
" Forgive us our debts;" so, twice the Lord
Himself in His parables (Matt, xviii. 23-35; Luke
vii. 41, 42) set forth the relation of the sinner to
God as that of the debtor to the creditor; and
concerning those on whom the tower of Siloam
fell, asks (Luke xiii. 4), "Think ye that they
were sinners (Greek ' debtors,') above all that
dwelt in Jerusalem?" Indeed so imbedded is
this thought in the conscience of man that it has
been crystallised in our word " ought," which is
but the old preterite of "owe;" as in Tyndale's
New Testament, where we read (Luke vii. 41),
" there was a certain lender, which ought him
five hundred pence." What a startling concep-
tion is this, which forms the background to the
great " guilt-offering" ! Man a debtor to God!
a debtor for service each day due, but no day
ever fully and perfectly rendered! in gratitude
for gifts, too often quite forgotten, oftener only
paid in scanty part! We are often burdened and
troubled greatly about our debts to men; shall
we not be concerned about the enormous and
ever accumulating debt to God! Or is He an
easy creditor, who is indifferent whether these
debts of ours be met or not? So think multi-
tudes; but this is not the representation of
Scripture, either in the Old or the New Testa-
ment. For in the law it was required, that if a
man, guilty of any of these offences for the for-
giveness of which the guilt-offering was pre-
scribed, failed to confess and bring the offering,
and make the restitution with the added fifth, as
commanded by the law, he should be brought
before the judges, and the full penalty of law
exacted, on the principle of " an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth! " And in the New Testa-
ment, one of those solemn parables of the two
debtors closes with the awful words concerning
one of them who was " delivered to the tor-
mentors," that he should not come out of prison
till he had "paid the uttermost farthing." Not a
hint is there in Holy Scripture, of forgiveness of
our debts to God, except upon the one condition
of full restitution made to Him to whom the debt
is due, and therewith the sacrificial blood of a
guilt-offering. But Christ is our Guilt-Offering.
He is our Guilt-Offering, in that He Himself did
that, really and fully, with respect to all our debts
as sinful men to God, which the guilt-offering of
Leviticus symbolised, but accomplished not.
His soul He made a guilt-offering for our tres-
passes! Isaiah's words imply that He should
make full restitution for all that of which we, as
sinners, defraud God. He did this by that per-
fect and incomparable service of lowly obedience
such as we should render, but have never ren-
dered; in which He has made full satisfaction to
God for all our innumerable debts. He has
made such satisfaction, not by a convenient legal
fiction, or in a rhetorical figure, or as judged by
any human standard. Even as the ram of the
guilt-offering was appraised according to " the
shekel of the sanctuary," so upon our Lord, at
the beginning of that life of sacrificial service,
was solemnly passed the Divine verdict that
with this antitypical Victim of the Guilt-Offering,
God Himself was " well pleased " (Matt. iii. 17).
Not only so. For we cannot forget that ac-
cording to the law, not only the full restitution
must be made, but the fifth must be added
thereto. So with our Lord. For who will not
confess that Christ not only did all that we
should have done, but, in the ineffable depth of
His self-humiliation and obedience unto death,
even the death of the cross, paid therewith the
added fifth of the law. Said a Jewish Rabbi to
the writer, " I have never been able to fimsh
reading in the Gospel the story of the Jesus of
Nazareth; for it too soon brings the tears to my
eyes! " So affecting even to Jewish unbelief was
this unparalleled spectacle, the adorable Son of
God making Himself a guilt-offering, and pay-
ing, in the incomparable perfection of His holy
obedience, the added fifth in our behalf! Thus
has Christ " magnified this law " of the guilt-
offering, and " made it honourable," even as He
did all law (Isa. xlii. 21).
And, as is intimated, by the formal valuation
of the sacrificial ram, in the type, even the death
of Christ as the guilt-offering, in one aspect is
to be regarded as the consummating act of
service in the payment of debts Godward. Just
as the sin-offering represented His death in its
passive aspect, as meeting the demands of justice
against the sinner as a rebel under sentence of
death, by dying in his stead, so, on the other
hand, the guilt-offering represents that same
sacrificial death, rather in another aspect, no
less clearly set forth in the New Testament;
namely, the supreme act of obedience to the will
of God, whereby He discharged " to the utter-
most farthing," even with the added fifth of the
law, all the transcendent debt of service due
from man to God.
This representation of Christ's work has in all
ages been an offence, " the offence of the cross."
All the more need we to insist upon it, and never
to forget, or let others forget, that Christ is ex-
pressly declared in the Word of God to have
been " a guilt-offering," in the Levitical sense of
that term; that, therefore, to speak of His death
as effecting our salvation merely through its
moral influence, is to contradict and nullify the
Word of God. Well may we set this word in
Isa. liii. 10, concerning the Servant of Jehovah,
against all modern Unitarian theology, and
against all Socinianising teaching; all that would
maintain any view of Christ's death which ex-
cludes or ignores the divinely revealed fact that
it was in its essential nature a guilt-offering; and,
Leviticus vi. i6-26-vii. 6-36] THE PRIESTS' PORTIONS.
281
because a guilt-offering, therefore of the nature
of the payment of a dei)t in behalf of those for
whom He suffered.
Most blessed truth this, for all who can re-
ceive it! Christ, the Son of God, our Guilt-
Offering! Like the poor Israelite, who had de-
frauded God of that which was His due, so must
we do; coming before God, confessing that
wherein we have wronged Him, and bringing
forth fruit meet for repentance, we must bring
and plead Christ in the glory of His person, in
all the perfection of His holy obedience, a^ our
Guilt-Offering. And therewith the ancient
promise to the penitent Israelite becomes ours
(A. 7), "The priest shall make atonement for
him before the Lord, and he shall be forgiven;
concerning whatsoever he doeth so as to be
guilty thereby."
CHAPTER IX.
THE PRIESTS' PORTIONS.
Leviticus vi. 16-18, 26; vii. 6-10, 14, 31-36.
After the law of the guilt-offering follows a
section (vi. 8-vii. 38) with regard to the offer-
ings previously treated, but addressed especially
to the priests, as the foregoing were specially di-
rected to the people. Much of the contents of
this section has already passed before us, in
anticipation of its order in the book, as this has
seemed necessary in order to a complete exposi-
tion of the several offerings. An important part
of the section, however, relating to the portion
of the offerings which was appointed for the
priests, has been passed by until now, and must
claim our brief attention.
In the verses indicated above, it is ordered that
<>f the meal-offerings, the sin-offerings, and the
f{uilt-offerings, all that was not burnt, as also
the wave-breast and the heave-shoulder of the
j'cace-offerings, should be for Aaron and his
sons. In particular, it is directed that the priest's
fortion of the sin-offering and the guilt-offering
shall be eaten by " the priest that maketh atone-
nent therewith" (vii. 7); and that of the meal-
offerings prepared in the oven, the frying-pan, or
the baking-pan, all that is not burned upon the
altar, according to the law of chap, ii., shall be
eaten by "the priest that offereth it;" and that
of every meal-offering mingled with oil, or dry,
the same part " shall all the sons of Aaron have,
one as well as another" (vii. 9, 10). Of the
burnt-offering, all the flesh being burned, the
hide alone fell to the officiating priest as his per-
quisite (vii. 8).
These regulations are explained in the con-
cluding verses of the section (vii. 35, 36) as fol-
lows. "This is the anointing-portion of Aaron,
and the anointing-portion of his sons, out of the
offerings of the Lord made by fire, in the day
when he presented them to mini'^ter unto the
lord in the priest's office; which the Lord com-
manded to be given them of the children of
Israel, in the day that he anointed them. It is
a due for ever throi'ghn'it their generations."
Hence, it is olain that ♦^h'5 "<;p whVh was to be
made of certain parts of '-Tt^'n offerings does
rot touch the question of '^hp ronserrat'on of the
whole to God. The whole of each offering is
none the less wholly accepted and appropriated
by God, that He designates a part of it to the
maintenance of the priesthood. That even as thus
used by the priest it is used by him as something
belonging to God, is indicated by the phrase
used, "it is most holy" (vi. 17); expressive
v/ords, which in the law of the offerings always
have a technical use, as denoting those things of
which only the sons of Aaron might partake,
and that only in the holy place. In the case of
the meal-offering, its peculiarly sacred character
as belonging, the whole of it, exclusively to God,
is further marked by the additional injunctions
that it should be " eaten without leaven in a holy
place" (vi. 16); and that whosoever touched
these offerings should be holy (vi. 18); that is, he
should be as a man separated to God, under all
the restrictions (doubtless, without the privi-
leges), which belonged to the priesthood, as men
set apart for God's service. In the eating of
their portion of the various offerings by the
priests, we are to recognise no official act: we
simply see the servants of God supported by the
bread of His table.
This last thought, which is absent in the case
of no one of the offerings,* is brought out with
special clearness and fulness in the ceremonial
connected with the peace-offerings (vii. 28-34).
In this case, certain parts, the right thigh (or
shoulder?) and the breast, are set apart as the
due of the priest. The selection of these is de-
termined by the principle which marks all the
Levitical legislation: God and those who repre-
sent Him are to be honoured by the consecration
of the best of everything. In the animals used
upon the altar, these were regarded as the choice
parts, and are indeed referred to as such in other
Scriptures. But, in order that neither the priest '
nor the people may imagine that the priest re-
ceives these as a man from his fellowmen, but
may understand that they are given to God, and
that it is from God that the priest now receives
them, as His servant, fed from His table; to this
end, certain ceremonies were ordained to be
used with these parts; the breast was to be
^' heaved," the thigh was to be " waved." before
the Lord. What was the meaning of these
actions?
The breast was to be "heaved;" that is, ele-
vated heavenward. The symbolic meaning of
this act can scarcely be missed. By it, the priest
acknowledged his dependence upon God for the
supply of this sacrificial food, and. again, by this
act consecrated it anew to Him as the One that
sitteth in the heavens.
But God is not only the One that " sitteth in
the heavens;" He is the God who has conde-
scended also to dwell among men, and especially
in the tent of meeting in the midst of Israel.
And thus, as by the elevation of the breast
heavenward. God. the Giver, was recognised as
the One enthroned in heaven, so by the " wav-
ing" of the thigh, which, as the rabbis tell us,
was a movement backward and forward, to and
from the altar. He was recognised also as Je-
hovah, who had condescended from heaven to
dwell in the midst of His people. Like the
" heaving," so the " waving," then, was an act
of acknowledgment and consecration to God;
the former, to God, as in heaven, the God of
creation; the other, to God, as the God of _ the
altar, the God of redemption. And that this is
* Even in the burnt-offering, the hide of the victim was
assigned to the priest (vii. 8).
282
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
the true significance of these acts is illustrated by
the fact that in the Pentateuch, in the account of
the gold and silver b'rought by the people for
the preparation of the tabernacle (Exod. xxxv.
22), the same word is used to describe the pres-
entation of these ofiferings which is here used
of the wave-ofifering.
And so in the peace-offering the principle is
amply illustrated upon which the priests received
their dues. The worshippers bring their offer-
ings, and present them, not to the priest, but
through him to God; who, then, having used
such parts as He will in the service of the sanc-
tuary, gives again such parts of them as He
pleases to the priests.
The lesson of these arrangements lies imme-
diately before us. They were intended to teach
Israel, and, according to the New Testament,
are also designed to teach us, that it is the will
of God that those who give up secular occupa-
tions to devote themselves to the ministry of His
house should be supported by the freewill offer-
ings of God's people. Very strange indeed it
is to hear a few small sects in our day denying
this. For the Apostle Paul argues at length to
this effect, and calls the attention of the Corin-
thians (i Cor. ix. 13, 14) to the fact that the
principle expressed in this ordinance of the law
of Moses has not been set aside, but holds good
in this dispensation. " Know ye not that they
which . . . wait upon the altar have their por-
tion with the altar? Even so did the Lord
ordain that they which proclaim the Gospel
should live of the Gospel." The principle
plainly covers the case of all such as give up
secular callings to devote themselves to the
ministry of the Word, whether to proclaim the
'Gospel in any of the great mission fields, or to
exercise the pastorate of the local church. Such
are ever to be supported out of the consecrated
offerings of God's people.
To point in disparagement of modern " hire-
ling " ministers and missionaries, as some have
done, to the case of Paul, who laboured with
his own hands, that he might not be chargeable
to those to whom he ministered, is singularly
inapt, seeing that in the chapter above referred
to he expressly vindicates his right to receive of
the Corinthians his support, and in this Second
Epistle to them even seems to express a doubt
(2 Cor. xii. 13) whether in refusing, as he did,
to receive support from them, he had not done
them a " wrong," making them thus " inferior
to the rest of the churches," from whom, in
fact, he did receive such material aid (Phil. iv.
10, 16).
And if ever claims of this kind upon our be-
nevolence and liberality seem to be heavy, and if
to nature the burden is sometimes irksome, we
shall do well to remember that the requirement is
not of man, and not of the Church, but of God.
It comes to us with the double authority of the
Old and New Testament, of the Law and the
Gospel. And it will certainly help us all to give
to these ends the more gladly, if we keep that in
mind which the Levitical law so carefully kept
before Israel, that the giving was to be regarded
by them as not to the priesthood, but to the
Lord, and that in our giving outwardly to sup-
port the ministry of God's Word, we give, really,
to the Lord Himself. And it stands written
(Matt. X. 42): "Whosoever shall give to drink
unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water
only, ... he shall in no wise lose his reward."
CHAPTER X.
THE CONSECRATION OF AARON AND
HIS SONS, AND OF THE TABERNACLE.
Leviticus viii. 1-36.
The second section of the book of Leviticus
(viii. i-x. 20) is historical, and describes (viii.)
the consecration of the tabernacle and of Aaron
and his sons, (ix.) their induction into the duties
of their office, and, finally (x.), the terrible judg-
ment by which the high sanctity of the priestly
office and of the tabernacle service was very
solemnly impressed upon them and all the
people.
First in order (chap_. viii.) is described the
ceremonial of consecration. We read (vv. 1-4) ;
" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying. Take
Aaron and his sons with him, and the garments,
and the anointing oil, and the bullock of the sin
offering, and the two rams, and the basket of
unleavened bread; and assemble thou all the con-
gregation at the door of the tent of meeting.
And Moses did as the Lord commanded him;
and the congregation was assembled at the door
of the tent of meeting."
These words refer us back to Exod. xxviii.,
xxix., in which are recorded the full directions
previously given for the making' of the garments
and the oil of anointing, and for the ceremonial
of the consecration of the priests. The law of
offerings having been delivered, Moses now
proceeds to consecrate Aaron and his sons to the
priestly office, according to the commandment
given; and to this end, by Divine direction, he
orders " all the congregation " to be assembled
" at the door of the tent of meeting." In this
last statement some have seen a sufficient reason
for rejecting the whole account as fabulous, in-
sisting that it is paJpably absurd to suppose that
a congregation numbering some millions could
be assembled at the door of a single tent! But,
surely, if the words are to be taken in the ultra-
literal sense required in order to make out this
difficulty, the impossibility must have been
equally evident to the supposed fabricator of the
fiction; and it is yet more absurd to suppose that
he should ever have intended his words to be
pressed to such a rigid literality. Two explana-
tions lie before us, either of which meets the
supposed difficulty; the one, that endorsed by
Dillmann,* that the congregation was gathered
in their appointed representatives; the other,
that which refuses to see in the words a state-
ment that every individual in the nation was
literally " at the door," and further reminds us
that, inasmuch as the ceremonies of the conse-
cration are said to have continued seven days,
we are not, by the terms of the narrative, re-
quired to believe that all, in any sense, were
present, either at the very beginning or at any
one time during that week. It is not too much
to say that by a captious criticism of this kind,
any narrative, however sober, might be shown
to be absurd.
_ The consecration ceremonial was introduced
by a solemn declaration made by Moses to as
sembled Israel, that the impressive rites which
they were now about to witness, were of Divine
appointment. We read (ver. 5), " Moses said
♦See "Die Bticher Exodus und Leviticn?,"3 Aufl., p.
462.
Leviticus viii. 1-36.]
CONSECRATION OF AARON.
283
unto the congregation, This is the thing which
the Lord hath commanded to be done."
Just here we may pause to note the great em-
phasis which the narrative lays upon this fact of
the Divine appointment of all pertaining to
these consecration rites. Not only is this Di-
vine ordination of all thus declared at the be-
ginning, but in connection with each of the
chief parts of the ceremonial the formula is re-
peated, " as the Lord commanded Moses."
Also, at the close of the first day's rites, Moses
twice reminds Aaron and his sons that this
whole ritual, in all its parts, is for them an ordi-
nance of God, and is to be regarded accordingly,
upon pain of death (vv. 34, 35). And the narra-
tive of the chapter closes (ver. 36) with the
words, " Aaron and his sons did all the things
which the Lord commanded by the hand of
Moses." Twelve times in this one chapter is
reference thus made to the Divine appointment
of these consecration rites.
This is full of significance and instruction. It
is of the highest importance in an apologetic
way. For it is self-evident that this twelvefold
affirmation, twelve times directly contradicts the
modern theory of the late origin and human in-
vention of the Levitical priesthood. There is
no evading of the issue which is thus placed
squarely before us. To talk of the inspiration
from God, in any sense possible to that word, of
a writing containing such affirmations, so numer-
ous, formal, and emphatic, if the critics referred
to are right, and these affirmations are all false,
is absurd. There is no such thing as inspired
falsehood.
Again, a great spiritual truth is herein brought
before us, which concerns believers in all ages.
It is set forth in so many words in Heb. v. 4,
where the writer, laying down the essential con-
ditions of priesthood, specially mentions Divine
appointment as one of these; which he affirms
as satisfied in the high-priesthood of Christ:
" No man taketh the honour unto himself, but
when he is called of God,, even as was Aaron.
So Christ also glorified not Himself to be made
a high priest. ' Fundamental to Christian faith
and life is this thought: priesthood is not of
man, but of God. In particular, in all that Christ
has done and is still doing as the High Priest,
in the true holiest. He is acting under Divine
appointment.
And we are hereby pointed to the truth of
which some may need to be reminded, that the
work of our Lord in our behalf, and that of <^he
whole universe into which sin haS entered, has
its cause and origin in the mind and gracious will
of the Father. It was in His incomprehensible
love, who appointed the priestly office, that the
whole work of atonement, and therewith purifi-
cation and full redemption, had its mysterious
origin. The thoughtful reader of the Gospels
will hardly need to be reminded how constantly
our blessed Lord, in the days of His high-
priestly service upon earth, acted in all that He
did under the consciousness, often expressed, of
His appointment by the Father to this work.
Thus, Aaron in the solemn ceremonial of those
days of consecration, as ever afterward, doing
" all the things which the Lord commanded by
the hand of AIoscs," in so doing fitly represented
Him who should come afterward, who said of
Himself (John vi. .•^8), " I came down from
heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of
Him that sent Me."
The Levitical Priesthood and Taber-
nacle AS Types.
In order to any profitable study of the follow-
ing ceremonial, it is indispensable to have dis-
tinctly before us the New Testament teaching as
to the typical significance of tlie priesthood and
the tabernacle. A few words on this subject,
therefore, seem to be needful as preliminary to
more detailed exposition. As to the typical
character of Aaron, as high priest, the New
Testament leaves us no room for doubt.
Throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews, Christ
is held forth as the true and heavenly High
Priest, of whom Aaron, with his successors, was
an eminent type.
As regards the other priests, while it is true
that, considered in themselves, and without refer-
ence to the high priest, each of them also, in the
performance of his daily functions in the taber-
nacle, was a lesser type of Christ, as is intimated
in Heb. x. II, yet, as contrasted with the high
priest, who was ever one, while they were many,
it is plain that another typical reference must be
sought for the ordinary priesthood. What that
may be is suggested to us in several New Testa-
ment passages; as. especially, in Rev. v. 10, where
the whole body of believers, bought by the blood
of the slain Lamb, is said to have been made
" unto our God a kingdom and priests;" with
which may be compared Heb. xiii. 10, where it is
said, " We have an altar, whereof they have no
right to eat which serve the tabernacle"; words
which plainly assume the priesthood of all be-
lievers in Christ, as the antitype of the priest-
hood of the Levitical tabernacle.*
As to the typical meaning of the tabernacle,
which also is anointed in the consecration cere-
monial, there has been much difference of opin-
ion. That it was typical is declared, in so many
words, in the Epistle to the Hebrews (viii. 5),
where the Levitical priests are said to have
served " that which is a copy and shadow of
the heavenly things;" as also ix. 24, where we
read, " Christ entered not into a holy place made
with hands, like in pattern to the true; but into
heaven itself, now to appear before the face of
God for us." But when we ask what then were
" the heavenly things " of which the tabernacle
was " the copy and shadow," we have different
answers.
Many have replied that the antitype of the
tabernacle, as of the temple, was the Church of
believers: and, at first thought, with some appar-
ent Scriptural reason. For it is certain that
Christians are declared (i Cor. iii. 16) to be the
temple of the living God; where, however, it is
to be noted that the original word denotes, not
the temple or tabernacle in general, but the
" sanctuary " or inner shrine — the " holy of
holies." More to the point is i Peter ii. 5,
where it is said to Christians, " Ye also, as living
stones, are built up a spiritual house." Such
passages as these do certainly warrant us in say-
ing that the tabernacle, and especially the inner
sanctuary, as the special place of the Divixe habi-
tation and manifestation, did in so far typify the
Church.
But when we consider the tabernacle, not in
* Especially strikinp: in this connection is the expression
used by the Apostle P.huI (Rom. xv. 16), where he speaks
nf himself as " a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gen-
tiles, ministerinjr the Gospel of God;" in which last
phrase, the (ireek word denotes " ministration as u.
priest " See R. V., mari;in
284
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
itself, but in relation to its priesthood and min-
istry, the explanation fails, and we fall into con-
fusion. As when the priests are considered, not
in themselves, but in their relation to the high
priest, we arc compelled to seek an antitype dif-
ferent from the Antitype of the high priest, so
in this case. To identify the typical meaning of
the tabernacle, considered as a part of a whole
system and order, with that of the priesthood
who serve in it, is to throw that whole typical
system into confusion. Furthermore, this can-
not be harmonised with a number of New Testa-
ment expressions with regard to the tabernacle
and temple, as related to the high priesthood of
our Lord. It is hard to see, for example, how
the Church of believers could be properly de-
scribed as " things in the heavens." Moreover,
we are expressly taught (Heb. ix. 24), that the
Antitype cf the Holy Place into which the high
priest entered every year, with blood, was
"heaven itself," "the presence of God;" and
again. His ascension to the right hand of God is
described (Heb. iv. 14, R. V.), with evident allu-
sion to the passing of the high priest through
the Holy Place into the Holiest, as a passmg
"through the heavens;" and also (Heb. ix. 11).
as an entering into the Holy Place, " through the
greater and more perfect tabernacle." These
expressions exclude reference to the Church of
Christ as the antitype of the earthly tabernacle.
Others, again, have regarded the tabernacle as
a type of the human nature of Christ, referring in
proof to John ii. 19-21, where our Lord speaks
of "the temple of His body;" and also to Heb.
X. 19, 20, where it is said that believers have ac-
cess to the Holiest " by a new and living way,
which He dedicated for us through the veil, that
is to say. His flesh."
As regards the first of these passages, we
should note that the original word is, again, not
the word for the temple in general, but that
which is invariably used to denote the inner
sanctuary, as the special shrine of Jehovah's
presence: so that it really gives us no warrant
for afifirming that the tabernacle, as a whole, was
a type of our Lord's humanity; nor, on that sup-
position, does it seem possible to explain the
meaning of the three parts into which the taber-
nacle was divided. And the second passage re-
ferred to is no more to the point. For the
writer had only a little before described the
tabernacle as a " pattern of things in the
heavens;" words which, surely, could not be ap-
plied to the humanity in which our Lord ap-
peared in His incarnation and humiliation, — a
humanity which was not a thing " of the
heavens," but of the earth. The reference to the
" flesh " of Christ, as being the veil through
which He passed into the Holiest (Heb. x. 19,
20) is merely by way of illustration, and not of
typical interpretation. The thought of the in-
spired writer appears to be this. Just as, in the
Levitical t<nbernacle, the veil must be parted be-
fore the high priest could go into the Holiest
Place, even so was it necessary that the flesh of
our Lord should be rent in order that thus,
through death, it might be possible for Him to
enter into the true holiest. The thought has
been happily expressed by Delitzsch, thus:
" While He was with us here below, the weak,
limit-bound, and mortal flesh which He had
assumed for our sakes hung like a curtain be-
tween Him and the Divine sanctuary into which
He would enter; and in order to such entrance.
this curtain had to be withdrawn by death, even
as the high priest had to draw aside the temple
veil in order to make his entry to the Holy of
Holies." *
Not to review other opinions on this matter,
the various expressions used constrain us to re-
gard the tabernacle as typifying the universe
itself, measured and appointed in all its parts by
infinite wisdom, as the abode of Him who
" filleth immensity with His presence," the place
of the Divine manifestation, and the abode of
His holiness. In the outer court, where the vic-
tims were offered, we have this world of sense
in which we live, in which our Lord was offered
in the sight of all; in the Holy Place, and the
Holy of Holies, the unseen and heavenly worlds,
through the former of which our Lord is repre-
sented as having passed (Heb. iv. 14, ix. 11) that
He might appear with His blood in the true
Holiest, where God in the innermost shrine of
His glory " covereth Himself with light as with
a garment." For this cosmical dwelling-place of
the Most High God has been defiled by sin,
which, as it were, has profaned the whole sanc-
tuary; for we read (Col. i. 20), that not only
" things upon the earth," but also " things in the
heavens," are to be " reconciled " through
Christ, even " through the blood of His cross;"
and, still more explicitly, to the same effect
(Heb. ix. 2,3), that as the typical " copies of the
things in the heavens " needed to be cleansed
with the blood of bullocks and of goats, so " it
was necessary that . . . the heavenly things
themselves should be cleansed with better sacri-
fices than these." And so, at this present time,
Christ, as the High Priest of this cosmical taber-
nacle. " not made with hands," having offered
His great sacrifice for sins for ever, is now en-
gaged in carrying out His work of cleansing the
people of God, and the earthly and the heavenly
sanctuary, to the uttermost completion.
With these preliminary words, which have
seemed essential to the exposition of these chap-
ters, we are now prepared to consider the cere-
monial of the consecration of the priesthood and
tabernacle, and the spiritual meaning which it
was intended to convey.
The Washing with Watee.
Leviticus viii. 6.
"And Moses brought Aaron and bis sons, and washed
them with water."
The consecration ceremonies consisted of four
parts, namely, the Washing, the Investiture, the
Anointing, and the Sacrifices. Of these, first in
order was the IVashing. We read that " Moses "
— acting throughout, we must remember, as
Mediator, representing God — " brought Aaron
and his sons, and washed them with water." The
meaning of this act is so evident as not to have
been called in question. Washing ever signifies
cleansing; the ceremonial cleansing of the body,
therefore, in svmbol ever represents the inward
purification of the spirit.
Of this usage the Biblical illustrations are very
numerous. Thus, the spiritual purification of
Israel in the latter day is described (Isa. iv. 4) by
the same word as is used here, as a washing away
♦ "Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews,' vol. ii.,
p. 172.
t.eviticus viii. 1-36.]
CONSECRATION OF AARON.
205
of " the filth of the daughters of Zion " by the
Lord. So, again, in the New Testament, we
read that Christ declared unto Nicodemus that
in order to see the kingdom of God a man must
be born again, " of water and the Spirit," and
in the Epistle to Titus (iii. 5) we read of a cleans-
ing of the Church " with the washing {marg.,
laver) of water, by the Word," even the " wash-
ing of regeneration." The symbolism in this
case, therefore, points to cleansing from the de-
filement of sin as a fundamental condition of
priesthood. As regards our Lord indeed, such
cleansing was no more needed for His high
priesthood than was the sin-ofTering for Himself;
for in His holy incarnation, though He took our
nature indeed with all the consequences and in-
firmities consequent on sin. He was yet " with-
out sin." But all the more it was necessary in
the symbolism that if Aaron was to typify the
sinless Christ of God he must be cleansed with
water, in type of the cleansing of human nature,
without which no man can approach to God.
And in that not only Aaron, but also his sons,
the ordinary priests, were thus cleansed, we are
in the ordinance significantly pointed to the deep
spiritual truth that they who are called to be
priests to God must be qualified for this ofifice,
first of all, by the cleansing of their human nature
through the washing of regeneration, by the
power of the Holy Ghost.
The Investiture.
Leviticus viii. 7-9.
" And he put upon him the coat, and girded him with
the girdle, and clothed him with the robe, and put the
ephod upon him, and he girded him with the cunningly
woven band of the ephod, and bound it unto him there-
with. And he placed the breastplate upon him : and in the
breastplate he put the Urim and the Thummim. And he
set the mitre upon his head : s,nd upon the mitre, in front,
did he set the golden plate, the holy crown ; as the Lord
commanded Moses."
The next ceremony of the consecration was the
Investiture of Aaron with his official high-
priestly robes, as they had been appointed of God
to be made (Exod. xxviii.). The investiture of
the sons of Aaron significantly takes place only
after the anointing of the tabernacle, and of
Aaron as high priest. Of the investiture of
Aaron we read in vv. 7-9, above.
As these garments were official, we must needs
regard them as symbolical; a thought which is
the more emphasised by the very minute and
special directions given by the Lord for making
them. Nothing was left to the fancy of man;
all was prescribed by the Lord. The official
robes of the high priest consisted of eight
pieces, four of which, the coat, the girdle, the
turban (or "mitre"), and the breeches, were,
with the exception of the turban, of white linen,
and identical in every respect with the official
dress of the ordinary priests.
Four pieces more were peculiar to himself, the
special insignia of his office, and unlike the dress
of the ordinary priest, were richly made in gold
and various colours, " garments for glory and
for beauty." These were: the robe of the ephod,
made all of blue, with a border of pendant pome-
granates and golden bells in alternation; the
ephod itself consisting of two pieces, broidered
in gold and blue, purple, scarlet, and fine
white linen, the one hanging in front, the other
19 -Vol. I.
behind, over the robe of the ephod, and joined on
the shoulders with two onyx stones, on which
were graven the names of the twelve tribes, six
on the one shoulder and six on the other; it was
girt about him with a girdle of the same material
and colours. The third was the breastplate,
which was a double square of the same material
and colours as the ephod, within the fold of
which, as it hung from his shoulders by golden
chains, was placed the Urim and the Thummim,
whatever these may have been, and upon the
front of which were set twelve precious stones,
on which, severally, were engraved the names of
the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. And
the fourth and last article of his attire was " the
golden plate, the holy crown;" a band of gold
bound about his forehead over the turban, with
blue lace, on which were engraven the words,
" Holiness to Jehovah."
This dress of the high priest represented him,
in the first place, as the appointed minister of
the tabernacle. The number of pieces, twice four,
like the four of the common priests' attire, an-
swered to the four which was represented in the
ground plan of the tabernacle, quadrangular
both in its form as a whole and in its several
parts, the Holy of Holies being a perfect cube;
four being in Scripture constantly the number
which symbolises the universe, as created by God
and bearing witness to Him. So also the gar-
ments of the high priest marked him as the min-
ister of the tabernacle by their colours, also four
in number, and the same as those of the latter,
namely, blue, purple, scarlet, and white.
But the official robes of the high priest marked
him, in the second place, as the servant of the
God of the tabernacle, whose livery he wore. For
these colours, various modifications of light, all
thus had a symbolic reference to the God of light,
who made the universe of which the Mosaic
tabernacle was a type. Of these, the blue, the
colour of the overarching heaven, has been in
many lands and religions naturally regarded as
the colour symbolising God, as the God of the
heaven, bowing to the earth in condescending
love and self-revelation. In like manner, we
find it repeatedly recurring in the symbolic mani-
festations of Jehovah in the Holy Scriptures,
where it always brings God before us with special
reference to His condescending love as entering
into covenant with man, and revealing for their
good His holy law.* The purple, as will occur
to every one, is everywhere recognised as the
colour of royalty, and therefore symbolised the
kingly exaltation and majesty of God, as the
Ruler of heaven and earth. The scarlet reminds
us at once of the colour of blood, which stands
in the very foreground of the Mosaic symbolism
as the symbol of life, and thus points us to the
conception of God, as the essentially Living One,
who is Himself the sole primal source of all life,
whether physical or spiritual, in the creature.
No one can mistake, again, the symbolic mean-
ing of the white, which, not only in the Scripture,
but among all nations, has ever been the symbol
of purity and holiness, and thus represented the
high priest as the minister of God, as the Most
Holy One. By this investiture, therefore, Aaron
was symbolically constituted the minister of the
tabernacle, on the one hand, and of God, on the
other; and, in particular, of God as the God of
revelation, in covenant with Israel; of God as
the Most High, the King of Israel; of God as
* See, e. ff., Exod. xxiv. 10; Ezek. i. 26.
28f
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS
the God of life, the Giver of life in the redemp-
tion of Israel; and, finally, of God as the Most
Holy, the God " who is light," and " with whom
is no darkness at all."
The " robe of the ephod " was woven in one
piece, and all of blue. In that it was thus with-
out seam, was symbolised the wholeness and ab-
solute integrity necessary to him who should
bear the high-priestly office. In that it was made
all of blue, the colour which symbolised the God
of heaven as manifesting Himself to Israel in
condescending love, in the holy law and cove-
nant, this robe of the ephod specially marked the
high priest as the minister of Jehovah and of
His revealed law.
The ephod, which depended from the shoul-
ders before and behind, according to the usage
of Scripture, was the garment specially signifi-
cant of rule and authority; a thought which
reached full expression in the breastplate which
was fastened to it, which contained the Urim and
Thummim, by which God's will was made known
to Israel in times of perplexity, and was called
" the breast-plate of judgment."
The ornamentation of these garments had also
a symbolic meaning, though it may not be in
each instance equally clear. In that the high
priest, as thus robed, bore upon the ephod and
the breast-plate of judgment, graven on precious
stones, the names of the twelve tribes of Israel,
he was marked as one who in all his high-priestly
work before and with God, presented and repre-
sented Israel. In that the names were engraven
upon precious stones was signified the exceed-
ing preciousness of Israel in God's sight, as His
" peculiar treasure." In that, again, they were
worn upon his shoulders, Aaron was represented
to Israel as upholding and bearing them before
God in the strength of his office; in that he wore
their names upon his breast, he was represented
as also bearing them upon his heart in love and
afifection.
The symbolic meaning of the pomegranates
and golden bells, which formed the border of the
robe of the ephod, is not quite so clear. But
we may probably find a hint as to their signifi-
cance in the Divine direction as to the border of
blue which every Israelite was to wear upon the
bottom of his garment (Numb. xv. 39). The
purpose of this is said to be that it might be for
a continual reminder of the law: " It shall be
unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it,
and remember all the commandments of the
Lord, and do them." If then this border in the
garment of each individual member of the
priestly nation was designed symbolically to
mark them as the keepers of the law of the God
of heaven, we may safely infer an analogous
meaning in the similar border to the official
garment of the high priest. And if so, then we
shall perhaps, not be far out of the way if in this
case we follow Jewish tradition in regarding the
pomegranate, a fruit distinguished by being filled
to the full with seeds, as the symbol, par excel-
lence, of the law of commandments, the words of
the living God, as " incorruptible seed," endowed
by Him with vital energy and power.*
As for the bells, we naturally think at once of
the common use of the bell to give a signal, and
announce what one may be concerned to know.
♦Thus, e.g:, in Cant. iv. 13, where the Revised Version
reads, "Thy shoots are an orchard of pomegranates,"
the Jewish paraphrast in the Chaldee Targum renders,
" Thy young men are filled with the commandments (of
God) like unto pomegranates (sc. with their seeds)."
So we read of these golden bells (Exod. xxviii.
35). " the sound thereof shall be heard when he
goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord . . .
that he die not."
These golden bells in the border of his gar-
ment, between each pair of pomegranates, thus
announced him as officially appearing before
God as the fulfiller of the law of commandments,
and as, for this reason, acceptable to God in the
execution of his high-priestly functions.
As to the Urim and Thummim, " Light and
Perfection," which were apparently placed within '
the fold of the breast-plate of judgment, as the
tables of the law within the ark of the covenant,
there has been in all ages much debate; but what
they were cannot be said to have been certainly
determined. Most probable appears the opinion
that they were two sacred lots which on solemn
occasions were used by the high priest for deter-
mining the will of God. So much, in any case,
is clear from the Scripture, that in some way
through them the will of God as the King of
Israel was made known to the high priest, for
the direction of the nation in doubtful matters.
Most fitly, therefore, they were placed within the
breast-plate of judgment, which, indeed, may
have received this name from this circumstance.
The high priest, therefore, as the bearer of the
Urim and Thummim, was set forth, in accord-
ance with the meaning of these words, as one
who in virtue of his office received perfect en-
lightenment from God as to His will, in all that
concerned Israel's action.
The plate of graven gold, called the " holy
crown " was bound by Moses with a lace of blue
upon the mitre of Aaron in front. The precious
metal here, as elsewhere in the official garments
of the high priest, and in the tabernacle, was
symbolic of the boundless riches of the glory of
the God of Israel, whose minister the high priest
was. The special significance, however, of this
holy crown, is found in the words which ap-
peared upon it. " Holiness to Jehovah." This
was a continual visible mark and reminder of the
fact that the high priest, in all that he was, and
in all that he did. was a person in the highest
possible sense consecrated to Jehovah, the
heavenly King of Israel, whose livery he wore.
And in that this golden plate with this inscrip-
tion is called his " crown," it is further suggested
that in this last-named fact is found the crown-
ing glory and dignity of the high priest's office.
He is the minister of the God of Israel, Jehovah,
whose own supreme glory is just this, that He
is holy. In the directions given for this crown
in Exod. xxviii. 36-38 it is said that in virtue of
his wearing this, or, rather in virtue of the fact
thus set forth. " Aaron shall bear the iniquity of
the holy things which the children of Israel shall
hallow in all their holy gifts; and it shall always
be upon his forehead, that they may be accepted
before the Lord." That is, even Israel's conse-
crated things, their holiest gifts, are yet defiled
by the ever abiding sinfulness of those who offer
them; but they are nevertheless graciously ac-
cepted, as being offered by Aaron, himself " holy
to the Lord."
Such then appears to have been the symbolic
meaning of these " garments for glory and for
beauty." with which Moses now robed Aaron, in
token of his investiture with the manifold digni-
ties of the exalted office to which God had called
him. But we must not forget that we are not,
in all this, dealing merely with matters of anti-
Leviticus viii. 1-36.]
CONSECRATION OF AARON.
287
quarian or archaeological interest. Nothing is
plainer than the teaching of the New Testament,
that Aaron, as the high priest, not by accident,
but by Divine intention, prefigured Christ. In
all the directions given concerning his investi-
ture with his office, and the work which, as high
priest, he had to do, the Holy Ghost intended to
prefigure, directly or indirectly, something con-
cerning the person, office, and work of Jesus
Christ, as our heavenly High\ Priest, the Fulfiller
of all these types. As Aaron appears in his four-
fold high-priestly garments of four colours,
which represented him as the minister, on the
one hand, of the tabernacle, and, on the other, of
the God of Israel, the Inhabitant of the taber-
nacle, so are we reminded how Christ is ap-
pointed as the " Minister of the greater and more
perfect tabernacle, not made with hands " (Heb.
ix. 11), the earth, the heaven, and the heaven of
heavens, to reconcile, by the ofifering of His
blood, " both the things which are on earth and
tht)se which are in the heavens " (Col. i. 20).
We look upon the blue robe of the ephod, and
remember how Christ is made a minister of " a
better covenant, enacted upon better promises •"
(Heb. viii. 6), representing, as that old covenant
did not, the fulness of the revelation of God's
condescending love and saving mercy. So also
the inwoven scarlet reminds us how Christ,
again, as the great High Priest, is the minister
of the God of life, and is also Himself life and
the Giver of life to all His people. We look
upon the high priest's purple and gold, and are
reminded again that Christ, the High Priest, is
also invested with regal power and dominion, all
authority being ^iven unto Him in heaven and
on earth (Matt, xxviii. 18).
Again, we look on the ephod of fine linen, in-
woven with blue, and scarlet, and purple, and
gold, with its girdle, symbolising service, and its
pendant breast-plate of judgment, and are re-
minded how Christ in all the relations thus per-
taining to Him as High Priest, is the Ruler and
the Judge of His people, who. as the bearer of
the true Urim and Thummim, is not only Priest,
and King, and Judge, but also, and in order to
the salvation of His people, their Prophet, con-
tinually revealing unto those who seek Him, the
. will of God for their direction and guidance in
every emergency of life. The girdle, the symbol
of service, brings to mind, again, how in all this
He is the Servant of the Lord, serving the
Father in saving us.
The symbolism of the pomegranates and the
golden bells reminds us, for the strengthening of
our faith, how our exalted High Priest, who ap-
pears before God in our behalf in the Holiest,
appefvrs there as the great Preserver and Fulfiller
of the Divine law, supremely qualified, no less
by His supreme merit than by Divine appoint-
ment, to urge our needs with prevalence before
God, His very presence in the heavenly sanctu-
ary vocal with sweet music. Did Aaron bear the
names of the twelve tribes of Israel on his
shoulders and on his breast before God continu-
ally? Even so does his great Antitype bear con-
tinually all His people before God. as He exe-
cutes His high-priestly office: and this, too, not
merely in a vague and general way, but tribe by
tribe, community by community, each with its
peculiar case and special need: nay, we m.ay say
even more; each individual, as such, is thus
borne continually on the shoulders and the breast
of the heavenly Priest: on His shoulders He
bears them, to support them by His power; on
His heart, in tenderest love and sympathy. And
so often as we are distressed and discouraged by
the consciousness of defilement still pertaining
even to the holiest of our holy things, consecra-
tion ever imperfect at the best, we may bethink
ourselves of the golden crown which Aaron wore,
and its inscription, and remember how the Lord
Jesus is in fullest reality " holy to the Lord;" so
that we may take heart of grace as, with full
reason and right, we apply to Him what is said
of this crown of holiness on Aaron's brow: " The
crown of holiness is ever on His forehead, and
He shall bear the iniquity of the holy things
which we shall hallow in all our holy gifts; it is
always on His forehead, that our works may be
accepted before the Lord." And so we are
taught by this symbolism ever to look away from
all conscious defilement and sin to the infinite
holiness of the person of the Lord Jesus, as He
continually appears before God as High Priest
in our behalf, the all-sufficient Surety for the ac-
ceptance of our persons and of our imperfect
works, for His own sake.
The investiture, as also the anointing, of the
sons of Aaron, followed the robing and anoint-
ing of Aaron. We read (ver. 13) : " Moses
brought Aaron's sons, and clothed them with
coats, and girded them with girdles, and bound
head-tires upon them: as the Lord commanded
Moses."
To the three articles of their attire here men-
tioned, must be added the " linen breeches "
(Exod. xxviii. 42, 43); so that they also, in the
several parts of their official vestments, bore the
number four, the signature of the creaturely, as
represented in the tabernacle. All was of pure
white linen, signifying the holiness and right-
eousness of those who should act as priests be-
fore God. So once and again in the Apocalypse,
the same symbol is used to denote the spotless
holiness and righteousness of the blood-bought
saints, who are made " a kingdom and priests "
unto God: as, for instance, it is said of that same
holy body, symbolised as the bride of the Lamb,
that " it was given unto her that she should array
herself in fine linen, bright and pure: for the fine
linen is the righteous acts of the saints " (Rev.
xix. 8).
The Anointing.
Leviticus viii. 10-12.
"And Moses took the anointinyr oil, and anointed the
tabernacle and all that was therein, and sanctified them.
And he sprinkled thereof upon the altar seven times,
and anointed the altar and all its vessels, and the laver
and its base, to sanctify them. And he poured of the
anointed oil upon Aaron's head, and anointed him, to
sanctify him."
Next in order came the anointing, first of the
tabernacle and all that pertained to its service.
and then the anointing of Aaron.
The anointing oil was made (Exod. xxx. 22-
23) with a perfume of choice spices, their num-
ber, four, the sacred number so constantly recur-
ring in the tabernacle. To make or use this oil,
except for the sacred purposes of the sanctuary,
was forbidden under penalty of being cut off
from the holy people. The purpose of the
anointing of the tabernacle and all within it, is
declared to he its consecration thereby to the
service of Jehovah. The altar, as a place of
288
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
special sanctity, the place where God had cove-
nanted to meet with Israel, was anointed seven
times. For the number seven, compounded of
three, the signet number of the Godhead, and
four, the constant symbol of the creaturely, is
thus by eminence the sacred number, the num-
ber, in particular, which is the sign and reminder
of the covenant of redemption; and so here it is
with special meaning that the altar, as being the
place where God had specially covenanted to
meet with Israel as reconciled through the blood
of atonement, should receive a sevenfold anoint-
ing.
After this, the anointing oil was poured on the
head of Aaron, to sanctify him.
As to the meaning of this part of the symbolic
service, there is little room for doubt. The
" anointing " is said to have been " to sanctify "
or set apart to the service of Jehovah him that
was anointed. And, inasmuch as oil, in the Holy
Scriptures, is the constant symbol of the Holy
Spirit, it is taught hereby that consecration is
secured only through the anointing with the
Holy Ghost.
The direct typical reference of this part of the
ceremonial to Christ, will not be denied by any
one for whom the Scripture any longer has au-
thority. For Christ Himself quoted the words
we find in Isa. Ixi. i, as fulfilled in Himself:
" The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, be-
cause the Lord God hath anointed Me." And
the Apostle Peter afterward taught (Acts x. 38)
that God had " anointed Jesus with the Holy
Ghost and with power;" while the most com-
mon title of our Lord, as " the Messiah " or
" Christ," as we all know, though often forgetful
of its meaning, simply means " the Anointed
One." So every time we use the word, we un-
consciously testify to the fulfilment of this type
of the anointing of Aaron as priest, as, after-
ward, of the anointing of David as king, in Him.
And as the anointing of Aaron took place in the
sight of all Israel, assembled at the door of the
tent of meeting, so in the fulness of time was
Jesus, in the sight of all the multitude that waited
on the baptism of John, after having been
washed with water, " to fulfil all righteousness,"
anointed from heaven, as " the Holy Ghost de-
scended in bodily form, as a dove," and abode
upon him (Luke iii. 22). And while, according
to Jewish tradition, the anointing oil was ap-
plied to the ordinary priests only in small quan-
tity and by the finger, on the head of Aaron it
was "poured;" in which word, as suggested in
Psalm cxxxiii. 2, we are to understand a refer-
ence to the great copiousness with which it was
used. In which, again, the type exactly corre-
sponds to the Antitype. For while it is true of
all believers that they " have an anointing from
the Holy One " (i John ii. 20), even as their
Lord, yet of Him alone is it true that unto Him
the Spirit " was not given by measure " (John iii.
34). And by this Divine anointing with the
Holy Spirit without limit, was Jesus sanctified
and qualified for the office of High Priest for all
His people.
The anointing of the tabernacle with the same
holy oil was according to a custom long before
prevalent, and however it may seem strange to
any of us now, will not have seemed strange to
Israel. We read, for instance (Gen. xxviii. 18),
of the anointing of the stone at Bethel by Jacob,
by which he thus consecrated it to be a stone of
remembrance of the revelation of God to him
in that place. So, by this anointing, the taber-
nacle, with all that it contained, was " sanctified;"
that is, consecrated that so the use of these might
be made, through the power of the Holy Ghost,
a means of grace and blessing to Israel. And it
was thus anointed, and for this purpose, as being
a " copy and pattern of the heavenly things."
By the ceremony is signified to us, that by the
power of the Holy Ghost, through the high-
priesthood of our Lord, the whole universe and
all that is in it has been consecrated and endowed
by God with virtue, to become a means of grace
and blessing to all believers, by His grace and
might who works " in all things and through all
things " to this end.
The Consecration Sacrifices.
Leviticus viii. 14-32.
" And he brought the bullock of the sin offering : and
Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the
bullock of the sin offering. And he slew it ; and Moses
took the blood, and put it upon the horns of the altar
round about with his finger, and purified the altar, and
poured out the blood at the base of the altar, and sanctified
it, to make atonement for it. And he took all the fat that
was upon the inwards, and the caul of the liver, and the
two kidneys, and their fat, and Moses burnt it upon
the altar. But the bullock, and its skin, and its flesh,
and its dung, he burnt with fire without the camp ; as the
Lord commanded Moses. And he presented the ram
of the burnt offering; and Aaron and his sons laid
their hands upon the head of the ram. And he killed
it ; and Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar
round about. And he cut the ram into its pieces ; and
Moses burnt the head, and the pieces, and the fat.
And he washed the inwards and the legs with water;
and Moses burnt the whole ram upon the altar ; it was
a burnt offering for a sweet savour : it was an offer-
ing made by fire unto the Lord ; as the Lord commanded
Moses. And he presented the other ram, the ram of con-
secration ; and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon
the head of the ram. And he slew it, and Moses took of
the blood thereof, and put it upon the tip of Aaron's right
ear, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the
great toe of his right foot. And he brought Aaron's sons,
and Moses put of the blond upon the tip of their right
ear, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the
great toe of their right foot : and Moses sprinkled the
blood upon the altar round about. And he took the fat,
and the fat tail, and all the fat that was upon the inwards,
and the caul of the liver, and the two kidneys and their
fat, and the right thigh ; and ^ut of the basket of un-
leavened bread, that was before the Lord, he took one un-
leavened cake, and one cake of oiled bread, a-^d one wafer,
and placed them on the fat, and upon the right thigh ; and
he put the whole upon the hands of Aaron, and upon the
hands of his sons, and waved them for a wave offering
before the Lord And Moses took them from off their
hands, and burnt them on the altar upon the burnt offer-
ing : they were a consecration for a sweet savour : it was
an offering made by fire unto the Lord. And Moses took
the breast, and waved it for a wave offering before the
Lord : it was Moses' portion of the ram of consecration ;
as the Lord commanded Moses. And Moses took of
the anointing oil, and of the blood which was upon
the altar, and sprinkled it iipon Aaron, upon his^ gar-
ments, and upon his sons, and upon his sons' garments
with him j and sanctified Aaron, his garments, and
his sons, and his sons' garments with him. And Moses
said unto Aaron and to his sons. Boil the flesh at the
door of the tent of meeting ; and there eat it and the
bread that is in the basket of consecration, as I com-
manded, saying, Aaron and his sons shall eat it. And
that which remaineth of the flesh and of the bread
shall ye burn with fire."
The last part of the consecration ceremonial
was the sacrifices. Each of the chief sacrifices
of the law were ofifered in order; first, a sin-
offering; then, a burnt-offering; then, a peace-
offering, with some significant variations from
the ordinary ritual, adapting it to this occasion;
with which was conjoined, after the usual man-
ner, a meal-offering. A sin-offering was offered,
first of all; there had been a symbolical cleans-
ing with water, but still a sin-offering is required.
Leviticus viii. 1-36.]
CONSECRATION OF AARON.
289
It signified, what so many in these days seem to
forget, that in order to our acceptableness be-
fore God, not only is needed a cleansing of the
defilement of nature by the regeneration of the
Holy Ghost, but also expiation for the guilt of
our sins. The sin-offering was first, for the
guilt of Aaron and his sons must be thus typic-
ally removed, before their burnt-offerings and
their meal- and peace-offerings can be accepted.
The peculiarities of the offerings as rendered
on this occasion are easily explained from the
circumstances of their presentation. Moses
officiates, for this time only, as specially dele-
gated for this occasion, inasmuch as Aaron and
his sons are not yet fully inducted into their
office. The victim for the sin-offering is the
costliest ever employed: a bullock, as ordered for
the sin of the anointed priest. But the blood is
not brought into the Holy Place, as in the ritual
for the oft'ering for the high priest, because
Aaron is not yet fully inducted into his office.
Nor do Aaron and his sons eat of the flesh of
the sin-offering, as ordered in the case of other
sin-offerings whose blood is not brought within
the Holy Place; obviously, because of the prin-
ciple which rules throughout the law, that he for
whose sin the sin-offering is offered, must not
himself eat of the flesh; it is therefore burnt
with fire, without the camp, that it may not see
corruption.
By this sin-offering, not only Aaron and his
son were cleansed, but we read that hereby atone-
ment was also made "for the altar;" a mysteri-
ous type, reminding us that, in some way which
we cannot as yet fully understand, sin has af-
fected the whole universe: in such a sense, that
not only for man himself who has sinned, is pro-
pitiation required, but, in some sense, even for
the earth itself, with the heavens. That in ex-
pounding the meaning of this part of the ritual
we do not go beyond the Scripture is plain from
such passages as Heb. ix. 23, where it is ex-
pressly said that even as the tabernacle and the
things in it were cleansed with the blood of the
bullock, so was necessary that, not merely man,
but " the heavenly things themselves," of which
the tabernacle and its belongings were the
" copies," should be cleansed with better sacri-
fices than these," even the offering of Christ's
own blood. So also we read in Col. i. 20, before
cited, that through Christ, even through the
blood of His cross, not merely persons, " but all
things, whether things on the earth, or things in
the heavens," should be reconciled unto God.
Mysterious words these, no doubtj but words
which teach us at least so much as this, how pro-
found and far-reaching is the mischief which sin
has wrought, even our sin. Not merely the
sinning man must be cleansed with blood before
he can be made a priest unto God. but even
nature, "made subject to vanity" (Rom. viii.
20), for man's sin, needs the reconciling blood
before redeemed man can exercise his priesthood
unto God in the heavenly places. Evidently we
have here an estimate of the evil of sin which is
incomparably higher than that which is com-
monly current among men; and we shall do well
to conform our estimate to that of God, who re-
quired atonement to be made even for the
earthen altar, to sanctify it.
Reconciliation being made by the sin-offering,
next in order came the burnt-offering, symbolic,
as we have seen, of the full consecration of the
person of the offerer to God; in this case of the
full consecration of Aaron and his sons to the
service of God in the priesthood. The ritual was
according to the usual law, and requires no
further exposition.
The ceremonial culminated and was completed
in the offering of " the ram of consecration."
The expression is, literally, " the ram of fillings;"
in which phrase there is a reference to the pe-
culiar ceremony described in vv. 27, 28, in which
certain portions of the victim and of the rfieal-
offering were placed by Moses on the hands of
Aaron and his sons, and waved by them for a
wave-offering; and afterwards burnt wholly on
the altar upon the burnt-offering, in token of
their full devotement to the Lord. Of these it is
then added, " they were a consecration " (lit.
" fillings," sc. of hands, " were these "). The
meaning of the phrase and the action it denoted
is determined by its use in i Chron. xxix. 5
and 2 Chron. xxix. 31, where it is used of the
bringing of the freewill-offerings by the people
for Jehovah. The ceremonial in this case there-
fore signified the formal making over of the
sacrifices into the charge of Aaron and his sons,
which henceforth they were to offer; that they
received them to offer them to and for Jehovah,
was symbolised by their presentation to be
waved before Jehovah, and further by their being
burnt upon the altar, as a sacrifice of sweet
savour.
Another thing peculiar to this special conse-
cration sacrifice, was the use which was made of
the blood, which (ver. 23) was put upon the tip
of Aaron's right ear, upon the thumb of his
right hand, and upon the great toe of his right
foot. Although the solution is not without diffi-
culty, we shall probably not err in regarding this
as distinctively an act of consecration, signifying
that in virtue of the sacrificial blood, Aaron and
his sons were set apart to sacrificial service. It
is applied to the ear, to the hand, and the foot,
and to the most representative member in each
case, to signify the consecration of the whole
body to the Lord's service in the tabernacle; the
ear is consecrated by the blood to be ever atten-
tive to the word of Jehovah, to receive the inti-
mations of His will; the hand, to be ever ready
to do the Lord's work; and the foot, to run on
His service.
Another peculiarity of this offering was in the
wave-offering of Aaron and his sons. Not the
breast, but the thigh, and that together with the
fat (ver. 27) was waved before the Lord; and,
afterward, not only the fat was burnt upon the
altar, according to the law, but also the thigh,
which in other cases was the portion of the
priest, was burnt with the fat and the memorial
of the meal-offering. The breast was afterward
waved, as the law commanded in the case of the
peace-offerings, but was given to Moses as his
portion. The last particular is easy to under-
stand; Moses in this ceremonial stands in the
place of the officiating priest, and it is natural
that he should thus receive from the Lord his
reward for his service. As for the thigh, which,
when the peace-offering was offered by one of
the people, was presented to the Lord, and then
given to the officiating priest to be eaten, obvi-
ously the law could not be applied here, as the
priests themselves were the bringers of the
offering; hence the only alternative was, as in
the case of sin-offerings of the holy place, to
burn the flesh with fire upon the altar, as " the
food of Jehovah." The remainder of the iesh
290
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
was to be eaten by the priests alone as the
offerers, under the regulation for the thank-offer-
ing, except that whatever remained until the next
day was to be burnt; a direction which is ex-
plained bj' the fact that the sacrifice was to be
repeated for seven days, so that there could be
no reason for keeping the f^esh until the third
day. Last of all, it is to be noted that whereas
in the thank-offerings of the people, the offerer
was allowed to bring leavened bread for the sac-
rificial feast, in the feast of the consecration of
priests this was not permitted; no doubt to em-
phasise the peculiar sanctity of the office to which
they were inducted.
With these modifications, it is plain that the
sacrifice of consecration was essentially, not a
guilt-offering, as some have supposed, but a
peace-offering. It is true that a ram was en-
joined as the victim instead of a lamb, but the
correspondence here with the law of the guilt-
offering is of no significance when we observe
that rams were also enjoined or used for peace-
offerings on other occasions of exceptional dig-
nity and sanctity, as in the peace-offerings for
the nation, mentioned in the following chapter,
and the peace-offerings for the princes of the
tribes (Numb. vii.). Unlike the guilt-offering,
but after the manner of the other, the sacrifice
was followed by a sacrificial feast. That partici-
pation in this was restricted to the priests is
sufficiently explained by the special relation of
this sacrifice to tlieir own consecration.
Before the sacrificial feast, however, one
peculiar ceremony still remained. We read (ver.
30); "Moses took of the anointing oil, and of
the blood (of the peace-offering) which was
upon the altar, and sprinkled it upon Aaron,
upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon
his sons' garments with him; and sanctified
Aaron, his garments, and his sons, and his sons'
garments with him."
This sprinkling signified that now. through
the atoning blood which had been accepted be-
fore God upon the altar, and through the sancti-
fying Spirit of grace, which was symbolised by
the anointing, thus inseparably associated each
with the other, they had been brought into cove-
nant relation with God regarding the office of
the priesthood. That this their covenant rela-
tion to God concerned them, not merely as
private persons, but in their official character,
was intimated by the sprinkling, not only of their
persons, but of the garments which were the
insignia of their priestly office.
All this completed, now followed the sacrificial
feast. We read that Moses now ordered Aaron
and his sons (ver. 31): "Boil the ficsh at the
door of the tent of meeting: and there eat it and
the bread that is in the basket of consecration, as
I commanded, saying, Aaron and his sons shall
eat it. And that which remaineth of the flesh
and of the bread shall ye burn with fire."
This sacrificial feast most fitly marked the con-
clusion of the rites of consecration. Hereby it
was signified, first, that by this solemn service
they were now brought into a relation of pecu-
liarly intimate fellowship with Jehovah, as the
ministers of His house, to offer His offerings,
and to be fed at His table. It was further signi-
fied, that strength for the duties of this office
should be supplied to them by Him whom they
were to serve, in that they were to be fed of His
altar. And. finally, in that the ritual took the
Specific form of a thank-offering, was thereby
expressed, as was fitting, their gratitude to God
for the grace which had chosen them and set
them apart to so holy and exalted service.
These consecration services were to be re-
peated for seven consecutive days, during which
time they were not to leave the tent of meeting, —
obviously, that by no chance they might contract
any ceremonial defilement; so jealously must the
sanctity of everything pertaining to the service
be guarded.
The commandment was (vv. 33-35) ; " Ye shall
not go out from the door of the tent of meeting
seven days, until the days of your consecration
be fulfilled: for he shall consecrate you seven
days. As hath been done this day, so the Lord
hath commanded to do, to make atonement for
you. And at the door of the tent of meeting
shall ye abide day and night seven days, and
keep the charge of the Lord, that ye die not: for
so I am commanded."
By the sevenfold repetition of the consecra-
tion ceremonies was expressed, in the most em-
phatic manner known to the Mosaic symbolism,
the completeness of the consecration and qualifi-
cation of Aaron and his sons for their office, and
the fact also that, in virtue of this consecration,
they had come into a special covenant relation
with Jehovah concerning the priestly office.
That these consecration sacrifices by which
Aaron and his sons were set apart to the priest-
hood, no less than the preceding part of the cere-
monial, pointed forward to Christ and His
priestly people as the Antitype, it will be easy to
see. As regards our Lord, in Heb. vii. 28, the
sacred writer applies to the consecration of our
Lord as high priest the very term which the
Seventy had used long before in this chapter of
Leviticus to denote this formal consecration, and
represents the consecration of the Son as the
antitype of the consecration of Aaron by the law:
" the law appointeth men high priests, having in-
firmity; but the word of the oath, which was after
the law, appointeth a Son, perfected for ever-
more."
An exception, indeed, must be made, as re-
gards our Lord, in the case of the sin-offering;
of whom it is said (Heb. vii. 27), that He
" needeth not . . . like those high priests, to
offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins." But
as regards the other two sacrifices, we can see
that in their distinctive symbolical import they
each bring before us essential elements in the
consecration of our Lord Jesus Christ as High
Priest. In the burnt-offering, we see Him con-
secrating Himself by the complete self-surrender
of Himself to the Father. In the offering of
consecrations, we see Him in the meal-offering
of unleavened bread, offering in like manner His
most holy works unto the Father; and in the
sacrifice of the peace-offering, wherein Aaron ate
of the food of God's house in His presence, we
see Jesus in like manner as qualified for His
high-priestly work by His admission into terms
of the most intimate fellowship with the Father,
and sustained for His work by the strength given
from Him, according to His own word, " The
living Father hath sent Me, and I live because of
the Father." In the formal " filling of the
hands " of .^aron with the sacrificial material, in
token of his endowment with the right to offer
sacrifices for sin for the sake of sinful men, we
are reminded how our Lord refers to the fact
that He had received in like manner authority
from the Father to lay down His life for His
Leviticus viii. 1-36.]
CONSECRATION OF AARON.
291
sheep, emphatically adding the words (John x.
18), "This commandment have I received of My
Father."
So also was the meaning of the collateral cere-
monies fully realised in Him. If Aaron was
anointed with the blood on ear, hand, and foot,
by way of signifying that the members of his
body should be wholly devoted unto God in
priestly service, even so we are reminded (Heb.
X. 5, 7), that " when He cometh into the world
He saith, . . . Sacrifice and offering thou
wouldest not, but a body didst thou prepare for
Me; . . . Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God."
And so, as Aaron was at the end of the sacri-
fice sprinkled with blood and oil, in token that
God had now, through the blood and the oil,
entered into a covenant of priesthood with him,
so we find repeated reference to the fact of such
a solemn covenant and compact between God
and the High Priest of our profession summed
up in the words of prophecy, " The Lord hath
sworn, and will not repent. Thou art a priest for
ever after the order of Melchizedek."
So did this whole consecration ceremony, with
the exception only of such parts of it as had
reference to the sin of Aaron, point forward to
the future investiture of the Son of God with
the high-priestly oflfice, by God the Father, that
He might act therein for our salvation in all
matters between us and God. How can any
who have eyes to see all this, as opened out for
us in the New Testament, fail with fullest joy
and thankfulness to accept Christ, the Son of
God, now passed into the Holiest, as the High
Priest of our profession? How naturally to all
such come the words of exhortation with which
is concluded the great argument upon Christ's
high-priesthood in the Epistle to the Hebrews
(x. 19-23) : " Having therefore, brethren, bold-
ness to enter into the holy place by the blood of
Jesus; . . . and having a great priest over the
house of God; let us draw near with a true heart,
in fulness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled
from an evil conscience, and our body washed
with pure water: let us hold fast the confession
of our hope that it waver not; for He is faithful
that promised."
But not only was Aaron thus consecrated to
be high priest of the tabernacle, but his sons also,
to be priests under him in the same service. In
this also the type holds good. For when in Heb.
ii. Christ is brought before us as " the High
Priest of our confession." He is represented as
saying (ver. 13), " Behold. I and the children
which God hath given me! " As Aaron had his
sons appointed to perform priestly functions
under him in the earthly tabernacle, so also his
great Antitype has " sons," called to priestly
oflPice under Him in the heavenly tabernacle.
Accordingly, we find that in the New Testament,
not any caste or class in the Christian Church,
but all believers, are represented as " a holy
priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, accept-
able to God through Jesus Christ " (i Peter ii.
5). To the testimony of Peter corresponds that
of John in the Apocalypse, where in like manner
believers are declared to be priests unto God. and
represented as also acting as priests of God and
of Christ in the age which is to come after " the
first resurrection " * (Rev. xx. 6). Hence it is
plam that according to the New Testament we
* Not, however, as many imagine, in behalf of those
who have in this age died in sin, but in mini.strations to
the living nations in the flesh, in the age to come. We find
shall rightly regard the consecration of the sons
of Aaron as no less typical than that of Aaron
himself. It is typical of the consecration of all
believers to priesthood under Christ. It thus
sets forth in symbol the fact and the manner of
our own consecration to ministrations between
lost men and God, in the age which now is and
that which is to come, in things pertaining to
sin and salvation, according to the measure to
each one of the gift of Christ.
As the consecration of Aaron's sons began
with the washing with pure water, so ours with
" the washing of regeneration and the renewing
of the Holy Ghost " (Titus iii. 5). As Aaron's
sons, thus washed, were then invested in white
linen, clean and pure, so for the believer must
the word be fulfilled (Isa. Ixi. 10): "He hath
covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a
bridegroom decketh himself " (marg. " decketh
as a priest"). That is, the reality of our ap-
pointment of God unto this high dignity must
be visibly attested unto men by the righteousness
of our lives. But whereas the sons of Aaron
were not clothed until first Aaron himself had
been clothed and anointed, it is signified that the
robing and anointing of Christ's people follows
and depends upon the previous robing and
anointing of their Head. Again, as Aaron's sons
were also anointed with the same holy oil as was
Aaron, only in lesser measure, so are believers
consecrated to the priestly ofifice, like their Lord,
by the anointing with the Holy Ghost. The
anointing of Pentecost follows and corresponds
to the anointing of the High Priest at the Jor-
dan with one and the same Spirit. This is an-
other necessary consecration mark, on which the
New Testament Scriptures constantly insist. As
Jesus was " anointed with the Holy Ghost and
(thereby) with power," so He Himself said to
His disciples (Acts i. 8). " Ye shall receive
power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you;"
which promise being fulfilled, Paul could say
(2 Cor. i. 21), " He that . . . anointed us is
God;" and John (i John ii. 20). to all believers,
" Ye have an anointing from the Holy One."
And the sacrificial symbols are also all fulfilled
in the case of the Lord's priestly people. For
them, no less essential to their consecration than
the washing of the Holy Ghost, is the removal
of guilt by the great Sin-ofifering of Calvary;
which same offering, and true Lamb of God.
has also become their burnt-offering, their meal-
offering,' and their sacrifice of consecrations, as
it is written (Heb. x. 10), that, by the will of
God. " we have been sanctified through the offer-
ing of the body of Jesus Christ once for all:"
and that He also is become " our peace." in that
He has expiated our sins, and also given Himself
to us as our spiritual food; that so we may de-
rive daily strength for the daily service in the
priest's office, by feeding on the Lamb of God,
the true food of the altar, given by God for our
support. Also, as the sons of Aaron, like Aaron
himself, were anointed with the blood of the
peace-offering of consecration, on the ear. the
hand, and the foot, so has the blood of the Lamb,
in that it has broueht us into peace with God.
set apart every true believer unto full surrender
of all the members of his body unto Him; ears,
that they may be quick to hear God's word;
hands, that they may be quick to do it; feet, that
they may only run in the way of His command-
no ground of hope, in Holy Scripture, for the impenitent
dead. • • ' ' - '■■ ...•:'
292
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
ments. And finally, whereas the solemn cove-
nant of priesthood into which Aaron and his sons
had entered with God, was sealed and ratified by
the sprinkling with the oil and the blood, so by
the unction of the Holy Spirit given to believers,
and the cleansing of the conscience by the blood,
is it witnessed and certified that they are a people
called out to enter into covenant of priestly
service with the God of all the earth and the
heavens.
What searching questions as to personal ex-
perience all this raises! What solemn thoughts
throng into the mind of every thoughtful reader!
All this essential, if we are to be indeed members
of that royal priesthood, who shall reign as
priests of God and of Christ? Have we then the
marks, all of them? Let us not shrink from the
questions, but probe with them the innermost
depths of our hearts. Have we had the washing
of regeneration? If we think that we have had
this, then let us also remember that after the
washing came the investiture in white linen. Let
us ask, Have we then put on these white gar-
ments of righteousness? All that were washed,
were also clad in white; these were their official
robes, without which they could not act as priests
unto God. And there was also an anointing.
Have we, in like manner, received the anointing
with the Holy Ghost, endowing us with power
and wisdom for service? Then, the sin-ofifering,
the burnt-offering, the peace-offering of conse-
cration,— has the Lamb of God been used by us
in all these various ways, as our expiation, our
consecration, our peace, and our life? And has
the blood which consecrates also been applied to
ear, hand, and foot? Are we consecrated in all
the members of our bodies?
What questions these are! Truly, it is no light
thing to be a Christian; to be called and conse-
crated to be, with and under the great High
Priest, Jesus Christ, a " priest unto God " in
this life and in that of "the first resurrection;"
to deal between God and men in matters of sal-
vation. Have we well understood what is our
" high calling." and what the conditions on
which alone we may exercise our ministry? To
this may God give us grace, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
CHAPTER XI.
THE INAUGURATION OF THE TABER-
NACLE SERVICE.
Leviticus ix. 1-24.
Aaron and his sons having now been solemnly
consecrated to the priestly office by the cere-
monies of seven days, their formal assumption of
their daily duties in the tabernacle was marked
by a special service suited to the august occa-
sion, signalised at its close by the appearance of
the glory of Jehovah to assembled Israel, in
token of His sanction and approval of all that
had been done. It would appear that the daily
burnt-offering and meal-offering had been in-
deed offered before this, from the time that the
tabernacle had been set up; in which service,
however, Moses had thus far officiated. But
now that Aaron and his sons were consecrated,
it was most fitting that a service should thus be
ordered whi^ch should be a complete exhibition
of the order of sacrifice as it had now been given
by the Lord, and serve, for Aaron and his sons
in all after time, as a practical model of the man-
ner in which the divinely-given law of sacrifice
should be carried out.
The order of the day began with a very im-
pressive lesson of the inadequacy of the blood of
beasts to take away sin. For seven consecutive
days a bullock had been offered for Aaron and
his sons, and so far as served the typical purpose,
their consecration was complete. But still
Aaron and his sons needed expiating blood; for
before they could offer the sacrifices of the day
for the people, they are ordered yet again first
of all to offer a sin-offering for themselves. We
read (vv. i, 2): "And it came to pass on the
eighth day, that Moses called Aaron and his
sons, and the elders of Israel; and he said unto
Aaron, Take thee a bull calf for a sin-offering,
and a ram for a burnt-offering, without blemish,
and offer them before the Lord."
And then Aaron was commanded (vv. 3-5) :
" Unto the children of Israel thou shalt speak, ■
saying, Take ye a he-goat for a sin-offering; and
a calf and a lamb, both of the first year, without
blemish, for a burnt-oft'ering; and an ox and a
ram for peace-offerings, to sacrifice before the
Lord; and a meal-offering mingled with oil: for
to-day the Lord appeareth unto you. And they
brought that which Moses commanded before
the tent of meeting: and all the congregation
drew near and stood before the Lord."
There is little in these directions requiring ex-
planation. Because of the exceptional impor-
tance of the occasion, therefore, as in the feasts
of the Lord, a special sin-offering was ordered,
and a burnt-offering, besides the regular daily
burnt-offering, meal-offering, and drink-offering;
and, in addition, peculiar to this occasion, a
peace-offering for the nation; which last was
evidently intended to signify that now on the
basis of the sacrificial worship and the mediation
of a consecrated priesthood. Israel was privileged
to enter into fellowship with Jehovah, the Lord
of the tabernacle. No peace-offering was or-
dered for Aaron and his sons, as, according to
the law of the peace-offering, they would them-
selves take part in that of the people. The sin-
offering prescribed for the people was, not a kid,
as in King James's version, but a he-goat, which,
with the exception of the case of a sin of com-
mission as described in chap. iv. 13, 14, appears
to have been the usual victim. For the selec-
tion of such a victim, no reason appears more
probable than that assigned by rabbinical tradi-
tion, namely, that it was intended to counteract
the tendency of the people to the worship of
shaggy he-goats, referred to in chap. xvii. 7,
" They shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices
unto the he-goats (R. V.), after whom they gc^
a whoring."
The Order of the Offerings.
Leviticus ix. 7-21.
" And Moses said unto Aaron. Draw near unto the altar,,
and offer thy sin offering:, and thy burnt offering, and
make atonement for thyself, and for the people : and
offer the oblation of the people, and make atonement
for them ; as the Lord commanded. So Aaron drew near
unto the altar, and slew the calf of the sin offering, which
was for himself. And the sons of Aaron presented the
blood unto him : and he dipped his finger in the blood,
and put it upon the horns of the altar, and poured out the
blood at the base of the altar : but the fat. and the kidneys
and the caul from the liver of the sin offering, he burnt
Leviticus ix. 1-24.]
THE TABERNACLE SERVICE.
29:
upon the altar ; as the Lord commanded Moses. And the
flesh and the skin he burnt with fire without the camp.
And he slew the burnt offering; and Aaron's sons de-
livered unto him the blood, and he sprinkled it upon the
altar round about. And they delivered the burnt offering
unto him, piece by piece, and the head ; and he burnt
them upon the altar. And he washed the inwards and the
legs, and burnt them upon the burnt offering on the altar.
And he presented the people's oblation, and took the goat
of the sin offering which was for the people, and slew it,
and offered it for sin, as the first. And he presented the
burnt offering, and offered it according to the ordinance.
And he presented the meal offering, and filled his hand
therefrom, and burnt it upon the altar, besides the burnt
offering of the morning. He slew also the ox and the ram,
the sacrifice of peace offerings, which was for the people :
and Aaron's sons delivered unto him the blood, and he
sprinkled it upon the altar round about, and the fat of the
ox ; and of the ram, the fat tail and that which covered
the inwards, and the kidneys, and the caul of the liver :
and they put the fat upon the breasts and he burnt the fat
upon the altar ; and the breast and the right thigh Aaron
waved for a wave offering before the Lord ; as Moses
commanded."
Verses 7-21 detail the way in which this com-
mandment of Moses was carried out. in the offer-
ings, first, for Aaron and his sons, and then for
all the people; but, as the peculiarities of these
several offerings have been already explained,
they nted not here detain us. That which is
new, and of profound spiritual and typical mean-
ing, is the order of the sacrifices as here enjoined;
an order which, as we learn from many Scrip-
tures, represented what was intended to be the
permanent, and invariable law. The appointed
order of the offerings was as follows: first, when-
ever presented, came the sin-offering, as here;
then, the burnt-offering, with its meal-offering;
and last, always, the peace-offering, with its
characteristic sacrificial' feast.
The significance of this order will readily ap-
pear if we consider the distinctive meaning of
each of these offerings. The sin-offering had
for its central thought, expiation of sin by the
shedding of blood; the burnt-offering, the full
surrender of the person symbolised by the victim,
to God; the meal-offering, in like manner, the
consecration of the fruit of his labours; the
peace-offering, sustenance of life from God's
table, and fellowship in peace and joy with God
and with one another. And the great lesson for
us now from this model tabernacle service is
this: that this order is determined by a law of
the spiritual life.
So much as this, even without clear prevision
of the Antitype of all these sacrifices^ the
thoughtful Israelite might have discerned; and
even though the truth thus symbolised is place?d
before us no more in rite and symbol, yet it
abides, and ever will abide, a truth. Man every-
where needs fellowship with God, and cannot
rest without it; to attain such fellowship is the
object of all religions which recognise the being
of a God at all. Even among the heathen, we
are truly told, there are many who are feeling
after God "if haply they may find Him;" and,
among ourselves in Christian lands, and even in
the external fellowship of Christian churches,
there are many who with aching hearts are seek-
ing after an unrealised experience of peace and
fellowship with God. And yet God is " not far
from any one of us;" and the whole Scripture
represent Him as longing on His part with an
incomprehensible condescension and love after
fellowship with us, desiring to communicate to
us His fulness; and still so many seek and find
not!
We need not go further than this order of the
offerings, and the spiritual truth it signifies re-
garding the order of grace, to discover the secret
of these spiritual failures.
The peace-offering, the sacrificial feast of fel-
lowship with God, the joyful banqueting on the
food of His table, was always, as on this day,
in order. Before this must ever come the burnt-
offering. The ritual prescribed that the peace-
offering should be burnt " upon the burnt-offer-
ing;" the presence of the burnt-offering is thus
presupposed in every acceptable peace-offering.
But what if one had ventured to ignore this
divinely-appointed order, and had offered his
peace-offering to be burnt alone; can we imagine
that it would have been accepted?
These things are a parable, and not a hard one.
For the burnt-offering with its meal-offering
symbolised full consecration of the person and
the works to the Lord. Remembering this, we
see that the order is not arbitrary. For, in the
nature of the case, full consecration to God must
precede fellowship with God; he who would
know what it is to have God give Himself to
him, must first be ready to give himself to God.
And that God should enter into loving fellowship
with any one who is holding back from loving
self-surrender is not to be expected. This is not
merely an Old Testament law, still less merely a
fanciful deduction from the Mosaic symbolism;
everywhere in the New Testament is the thought
pressed upon us, no longer indeed in symbol,
but in plainest language. It is taught by precept
in some of the most familiar words of the great
Teacher. There is promise, for example, of con-
stant supply of sufficient food and raiment, fel-
lowship with God in temporal things; but only
on condition that " we seek first the kingdom of
God, and His righteousness," shall " afl these
things be added unto us " (Matt. vi. 33). There
is a promise of " a hundred-fold in this life, and
in the world to come, eternal life;" but it is pre-
faced by the condition of surrender of father,
mother, brethren, sisters, of houses and lands,
for the Lord's sake (Matt. xix. 29). Not, in-
deed, that the actual parting with these is en-
joined in every case; but, certainly, it is intended
that we shall hold all at the Lord's disposal, pos-
sessing, but " as though we possessed not;" — this
is the least that we can take out of these words.
Full consecration of the person and the works,
this then is the condition of fellowship with God;
and if so many lament the lack of the latter, it is
no doubt because of the lack of the former. We
often act strangely in this matter; half uncon-
sciously, searching, perhaps, every corner of our
life but the right one, from looking into which
by the clear light of God's Word we instinctively'
shrink, conscience softly whispering that just
there is something about which we have a lurk-
ing doubt, and which therefore, if we will be
fully consecrated, we must at once give up, till
we are sure that it is right, and right for us; and
for that self-denial, that renunciation unto God,
we are not ready. Is it a wonder that, if such be
our experience, we lack that blessed, joyful fel-
lowship with the Lord, of which some tell us?
Is it not rather the chief wonder that we should
wonder at the lack, when yet we are not ready to
consecrate all. body, soul, and spirit, with all our
works, unto the Lord? Let us then remember
the law of the offerings upon this point. No
Israelite could have the blessed feast of the
peace-offering, except, first the burnt-offering
and the meal-offering, symbolising full consecra-
tion, were smoking on the altar.
294
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
But this full consecration seems to many so
exceeding hard, — nay, we may say more, to many
it is utterly impossible. A consecration of some
things, especially those for which they care little,
this they can hear of; but a consecration of all,
that the whole may be consumed upon the altar
iDefore and unto God, this they cannot think of.
Which means — can we escape the conclusion? —
that the love of God does not yet rule supreme.
How sad! and how strange! But the law of the
offerings will again declare the secret of the
strange holding back from full consecration.
For it was ordained, that wherever there was sin
in the offerer, unconfessed and unforgiven, be-
fore even the burnt-offering must go the sin-
offering, expiating sin by blood presented on the
altar before God. And here we come upon an-
other law of the spiritual life in all ages. If fel-
lowship with God in peace and joy is conditioned
by the full consecration of person and service to
Him, this consecration, even as a possibility for
US, is in turn conditioned by the expiation of sin
through the great Sin-offering. So long as con-
science is not satisfied that the question of sin
has been settled in grace and righteousness with
God, so long it is a spiritual impossibility that
the soul should come into that experience of the
love of God, manifested through atonement,
which alone can lead to full consecration.
This truth is always of vital importance; but
it is, if possible, more important than ever to in-
sist upon it in our day, when, more and more,
the doctrine of the expiation of sin through the
blood of the Lamb of God is denied, and that,
forsooth, under the claim of superior enlighten-
ment. Men are well pleased to hear of a burnt-
offering, so long especially as it is made to
signify no more than the self-devotement of the
offerer; but for a sin-offering, much modern the-
ology has no place. So soon as we begin to
speak of the sacrifice of our Lord for sin in the
dialect of the ancient altar — which, it must never
be forgotten, is that of Christ and His apostles —
we are told that " it would be better for the
world if the Christian doctrine of sacrifice could
be presented to men apart from the old Jewish
ideas and terms, which only serve to obscure the
simplicity that is in Christ(!)" And so men,
under the pretext of magnifying the love of God.
and laying a truer basis for spiritual life, in effect
fleny the supreme and incomparable manifesta-
tion of that love, that God made " Him who
knew no sin to be sin on our behalf "(2 Cor. v.
21).
Very different is the teaching, not merely of
'the law of Moses, but of the whole New Testa-
ment; which, in all it has to say of the Christian
life as proceeding from full self-surrender, ever
represents this full consecration as inspired by
the believing recognition and penitent acceptance
, nf Christ, not merely as the great Example of
perfect consecration, but as a sin-offering, recon-
ciling us first of all by His death, before He
saves us by His life (Rom. v. 10). The expiation
of sin by the sin-offering, before the consecra-
tion which burnt-oft'ering and meal-offering
typify, this is the invariable order in both Testa-
ments. The Apostle Paul, in his account of his
own full consecration, is in full accord with the
spiritual teaching of the Mosaic ritual when he
gives this as the order. He describes himself,
and that in terms of no undue exaggeration, as
so under the constraint of the love of Christ as
to seem to some beside himself; and then he
goes on to explain the secret of this consecra-
tion, in which he had placed himself and all he
had upon God's altar, as a whole burnt-sacrifice,
as consisting just in this, that he had first appre-
hended the mystery of Christ's death, as a sub-
stitution so true and real of the sinless Victim in
the place of sinful men, that it might be said
that " one died for all, therefore all died;"
whence he thus judged, " that they which live
should no longer live unto themselves, but unto
Him who for their sakes died and rose again "
(2 Cor. V. 13-15). To the same effect is the
teaching of the Apostle John. For all true con-
secration springs from the thankful recognition
of the love of God; and, according to this
Apostle also, the Divine love which inspires the
consecration is manifest in this, that " He sent
His Son to be the propitiation for our sins " (i
John iv. loV The apprehension, then, of the
reality of the expiation made by the great Sin-
offering, and the believing appropriation of its
virtue to the cancelling of our guilt, this is the
inseparable previous condition of full consecra-
tion of person and work unto the Lord. It is
so, because only the apprehension of the need
of expiation by the blood of the Son of God, as
the necessary condition of forgiveness, can give
us any adequate measure of the depth of our
guilt and ruin, as God sees it; and. on the other
hand, only when we remember that God spared
not His only-begotten Son, but sent Him to
become, through death upon the cross, a pro-
pitiation for our sins, can we begin to have such
an estimate of the love of God and of Christ His
Son as shall make full consecration easy, or even
possible.
Let us then, on no account, miss this lesson
from the order of this ritual; before the peace-
offering, the burnt-offering; before the burnt-
offering, the sin-offering. Or, translating the
symbolism, perfect fellowship with God in peace
and joy and life, only after consecration; and the
consecration only possible in fulness, and only
accepted of God, in any case, when the great Sin-
offering has been first believingly appropriated,
according to God's ordination, as the propitia-
tion for our sins, for the cancelling of our guilt.
But there is yet more in this order of the offer-
ings. For, as the New Testament in every way
teaches us, the Antitype of every offering was
Christ. As we have already seen, in the Sin-
offering we have the type of Christ as our pro-
pitiation, or expiation; in the burnt-offering, of
Christ as consecrating Himself unto God in our
behalf; in the meal-offering, as, in like manner,
consecrating all His works in our behalf; in the
peace-offering, as imparting Himself to us as our
life, and thus bringing us into fellowship of peace
and love and joy with the Fnther.
Now this last is. in fact, the ultimate aim of
salvation: rather, indeed, we may say. it is sal-
vation. For life in its fulness means the cancel-
ling of death; death spiritual, and bodily death
also, in resurrection from the dead; it means also
perfect fellowship with the living God, and this,
attained, is heaven. Hence it must needs be that
the peace-offering which represents Christ as
giving Himself to us as our life, and introducing
us into this blessed state, comes last.
But before this, in order, not of time, but of
grace, as also of logic, must be Christ as Sin-
offering, and Christ as Burnt-offering. And,
first of all, Christ as Sin-offering. For God's
way of peace puts the cancelling of guilt, the
Leviticus ix. 1-24.]
THE TABERNACLE SERVICE.
295
satisfaction of His holy law and justice, and
therewith the restoration of our right relation to
Him, first, and in order to a holy life and fellow-
ship; while man will ever put these last, and re-
gard the latter as the means to obtaining a right
standing with God. Hence, inasmuch as Christ,
coming to save us, finds us under a curse, the
first thing in order is, and must be, the removal
of that curse of the holy wrath of God, against
every one that " continueth not in all things that
are written in the book of the law, to do them."
And so, first in order in the typical ritual is the
sin-oflfering which represents Christ as made " a
curse for us," that He might thus redeem us
from the curse of the law (Gal. iii. 13).
But this is not a complete account of the work
of our Lord for us in the days of His flesh. His
work indeed was one, but the Scriptures set it
forth in a twofold aspect. On the one hand, He
is the Sinless One, bearing the curse for us; but
also, in all His suffering for our sins. He is also
manifested as the Righteous One, making many
righteous by His obedience, even an obedience
unto the death of the cross (Rom. v. 19; Phil. ii.
8). And if we ask what was the essence of this
obedience of our Lord for us, what was it, in-
deed, but that which is the essence of all obedi-
ence to God, namely, full, unreserved, uninter-
rupted consecration and self-surrender to the will
of the Father? And as, by His suffering, Christ
endured the curse for us. so by all His obedience
and suffering in full submission to the will of
God, He became also " the Lord our righteous-
ness." And this, as repeatedly remarked, is the
central thought of the burnt-offering and the
meal-offering, — full consecration of the person
and the work to God.
In the sin-offering, then, we see Christ as our
propitiation: in the burnt-offering, we see Him
rather as our righteousness; but the former is
presupposed in the latter; and apart from this,
that in His death Fie became the expiation of
our sins. His obedience could have availed us
nothing. But given now Christ as our propitia-
tion and also our righteousness, the whole ques-
tion of the relation of Christ's people to God in
law and righteousness is settled, and the way is
now clear for the communication of life which
the peace-offering symbolised. Thus, as by faith
in Christ as the Sin-offering, our propitiation and
righteousness, we are "justified freely by grace,"
'■ apart from the works of the law." so now the
way is open, by the appropriation of Christ as our
life in the peace-offering, for our sanctification
and complete redemption. In a word, the law
of the order of the offerings teaches, symbolic-
ally and typically, exactly what, in Rom. vi. and
vii.. the Apostle Paul teaches dogmatically,
namely, that the order of grace is first justifica-
tion, then sanctification; but both by the same
crucified Christ, our propitiation, our righteous-
ness, and our life: in whom we come to have fel-
lowship in all good and blessing with the Father.
It is interesting to observe that after the
analogy of this order of the offerings, is the most
usual order of the development of Christian ex-
perience. For the awakened soul is usually first
of all concerned about the question of forgive-
ness of sin and acceptance: and hence, most com-
monly, faith first api)rehends Christ in this
aspect, as the One who " bare our sins in His
Body," by whose stripes we are healed: and then,
at a later period of experience, as the One who
also, in lowly consecration to the Father's will,
obeyed for us, that we might be made righteous
through His obedience. But no one who is truly
justified by faith in Christ as our propitiation and
righteousness, can long rest with this. He very
quickly finds what he had little thought of before,
that the evil nature abides even in the justified
and accepted believer; nay, more, that it has
still a terrible strength to overcome him and lead
him into sin, even often when he would not.
And this prepares the believer, still in accord
with the law of the order of grace here set forth,
to lay hold also on Christ by faith as His Peace-
offering, by feeding on whom we receive spiritual
strength, so that He thus, in a word, becomes
our sanctification and, at last, full redemption.
The Double Benediction.
Leviticus ix. 22-24.
" And Aaron lifted up his hands toward the people, and
blessed them ; and he came down from offering the sin
offering, and the burnt offering, and the peace offerings.
And Moses and Aaron went into the tent of meeting, and
came out and blessed the people ; and the glory of the
Lord appeared unto all the people. And there came forth
tire from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar
the burnt offering and the fat ; and when all the people
saw it, they shouted, and fell on their faces."
The sacrifices having now been made, and the
offerings presented in this divinely-appointed
order, by the ordained and consecrated priest-
hood, two things followed: a double benediction
was pronounced upon the people, and Jehovah
manifested to them His glory. We read (ver.
22), " And Aaron lifted up his hands toward the
people, and blessed them; and he came down
from offering the sin-offering, and the burnt-
offering, and the peace-offerings."
Presumably, the form of benediction which
Aaron used was that which, according to Numb,
vi. 24-27, the priests were commanded by the
Lord to use: "The Lord bless thee, and keep
thee: the Lord make His face to shine upon thee,
and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up His
countenance upon thee, and give thee peace." It
was not an empty form; for the Lord at that
time also promised Himself to make this bless-
ing efficient, saying thereafter, " So shall they
put My Name " — Jehovah, the name of God in
covenant, — "upon the children of Israel; and I
will bless them."
So also the Lord Jesus, Just before withdraw-
ing from the bodily sight of His disciples after
the completion of His great sacrifice, " lifted up
His hands, and blessed them;" and thereupon
disappeared from their sight, ascending into
heaven. Even so was it in the typical service of
this day; for when Aaron had thus lifted up his
hands and blessed the people (ver. 23), " Moses
and Aaron went into the tent of meeting."
The work of Aaron in the outer court had
been finished, and now he disappears from
Israel's sight; for he must, in like manner, be
inducted into the priestly work within the Holy
Place. He must there be shown all those things
to which, in his priestly ministrations, the blood
must be applied; and. especially, must also offer
the sweet incense at the golden altar which was
before the veil which enshrined the immediate
presence of Jehovah. But this offering of in-
cense, as all have agreed, typifies the precious
and most effective intercession of the great Anti-
type; so that thus it was shown in a figure, how
296 THE BOOK
the Christ of God, having finished His sacrificial
work in the sight of men, and having ascended
into heaven, should there for a season abide, hid-
den from human sight, making intercession for
His waiting people.
After an interval — we are not told how long —
Moses and Aaron again (vv. 23, 24), " came out,
and blessed the people: and the glory of the
Lord appeared unto all the people. And there
came forth fire from before the Lord, and con-
sumed upon the altar the burnt-offering and the
fat: and when all the people saw it, they shouted,
and fell on their faces."
This second blessing, by Moses and Aaron con-
jointly, followed Aaron's reappearance to Israel,
and marked the completion of these inauguration
services, the intercession within the veil, as well
as the sacrifices. And the revelation in a visible
way of the glory of the Lord added what now
was alone required, the manifest attestation by
the Lord of the tabernacle of His approval of all
that had been done in these memorable eight
days. This appearance of the Shekinah glory
was followed by a flash of fire which, in token of
the Divine appropriation of the sacrifices, con-
sumed in an instant the burnt-ofTering on the
altar with the fat of the sin-offering and the
peace-offering, which had been laid upon it. We
cannot follow here the Jewish tradition, which
has it that with this act the sacrificial fire which
was never to go out upon the altar, was origi-
nated. On the contrary, as we have seen, the
offerings had before this been made by Moses,
and even on this day the fire had been kindled
before (ver. 10, et seq.). Nor is there any neces-
sary inconsistency here; for we have but to sup-
pose that the burning of the sacrifices which had
been kindled by Aaron was not yet complete,
when the flash from the cloud of glory in an in-
stant consummated the burning, teaching in a
most august and impressive manner the symbolic
meaning of the burning of the sacrifices on the
altar, as signifying the acceptance and appropria-
tion of that which was offered, by the Lord who
had commanded all, and thereby endorsing all
that had been done, as according to His mind
and will.
And even so, according to the sure Word of
prophecy, our heavenly High Priest has yet in
reserve for His people a second benediction.
His first blessing upon leaving the world was
followed by Pentecost; the second, on His reap-
pearing, shall bring in resurrection and full salva-
tion. And in that day, when He " shall appear
a second time, apart from sin, to them that wait
for Him unto salvation" (Heb. ix. 28), there-
with shall appear the glory which on that day,
long ago, appeared to Israel; for He " shall come
in the glory of His Father," and thus shall God,
the Most High and the Most Holy, testify before
the universe His gracious acceptance of the
service of the true Aaron and His " many sons,"
the priestly people of God, through all the Chris-
tian ages. Thus, the services and events of that
day of induction, in their order from beginning
to end, were not only a parable of the order of
grace, but also, as it were, a typical epitome of
the whole work of redemption. They are thus
a prophecy that the work which began when
Christ made His soul an offering for sin, and to
perfect which He is now withdrawn from our
sight for a season, shall be consummated at last
t>y His reappearing in glory for the final bless-
ing of His waiting people.
OF LEVITICUS.
And if we look at other and subordinate
aspects of this inauguration service, we shall still
find this sequel of all, no less richly suggestive.
Expiation, righteousness, fellowship in peace
with God, shall bring with it the blessing of the
Lord, and finally issue in the revelation of His
glory in the sight of all who accept this great re-
demption through sacrifice. And so also in the
personal life. As the trustful acceptance and use
of the appointed Sin-oflFering leads to the conse-
cration of the person and the life, and as by this
consecration we come into conscious fellowship
with God in joy and peace, as we feed on the
flesh of the slain Lamb, so, as the blessed result,
unto every true believer, according to the meas-
ure of his faith, this is followed by the double
benediction of the Lord; one for this life, and
a larger, for the life which is to come. The Lord
blesses him, and keeps him: the Lord makes His
face to shine upon him, and is gracious unto
him: the Lord lifts up His countenance upon
him, and gives him peace, according to that word
of the great High Priest: " Peace I leave with
you; My peace I give unto you " (John xiv. 27;.
And then, after the present peace, is yet to fol-
low, as the final issue of the expiated sin, and
the consecrated life, and fellowship in peace with
the God of life and love, the beholding of the
glory of the Lord; according to that high-
priestly prayer of our Redeemer, " That which
Thou hast given Me, I will that, where I am,
they also may be with Me: that they may behold
My glory" (John xvii. 24). Even here some
know a little of this, and find that expiated sin
and full consecration are followed here and now
by bright glimpses of the Glory of the Lord.
But what is now seen thus in part shall then be
seen fully and face to face. Who would not
make sure of that beatific vision of the glory of
the Lord?
CHAPTER XII.
NADAB'S AND ABIHU'S " STRANGE FIRE."
Leviticus x. 1-20.
The solemn and august ceremonies of the con-
secration of the priests, and the tabernacle, and
the inauguration of the tabernacle service, had
a sad and terrible termination. The sacrifices of
the inauguration day had been completed, the
congregation had received the priestly benedic-
tion, the glory of Jehovah had appeared unto
the people, and, in token of His acceptance of all
that had been done, consumed the victims on
the altar. This manifestation of the glory of the
Lord so affected the people — as well it might —
that when they saw it, " they shouted, and fell on
their faces." It was, probably, under the in-
fluence of the excitement of this occasion that
(vv. I, 2), " Nadab and Abihu, the sons of
Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire
therein, and laid incense thereon, and offered
strange fire before the Lord, which He had not
commanded them. And there came forth fire
from before the Lord, and devoured them, and
they died before the Lord."
There has been no little speculation as to what
it was, precisely, which they did. Some will
have it, that they lighted their incense, not from
the altar fire, but elsewhere. As to this, while it
is not easy to prove that to light the incense at
the altar fire was an invariable requirement, yet
I cviticus X. I-20.] NADAB'S AND ABIHU'S "STRANGE FIRE."
297
it is certain that this was commanded for the
great day of atonement (xvi. 12) ; and also, that
when Aaron offered incense in connection with
the plague which broke out upon the rebellion
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, Moses com-
manded him to take the fire for the censer from
ofif the altar (Numb. xvi. 46); so that, perhaps
this is not unlikely to have been one element,
at least, in their offence. Others, again, have
thought that their sin lay in this, that they
offered their incense at a time not commanded in
the order of worship which God had just pre-
scribed; and this, too, may very probably have
been another element in their sin, for it is certain
that the divinely-appointed order of worship for
the day had been already completed. Yet again,
others have supposed that they rashly and with-
out Divine warrant pressed within the veil, into
the immediate presence of the Shekinah glory
of God, to offer their incense there. For this,
too, there is evidence, in the fact that the insti-
tution of the great annual day of atonement, and
the prohibition of entrance within the veil at
any other time, even to the high priest himself,
is said to have follo\yed " after the death of the
two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before
the Lord, and died" (xvi. i, 2).
It is perfectly possible, and even likely, that
all these elements were combined in their of-
fence. In any case, the gravamen of their sin is
expressed in these words; they offered "fire
which the Lord had not commanded them: "
offered it, either in a way not commanded, or
at a time not commanded, or in a place not com-
manded; or, perhaps, in each and all of these
ways, offered " fire which the Lord had not
commanded." This was their sin, and one which
brought instant and terrible judgment.
It is easy enough to believe that yet they
meant well in what they did. It probably
seemed to them the right thing to do. After
such a stupendous display as they had just wit-
nessed, of the flaming glory of Jehovah, why
should they not, in token of reverence and
adoration, offer incense, even in the most im-
mediate presence of Jehovah? And why should
s Jch minor variations from the appointed law,
as to manner, or time, or place, matter very
niuch, so the motive was worship? So may
they probably have reasoned, if indeed they
thought at all. But, nevertheless, this made no
difference; all the same, "fire came forth from
Jehovah, and devoured them." They had been
but so lately consecrated! and — as we learn
from ver. 5 — their priestly robes were on them at
the time, in token of their peculiar privilege of
special nearness to God! But this, too, made no
difference; "there came forth fire from before
the Lord and devoured them."
Their sin, in the form in which it was com-
mitted, can never be repeated; but as regards its
inner nature and essence, no sin has been in all
ages more common. For the essence of their
'oin was this, that it was will-worship; worship
in which they consulted not the revealed will
of God regarding the way in which He would be
served, but their own fancies and inclinations.
The directions for worship had been, as we have
seen, exceedingly full and explicit; but they ap-
parently imagined that the fragrance of their
incense, and its intrinsic suitableness as a sym-
bol of adoration and prayer, was sufficient to ex-
cuse neglect of strict obedience to the revealed
will of God touching His own worship. Their
sin was not unlike that of Saul in a later day,
who thought to excuse disobedience by the offer-
ing of enormous sacrifices. But he was sharply
reminded that " to obey is better than sacrifice "
(i Sam. XV. 22); and the priesthood were in like
manner on this occasion very terribly taught that
obedience is also better than incense, even the
incense of the sanctuary.
In all ages, men have been prone to commit
this sin, and in ours as much as any. It is true
that in the present dispensation the Lord has left
more in His worship than in earlier days to the
sanctified judgment of His people, and has not
minutely prescribed details for our direction.
It is true, again, that there is, and always will be,
room for some difference of judgment among
good and loyal servants of the Lord, as to how
far the liberty left us extends. But we are cer-
tainly all taught as much as this, that wherever
we are not clear that we have a Divine warrant
for what we do in the worship of God, we need
to be exceeding careful, and to act with holy
fear, lest possibly, like Nadab and Abihu, we be
chargeable with offering " strange fire," which
the Lord has not commanded. And when one
goes into many a church and chapel, and sees the
multitude of remarkable devices by which, as
is imagined, the worship and adoration of God
is furthered, it must be confessed that it certainly
seems as if the generation of Nadab and Abihu
was not yet extinct; even although a patient God,
in the mystery of His long-suffering, flashes not
instantly forth His vengeance.
This then is the first lesson of this tragic oc-
currence. We have to do with a God who is
very jealous; who will be worshipped as He
wills, or not at all. Nor can we complain. If
God be such a Being as we are taught in the
Holy Scripture, it must be His inalienable right
to determine and prescribe how He will be
served.
And it is a second lesson, scarcely less evident,
that with God, intention of good, though it
palliate, cannot excuse disobedience where He
has once made known His will. No one can im-
agine that Nadab and Abihu meant wrong; but
for all that, for their sin they died.
Again, we are herein impressively taught that,
with God, high position confers no immunity
when a man sins; least of all, high position in the
Church. On the contrary, the greater the ex-
altation in spiritual honour and privilege, the
more strictly will a man be held to account for
every failure to honour Him who exalted him.
We have seen this illustrated already by the law
of the sin-offering; and this tragic story illus-
trates the same truth again.
But the question naturally arises. How could
these men, who had been so exalted in privilege,
who had even beheld the glory of the God of Is-
rael in the holy mount (Exod. xxiv. i, 9, 10), have
ventured upon such a perilous experiment? The
answer is probably suggested by the warning
which, immediately followed their death (vv. 8,
9): " The Lord spake unto Aaron, saying. Drink
no wine nor strong drink, . . . when ye go
into the tent of the meeting, that ye die not."
It is certainly distinctly hinted by these words,
that it was under the excitement of strong drink
that these men so fatally sinned.
If so, then, although their sin may not be re-
peated in its exact form among us, yet the fact
points a very solemn warning, not only regard-
ing the careless use of strong drink, but, more
298
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
than that, against all religious worship and act-
ivity which is inspired by other stimulus than
by the Holy Spirit of God. Of this every age of
the Church's history has furnished sad examples.
Sometimes we see it illustrated in " revivals,"
even in such as may be marked by some evi-
dence of the presence of the Spirit of God; when
injudicious speakers seek by various methods
to work up what is, after ail, merely a physi-
cal excitement of a strange, infectious kind,
tliough too often mistaken lor the work of the
Holy Spirit of God. More subtle and yet more
common is the sin of such as in preaching the
Word find their chief stimulation in the excite-
ment of a crowded house, or the visible signs
of approbation on the part of the hearers; and
perhaps sometimes mistake the natural effect of
this influence for the quickening power of the
Holy Ghost, and go on to offer before the Lord
the incense of their religious service and wor-
ship, but with " strange fire." Of this all need
to beware; and most of all, ministers of the
Word.
The penalty of sin is often long delayed, but
it did not lag in this case. The strange fire in
the hands of Nadab and Abihu was met by a
flash of flame that instantly withered their life;
and, just as they were, their priestly robes upon
them unconsumed, their censers in their hands,
they dropped dead before the fatal bolt.
In reading this account and other similar narra-
tives in Holy Scripture, of the deadly outbreak
of God's wrath, many have felt not a little dis-
quieted in mind because of the terrific severity
of the judgment, which to them seems so out of
all proportion to the guilt of the offender. And
so, in many hearts, and even to many lips, the
question has perforce arisen: Is it possible to
believe that in this passage, for instance, we have
a true representation of the character of God?
In answering such a question we ought always
to remember, first of all, that, apart from our
imperfect knowledge, just because we all are
sinners, we are, by that fact, all more or less dis-
qualified and incapacitated for forming a correct
and unbiassed judgment regarding the demerit
of sin. It is quite certain that every sinful man
is naturally inclined to take a lenient view of the
guilt of sin, and, by necessary consequence, of
its desert in respect of punishment. In ap-
proaching this question, here and elsewhere in
God's Word, it is imperative that we keep this
fact in mind.
Again, it is not unnecessary to remark, that
we must be careful and not read into this narra-
tive what, in fact, is not here. For it is often
assumed without evidence, that when we read
in the Bible of men being suddenly cut off by
death for some special sin, we are therefore re-
quired to believe that the temporal judgment of
physical death must have been followed, in each
instance, by the judgment of the eternal fire.
But always to infer this in such cases, when, as
here, nothing of the kind is hinted in the text, is
a great mistake, and introduces a difficulty which
is wholly of our own making. That sometimes,
at least, the facts are quite the opposite, is ex-
pressly certified to us in i Cor. xi. 30-32, where
we are told that among the Christians of Corinth,
many, because of their irreverent approach to
the Holy Supper of the Lord, slept the sleep of
death; but that these judgments from the Lord,
of bodily death, instead of being necessarily in-
tended for their eternal destruction, were sent
that they might not finally perish. For the
Apostle's words are most explicit; for it is with
reference to these cases of sickness and death of
which he had spoken, that he adds (ver. 32) :
■■ But when we are (thus) judged, we are chast-
ened of the Lord, that we may not be condemned,
with the world."
What we have here before us, then, is not the
question of the eternal condemnation of Nadab
and Abihu for their thoughtless, though perhaps
not so intended, profanation of God's worship,
— a point on which the narrative gives us no
information, — but, simply and only, the inflicting
on them, for this sin, of the judgment of tem-
poral death. And if this yet seem to some undue
severity, as no doubt it will, there remain other
considerations which deserve to have great
weight here. In the first place, if this reveal
God as terribly severe in His judgment, even
upon what, compared with other crimes, may
seem a small sin, we have to remember that, after
all, this God of the Bible, this Jehovah of the
Old Testament, is only herein revealed as in
this respect like the God whose working we
see in nature and in history. Was the God of
Nadab and Abihu a severe God? Is not the God
of nature a terribly severe God? Who then is it
that has so appointed the economy of nature that
even for one thoughtless indulgence by a young
man, he shall be racked with pain all his life
thereafter? It is a law of nature, one says.
But what is a law of nature but the ordinary
operation of the Divine Being who made nature?
So let us not forget that the reasoning which,
because of the confessed severity of this judg-
ment on the sons of Aaron, argues God out of
the tenth of Leviticus, and refuses to believe that
this can be a revelation of His mind and char-
acter, by parity of reasoning must go on to argue
God out of nature and out of history. But if
one be not yet ready for the latter, let him take '
heed how he too hastily decide on this ground
against the verity of the history and the truth
of the revelation in the case before us.
Then, again, we need to be careful that we pass
not judgment before considering all that was
involved in this act of sin. We cannot look
upon the case as if the act of Nadab and Abihu
had been merely a private matter, personal to
themselves alone. This it was not, and could
not be. They did what they did in their official
robes; moreover, it was a peculiarly public act:
it took place before the sanctuary, where all the
people were assembled. What was the influence
of this their act, if it passed unrebuked and un-
punished, likely to be? History shows that noth-
ing was more inbred in the nature of the people
than just this tendency to will-worship. For
centuries after this, notwithstanding many like
terrible judgments, it mightily prevailed, taking
the form of numberless attempted improvements
on the arrangements of worship appointed by
God, and introducing, under such pretexts of
expediency, often the grossest idolatry. And al-
though the Babylonian judgment made an end
of the idolatrous form of will-worship, the old
tendency persisted, and worked on under a new
form till, as we learn from our Lord's words in
the Gospel, the people were in His day utterly
overwhelmed with " heavy burdens and griev-
ous to be borne," rabbinical additions to the
law, attempted improvements on Moses, under
pretext of honouring Moses, all begotten of
this same inveterate spirit of will-worship. Nor
Leviticus X. I-20.] NADAB'S AND ABIHU'S "STRANGE FIRE.
299
are such things of little consequence, as some
seem to imagine, whether we find them among
Jews or in Christian communions. On the con-
trary, all will-worship, in all its endless variety
of forms, tends to confuse conscience, by con-
founding with the commandments of God the
practices and traditions of men; and all history,
no less of the Church than of Israel, shows that
the tendency of all such will-worship is to the
subversion alike of morality and religion, oc-
casioning, too often, total misapprehension as
to what indeed is the essence of religion well
pleasing to God.
Was the sin of tke priests, Nadab and Abihu,
then, committed in such a public manner, such
a trifling matter after all? And when we fur-
ther remember the peculiar circumstances of
the occasion, — that the whole ceremonial of the
day was designed in a special manner to instruct
the people as to the manner in which Jehovah,
their King and their God, would be worshipped,
— it certainly is not so hard, after all, to see how
it was almost imperative that in the very begin-
ning of Israel's national history, God should give
them a lesson on the sanctity of His ordinances
and His hatred of will-worship, which should
be remembered to all time.
The solemn lesson of the terrible judgment,
Moses, as Prophet and Interpreter of God's will
to the people, declares in these words (ver. 3):
" This is it that the Lord spake, saying, I will
be sanctified in them that come nigh Me, and
before all the people I will be glorified."
If God separate a people to be specially near
unto Him, it is that, admitted to such special
nearness to Himself, they shall ever reverently
recognise His transcendent exaltation in holi-
ness, and take care that He be ever glorified in
them before all men. But if any be careless of
this, God will nevertheless not be defrauded. If
they will recognise His august holiness, in the
reverence of loyal service, well; God shall thus
glorify Himself in them before all. But if other-
wise, still God will be glorified in them before all
people, though now in their chastisement and in
retribution. The principle is that which is an-
nounced by Amos (iii. 2): "You only have
I known of all the families of the earth; therefore
I will visit upon you all your iniquities." And
when we remember that the sons of Aaron typi-
cally represent the whole body of believers in
Christ, as a priestly ^people, it is plain that the
warning of this judgment conies directly home
to us all. If, as Christians, we have been
brought into a relation of special nearness and
privilege with God, we have to remember that
the place of privilege is, in this case, a place of
peculiar danger. If we forget the reverence and
honour due to His name, and insist on will-
worship of any kind, we shall in some way suffer
for it. God may wink at the sins of others, but
not at ours. He is a God of love, and desires not
our death, but that He may be glorified in our
life; but if any will not have it so. He will not
be robbed of his glory. Hence the warning of
the Apostle Peter, who was so filled with these
Old Testament conceptions of God and His wor-
ship: " It is written, Ye shall be holy, for I am
holy. And if ye call on Him as Father, who
without respect of persons judgeth according
to each man's work, pass the time of your so-
journing in fear" (i Peter i. 17).
Ver. 3: " And Aaron held his peace."
For rebellion were useless; nay, it had been
madness. Even the tenderest natural affection
must be silent when God smites for sin; and in
this case the sin was so manifest, and the connec-
tion therewith of the judgment so evident, that
Aaron could say nothing, though his heart must
have been breaking.
Mourning in Silence.
Leviticus x. 4-7.
" And Moses called .Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of .
uzziel the uncle of Aaron, and said unto them, Draw near,
carry your brethren from before the sanctuary out of the
camp. So they drew near, and carried them in their coats
out of the camp ; as Moses had said. And Moses said
unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar and imto Ithamar, his sons,
Let not the hair of your heads go loose, neither rend ^'our
clothes; that ye die not, and that He be not wroth with
all the congregation : but let your brethren, the whole
house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord hath
kindled. And ye shall not go out from the door of the
tent of meeting, lest ye die : for the anointing oil of the
Lord is upon you. And they did according to the word
of Moses."
Even in ordinary cases, restrictions were
placed upon Aaron and his sons as regards the
outward signs of mourning; but exceptions were
made in the case of the nearest relations, and, in
particular, of the death of a son, or a brother
(chap. xxi. 2). In this case, however, this per-
mission could not be given; and they are warnel
that by public expressions of grief they would
not only bring death from the Lord upon them-
selves, but also bring His wrath upon the whole
congregation which they represented before
God. They are not indeed forbidden to mourn
in their hearts, but from all the outward and
customary signs of mourning they must abstain.
And the reason for this is given; '"The anoint-
ing oil of the Lord is upon you." That is, by
the anointing they had been set apart to repre-
sent God before Israel. Hence, when God had
thus manifested His holy wrath against sin, for
them to have exhibited the public signs of
mourning for this, even though the stroke of
wrath had fallen into their own family, would
have been a visible contradiction between their
actions and their priestly position. To others,
indeed, these outward tokens of mourning are
expressly permitted, for they stood in no such
special relation to God; their brethren, " the
whole house of Israel." might bewail the bnrnint:
which the Lord had kindled, but they, although
nearest of kin to the dead, are not permitted
even to follow the slain of the Lord to the
grave, and (vv. 4, 5) the sad duty is assigned to
their cousins, who bear the dead, in their white
priestly robes, just as they had fallen, out of the
camp to burial, while Aaron and his sons mourn
silently within the tent of meeting.
This has seemed hard to many, and has fur-
nished some another illustration of the hardness
and severity of the character of God as held up
in the Pentateuch. But we shall do well to re-
member that in all this we have nothing which
in any respect goes beyond the very solemn
words of the tender-hearted and most com-
passionate Saviour, who said, for example, " 1 1'
any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not his
own father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brethren, and sisters, ... he cannot be
My disciple " (Luke xiv. 26). In language such
as this, we cannot but recognise the same char-
acter as in this command unto Aaron and his
sons; and if such " hard sayings " are to be held
reason for rejecting the revelation of the char-
300
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
acter of God as given in the Old Testament, the
same logic, in the presence of similar words, will
require us also to reject the revelation of God's
character as given by Christ in the New Testa-
ment.
The teaching of both Testaments on this mat-
ter is plain. Natural affection is right; it is in-
deed implanted in our hearts by the God who
made us in all our human relations. But none
the less, whenever the feelings which belong even
to the nearest and tenderest earthly relations
come into conflict with absolute fealty and sub-
mission to the will of God, and unswerving loy-
alty to the will of Christ, then, hard though
indeed it may be, natural affection must give
way, and mourn within the tent in the silence of
a holy submission to the Lord.
Carefulness after Judgment.
Leviticus x. 8-20.
" And the Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, Drink no
wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when
ye go into the tent of meeting, that ye die not : it shall be
a statute for ever throughout your generations : and that
ye may put difference between the holy and the common,
and between the unclean and the clean ; and that ye may
teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the
Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses. And
Moses spake unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar and unto
Ithamar, his sons that were left. Take the meal offering
that remaineth of the offerings of the Lord made by fire,
and eat it without leaven beside the altar : for it is most
holy : and ye shall eat it in a holy place, because it is thy
due, and thy sons' due, of the offerings of the Lord made
by fire : for so I am commanded. And the wave breast
and the heave thigh shall ye eat in a clean place ; thou,
and thy sons, and thy daughters with thee : for they are
given as thy due, and thy sons' due, out of the sacrifices
of the peace offerings of the children of Israel. The
heave thigh and the wave breast shall they bring with the
offerings made by fire of the fat, to wave it for a wave
offering before the Lord: and it shall be thine, and thy
sons' with thee, as a due for ever ; as the Lord hath com-
manded. And Moses diligently sought the goat of the
sin offering, and, behold it was burnt : and he was angry
with Eleazar and with Ithamar, the sons of Aaron that
were left, saying. Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin
offering in the place of the sanctuary, seeing it is most
holy, and He hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the
congregation, to make atonement for them before the
Lord ? Behold, the blood of it was not brought into the
sanctuary within : ye should certainly have eaten it in the
sanctuary, as I commanded. And Aaron spake unto
Moses, Behold, this day have they offered their sin offer-
ing and their burnt offering before the Lord ; and there
have befallen me such things as these : and if I had eaten
the sin offering to-day. would it have been well-pleasing
in the sight of the Lord ? And when Moses heard that,
it was well-pleasing in his sight."
Such a judgment as the foregoing ought to
have had a good effect, and it did. This ap-
peared in renewed carefulness to secure the most
exact obedience hereafter in all their official
duties. To this end, the Lord Himself now
laid down a law evidently designed to preclude,
as far as possible, every risk of any such fault in
the priestly service as might again bring down
judgment. It is not only holiness, but consider-
ate and anxious love, which speaks in the next
words, addressed to Aaron (vv. 8, 9): "Drink
no wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons
with thee, when ye go into the tent of meeting,
that ye die not: it shall be a statute for ever
throughout your generations."
And for this prohibition the reason is given
(w. 10, it): "That ye may put difference be-
tween the holy and the common, and between
the unclean and the clean; and that ye may
teach the children of Israel all the statutes which
the Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of
Moses."
It was not then that the use of wine was in
itself sinful; for this is taught nowhere in the Old
or New Testament, and as a doctrine of religion
is characteristic, not of Judaism or Christianity,
but only of Mohammedanism, of Buddhism and
other heathen religions. The ground of this
command of abstinence, as of the New Testa-
ment counsel (Rom. xiv. 20, 21), is that of ex-
pediency. Because, in the use of wine or strong
drink, there was involved a certain risk, that
by undue indulgence, the judgment might be
confused or the memory weakened, so that
something might be done amiss; therefore the
priests, who were specially commissioned to
teach the statutes of the Lord to Israel, and this
most of all, by their own carefulness to obey all
the least of His commandments, are here warned
to abstain whenever about engaging in their
official duties. As suggested above, it is at least
very natural to infer, from the historical setting
of this prohibition, that the fatal offence of
Nadab and Abihu was occasioned by such an in-
dulgence in wine or strong drink as made it pos-
sible for impulse to get the better of knowledge
and judgment.
But, however -this may be, the lesson for us
abides the same; a lesson which each one ac-
cording to his circumstances must faithfully ap-
ply to his own case. For the Christian it is
not enough that he shall abstain from what is in
its own nature always sinful; it must be the law
of our life that we abstain also from whatever
may needlessly become occasion of sin. In this
we cannot, indeed, lay down a universal code of
law. Heathen reformers have done this, and
their imitators in the Church, but never Christ
or His Apostles. And this with reason. For
that which for one carries with it inevitable risk
of sin, is not always fraught with the same dan-
ger to another person with a different tempera-
ment, or even to the same person under different
circumstances. In each instance we must judge
for ourselves, taking heed not to abuse our
liberty to another's harm; and also, on the other
hand, being careful how v/e judge others in re-
gard to things which in their essential nature are
neither right nor wrong. But we shall be wise
to recognise the fact that it is just in such things
that many Christians do most harm, both to
their own souls and to those of others. And in
regard to the drinking of wine in particular, one
must be blind indeed not to perceive it to be the
fact that, whatever the rea'^on may be, the En-
glish-speaking peoples seem to be peculiarly
susceptible to the danger of undue indulgence
in wine and strong drink. On both sides of the
Atlantic, drunkenness must be set down as one
of the most prevalent national sins.
In deciding the question of personal duty in
this and like cases, all believers are bound, as
the Lord's priestly people, to remember that
He has appointed them that they should walk
before Him as a separated people, who, by their
daily walk, above all, are to teach others to " put
a difference between holy and common, and un-
clean and clean, and to observe all the statutes
which the Lord hath spoken."
In vv. 12-15 we have a repetition of the com-
mandments previously given, concerning the use
to be made of the meal-offering and the peace-
offering. From this it apears that Moses him-
self, in view of the tragic occurrence of the day,
was stirred up to charge Aaron and his sons
anew on matters on which he had already com-
manded them. And with this intensifieid care on
Leviticus xvi. 1-34.]
GREAT DAY OF ATONEMENT.
301
his part is evidently connected the incident re-
corded in the verses which follow, where we read
that, having repeated the directions as to the
meal-offering and the peace-offering (vv. 16,
17), " Moses diligently sought the goat of the
sin offering, and, behold, it was burnt; and he
was angry with Eleazar and with Ithamar, the
sons of Aaron that were left, saying. Wherefore
have ye not eaten the sin offering in the place of
the sanctuary, seeing it is most holy, and He
hath given it you to bear the iniquity of the con-
gregation, to make atonement for them before
the Lord? "
It had indeed been commanded, in the case of
those sin-offerings of which the blood was
brought into the holy place, that their flesh
should not be eaten; but that the flesh of all
others should be eaten, as belonging to the class
of things " most holy," by the priests alone within
the Holy Place. Hence Moses continued (ver.
18) : " Behold, the blood of it was not brought
jtito the sanctuary within: ye should certainly
have eaten it in the sanctuary, as I commanded."
What had been done, as it appears, had been
done with Aaron's knowledge and sanction; for
Aaron then answered in behalf of his sons (ver.
19): "Behold, this day have they offered their
sin offering and their burnt offering before the
Lord; and there have befallen me such things
as these: and if I had eaten the sin offering to-
day, would it have been well-pleasing in the
sight of the Lord? "
Of which answer, the intention seems to have
been this. In this day of special exaltation and
privilege, when for the first time they had per-
formed their solemn priestly duties, when most
of all there should have been the utmost care to
please the Lord in the very smallest things. His
holy Name had been profaned by the will-
worship of his sons, and the wrath of God had
broken out against them, and, in them, against
fheir father's house. Could it be the will of God
that a house in which was found the guilt of
such a sin, should yet partake of the most holy
things of God in the sanctuary?
From this it appears that the judgment sent
into the house of Aaron had had a most whole-
some spiritual effect. They had received such an
impression of their own profound sinfulness as
they had never had before. And it is very in-
structive to observe that they assume to them-
s-elves a part in the sinfulness which had been
shown in the sin of Nadab and Abihu. It did
not occur to Aaron or his remaining sons to
say, in the spirit of Israel in the day of our Lord,
" If w€ had been in their place, we would not
have done so." Rather their consciences had
been so awakened to the holiness of God and
their own inborn evil, that they coupled them-
selves with the others as under the displeasure
of God. Was it possible, even though they per-
sonally had not sinned, that such as they should
e;it that which was most holy unto God? They
had thus in the letter disobeyed the law; but be-
cause their offeirce was begotten of a misappre-
hension, and only showed how deeply and
thoroughly they had taken to heart the lesson of
the sore judgment, we read that " when Moses
heard " their explanation, " it was well pleasing
in his sight."
All this which followed the sin of Nadab and
Abihu, and the judgment which fell on them,
and thus upon the whole house of Aaron, is a
most instructive illustration of the working of
20— Vol. I.
the chastising judgments of the Lord, when
rightly received. Its effect was to awaken the
utmost solicitude that nothing else might be
found about the tabernacle service, even through
oversight, which was not according to the mind
of God; and, in those immediately stricken, to
produce a very profound sense of personal sin-
fulness and unworthiness before God. The New
Testament gives us a graphic description of this
effect of the chastisement of God on the believer,
in the account which we have of the result of the
discipline which the Apostle Paul inflicted on
the sinning member of the Church of Corinth;
concerning which he afterward wrote t'o them
(2 Cor. vii. 11) " Behold, this selfsame thing, that
ye were made sorry after a godly sort, what
earnest care it wrought in you, yea, what clear-
ing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea,
what fear, yea, what longing, yea, what zeal, yea,
what avenging! "
A good test is this, which, when we have
passed under the chastising hand of God, we may
well apply to ourselves: this " earnest care," this
" clearing of ourselves," this holy fear of a
humbled heart, — have we known what it means?
If so, though we sorrow, we may yet rejoice that
by grace we are enabled to sorrow " after a
godly sort," with " a repentance which bringeth
no regret."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GREAT DAY OF ATONEMENT.
Leviticus xvi. 1-34.
In the first verse of chapter xvi., which or-
dains the ceremonial for the great annual day of
atonement, we are told that this ordinance was
delivered by the Lord to Moses " after the death
of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near
before the Lord, and died."* Because of the
close historical connection thus declared be-
tween this chapter and chapter x., and also be-
cause in this ordinance the Mosaic sacrificial
worship, which has been the subject of the book
thus far, finds its culmination, it seems most
satisfactory to anticipate the order of the book
by taking up at this point the exposition of this
chapter, before proceeding in chapter xi. to a
wholly different subject.
This ordinance of the day of atonement was
perhaps the most important and characteristic in
the whole Mosaic legislation. In the law of the
offerings, the most distinctive part was the law
of the sin-offering; and it was on the great an-
nual day of atonement that the conceptions em-
bodied in the sin-offering obtained their most
complete development. The central place which
this day occupied in the whole system of sacred
times is well illustrated in that it is often spoken
of by the rabbis, without any more precise desig-
nation, as simply " Yomd" " The Day." It was
" the day " because, on this day, the idea of sacri-
ficial expiation and the consequent removal of
all sin, essential to the life of peace and fellowship
* The interposition of chapters xi. -xv. on ceremon al
uncleanness, between chapter.s x. and xvi., which are so
closelv connecte'' by this historical note in xvi. i, certainly
sujrcpsts an editorial redaction— as the phrase is— in
which the latter chapter, for whatsoever reason, has been
removed from its original context. But that such a
redaction, of which we have in the book other traces,
does not of necessity affect in the sliRhtest degree the
question of its inspiration and Divine authority, should
be self-evident.
302
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
with God, which was set forth imperfectly, as
regards individuals and the nation, by the daily
sin-otterings, received the highest possible sym-
bolical expression. It is plain that countless sins
and transgressions and various defilements must
yet have escaped unrecognised as such, even by
the most careful and conscientious Israelite; and
mat, for this reason, they could not have been
covered by any of the daily offerings for sin.
licnce, apart from this full, solemn, typical pur-
gation and cleansing of the priesthood and the
congregation, and the holy sanctuary, from the
uiicieannesses and transgressions of the chil-
dren of 'Israel, " even all their sins " -(ver. i6),
tiie sacrificial system had yet fallen short of ex-
pressing in adequate symbolism the ideal of the
complete removal of all sin. With abundant
reason then do the rabbis regard it as the day
of days in the sacred year.
It is insisted by the radical criticism of our day
that the general sense of sin and need of expia-
tion which this ordinance expresses could not
have existed in the days of Moses; and that
since, moreover, the later historical books of the
Old Testament contain no reference to the ob-
servance of the day, therefore its origin must be
attributed to the days of the restoration from
Babylon, when, as such critics suppose, the
deeper sense of sin, developed by the great judg-
ment of the Babylonian captivity and exile, oc-
casioned the elaboration of this ritual.
To this one might reply that the objection
rests upon an assumption which the Christian
believer cannot admit, that the ordinance was
merely a product of the human mind. But if,
as our Lord constantly taught, and as the chap-
ter explicitly affirms, the ordinance was a matter
of Divine, supernatural revelation, then naturally
we shall expect to find in it, not man's estimate
of the guilt of sin, but God's, which in all ages
is the same.
But, meeting such objectors on their own
ground, we need not go into the matter further
than to refer to the high authority of Dillmann,
who declares this theory of the post-exilian ori-
gin of this institution to be " absolutely incredi-
ble;" and in reply to the objection that the day
is not alluded to in the whole Old Testament
history, justly adds that this argument from
silence would equally forbid us to assign the ori-
gin of the ordinance to the days of the return
from Babylon, or any of the pre-Christian cen-
turies! for " one would then have to maintain
that the festival first arose in the nrst Christian
century; since only out of that age do we first
have any explicit testimonies concerning it."*
Again, the first verse of the chapter gives as
the occasion of the promulgation of this law,
'■ the death of the two sons of Aaron," Nadab
and Abihu, " when they drew near before the
Lord and died;" a historical note which is per-
fectly natural if we have here a narrative dating
from Mosaic days, but which seems most object-
less and unlikely to have been entered, if the law
were a late invention of rabbinical forgers. On
that occasion it was, as we read (v. 2), that " the
Lord said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy
brother, that he come not at all times into the
holy place within the veil, before the mercy-seat
which is upon the ark; that he die not: for I will
appear in the cloud upon the mercy-seat."
Into this place of Jehovah's most immediate
earthly manifestation, even Aaron is to come
* " Die Biicher Exodus und Leviticus," z Aufl., p. 525.
only once a year, at;d then only with atoning
blood, as hereinafter prescribed.
The object of tlie wnoie service of this day is
represented as atonement; expiation ot sm, in
the highest and fullest sense then possible. It
IS said to be appoiiiied to make atonement for
Aaron and for his house (ver. 6), for the holy
place, and for the tent of meeting (vv. 15-17J ;
lor the altar of burnt-ofifering in the outer court
(vv. 18, 19); and for all tne congregation of
Jgrael (vv. 20-22, 2i) ; and this, not merely for
such sins of ignorance as had been afterward
recognised and acknowledged in the ordinary
sin-ofiferings of each day, but for " all the iniqui-
ties of the children of Israel, and all their trans-
gressions, even all their sins:" even such as
were still unknown to all but God (ver.
21). The fact of such an ordinance for such
a purpose taught a most impressive lesson
of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of
man, on the one hand, and, on the other,
the utter insufficiency of the daily offerings to
cleanse from all sm. Da> by day these had been
offered in each year; and yet, as we reau (Heb.
ix. 8, 9), the Holy Ghost this signified by this
ordinance, " that the way into the holy place
hath not yet been made manifest;" it was "a
parable for the time now present; " teaching
that the temple sacrifices of Judaism could not
" as touching the conscience, make the worship-
per perfect " (Heb. ix. 9). We may well reverse
the judgment of the critics, and say — not that the
deepened sense of sin in Israel was the cause 01
the day of atonement; but rather, that the solemn
observances of this day, under God, were mack-
for many in Israel a most effective means to
deepen the conviction of sin.
The time which was ordained for this annual
observance is significant — the tenth day of the
seventh month. It was appointed for the
seventh month, as the sabbatic month, in which
all the related ideas of rest in God and with
God, in the enjoyment of the blessings of a now
complete redemption, received in the great feast
of tabernacles their fullest expression. It was
therefore appointed for that month, and for a
day which shortly preceded this greatest of the
annual feasts, to signify in type the profound and
most vital truth, that the full joy of the sabbatic
rest of man with God, and the ingathering of
the fruits of complete redemption, is only possi-
ble upon condition of repentance and the fullest
possible expiation for sin. It was appointed for
the tenth day of this month, no doubt, because
in the Scripture symbolism the number ten is the
symbol of completeness; and was fitly thus con-
nected with a service which signified expiation
completed for the sins of the year.
The observances appointed for the day had
regard, first, to the people, aiid, secondly, to
the tabernacle service. As for the former, it was
commanded (ver. 29) that they should " do no
manner of work," observing the day as a Sah-
bath Sabbathon. " a high Sabbatlr," or " Sabbath
of solemn rest," (ver. 31); ana. secondly, tliat
they should "afflict their souls" (ver. 31).
namely, by solemn fasting, in visible sign of sor-
row and humiliation for sin. By which it was
most distinctly taught, that howsoever complete
atonement may be, and howsoever, in making
that atonement through a sacrificial victim, the
sinner himself have no part, yet apart from his
personal repentance for his sins, that atonement
Leviticus xvi. 1-34.]
GREAT DAY OF ATONEMENT
3<^3
shall profit him nothing; nay, it was declared
(xxiii. 29), that if any man should, fail on this
point, God would cut him off from his people.
The law abides as regards the greater sacrifice
of Christ; except we repent, we shall, even be-
cause of that sacrifice, only the more terribly
perish; because not even this supreme exhibi-
tion of the holy love and justice of God has
moved us to renounce sin.
As regards the tabernacle service for the day,
the order was as follows. First, as most distinc-
tive of the ritual of the day, only the high-priest
could officiate. The other priests, who, on other
occasions, served continually in the holy place,
must on this day, during these ceremonies, leave
it to him alone; taking their place, themselves
as sinners for whom also atonement was to be
made, with the sinful congregation of their
brethren. For it was ordered (ver. 17): " There
shall be no man in the tent of meeting when the
high priest goeth in to make atonement in the
holy place, until he come out," and the work of
atonement be completed.
And the high priest could himself officiate only
after certain significant preparations. First (ver.
4), he must " bathe in water " his whole person.
The word used in the original is different from
that which is used of the partial washings in con-
nection with the daily ceremonial cleansings;
and, most suggestively, the same complete wash-
ing is required as that which was ordered in the
law for the consecration of the priesthood, and
for cleansing from leprosy and other specific
defilements. Thus was expressed, in the clearest
manner possible, the thought, that the high
priest, who shall be permitted to draw near to
God in the holiest place, and there prevail with
Him, must himself be wholly pure and clean.
Then, having bathed, he must robe himself in
a special manner for the service of this day. He
must lay aside the bright-coloured " garments
for glory and beauty " which he wore on all
other occasions, and put on, instead, a vesture
of pure, unadorned white, like that of the ordi-
nary priest; excepting only t'lat for him, on this
day, unlike them, the girdle also must be white.
By this substitution of these garments for his
ordinary brilliant robes was signified, not merely
the absolute purity which the white linen sym-
bolised, but especially also, by the absence of
adornment, humiliation for sin. On this day
he was thus made in outward appearance essen-
tially like unto the other members of his house,
for whose sin. together with his own, he was to
make atonement.
Thus washed and robed, wearing on his white
turban the golden crown inscribed " lioliness
to Jehovah" (Exod. xxviii. 38). he now took
(vv. 3. 5-7). as a sin-offering for himself and for
his house, a bullock; and for the congregation,
" two he-goats for a sin offering; " with a ram
for himself, and one for them, for a burnt-offer-
ing. The two goats were set " before the Lord
at the door of the tent of meeting." The bul-
lock was the offering before prescribed for the
sin-offering for the high priest (iv. 3). as being
the most valuable of all sacrificial victims. For
the choice of the goats many reasons have been
eiven, none of which seem wholly satisfactory.
Both of the goats are equally declared (ver. 5j
to be " for a sin offering;" yet only one was to
be slain.
The ceremonial wlTich followed is unique; it
is without its like either in Mosaism or in heath-
enism. It was ordered (ver. 8): "Aaron shall
cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the
Lord, and the other lot for Azazel;" an expres-
sion to which we shall shortly return. Only the
goat on whom the lot fell for the Lord was to be
slain.
The two goats remain standing before the
Lord; while now Aaron kills the sin-offering
for himself and for his house (ver. 11); then
enters, first, the Holy of Holies within the veil,
having taken (ver. 12) a censer " full of coals of
fire from off the altar before the Lord," with his
hands full of incense (ver. 13), " that the cloud
of the incense may cover the mercy-seat that is
upon the testimony (i. e., the two tables of the
law within the ark), that he die not." Then
(ver. 13) he sprinkles the blood " upon the
mercy-seat on the east " — by which was signi-
fied the application of the blood God-ward, ac-
companied with the fragrance of intercession,
for the expiation of his own sins and those of his
house; and then " seven times, before the mercy-
seat," — evidently, on the floor of the sanctuary,
for the symbolic cleansing of the holiest place,
defiled by all the uncleannesses of the children
of Israel, in the midst of whom it stood. Then,
returning, he kills the goat of the sin-offering
'■ for Jehovah," and repeats the same ceremony,
now in behalf of the whole congregation, sprin-
kling, as before, the mercy-seat, and, seven times,
the Holy of Holies, thus making atonement for
it, " because of the uncleannesses of the children
of Israel, and because of their transgressions,
even all their sins " (ver. 16). In like manner,
he was then to cleanse, by a seven-fold sprin-
kling, the Holy place; and then again going int<)
the outer court, also the altar of burnt-offering;
this last, doubtless, as in other cases, by apply-
ing the blood to the horns of the altar.
In all this it will be observed that the differ-
ence from the ordinary sin-offerings and the
wider reach of its symbolical virtue is found, not
in that the offering is different from or larger
than others, but in that, symbolically speaking,
the blood is brought, as in no other offering,
into the most immediate presence of God; even
into the secret darkness of the Holy of Holies,
where no child of Israel might tread. For this
reason did this sin-offering become, above all
others, the most perfect type of the one offering
of Him, the God-Man. who reconciled us to God
by doing that in reality which was here done in
symbol, even entering with atoning blood into
the very presence of God, there to appear in our
behalf.
Azazel.
Leviticus xvi. 20-28.
" And when he hath made an end of atoning for the holv
place, and the tent of meeting, and the altar, he shall pre-
sent the live goat : and Aaron shall lay both his hands
upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all
the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their trans-
gressions, even all their sins ; and he shall put them upon
the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand
of a man that is in readiness into the wilderness : and the
goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a soli-
tary land : and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.
And Aaron shall come into the tent of meeting, and shall
put off the linen garments, which he put on when he went
into the holy place, and shall leave them there: and he
shall bathe his flesh in water in a holy nlace. and put on
hi'i earments, and come forth, and offer his burnt oPTerin.g
; ■nd the burnt offering of the people, and make atone-
ment for himself and for the neople And the fa*^ of
the sin offering shall lie buni upon tiie altar. And lit
304
THE liOOK OF LEVITICUS.
that letteth go the goat for Azazel shall wash his
clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward
he shall come into the camp. And the bullock of the
sin offering, and the goat of the sin offering, whose
blood was brought in to make atonement in tne noly place,
shall be carried forth without the camp ; and they shall
burn in the fire their skins, and their flesh, and their dung.
And he that burneth them shall wash his clothes, and
bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into
the camp."
And now followed the second stage of the
ceremonial, a rite of the most singular and im-
pressive character. The live goat, during the
former part of the ceremony, had been left stand-
ing before Jehovah, where he had been placed
after the casting of the lot (ver. lo.) The ren-
dering of King James' version, that the goat was
so placed, " to make an atonement with him,"
assumes a meaning to the Hebrew preposition
here which it never has. Usage demands either
that which is given in the text or the margin of
the Revised Version, to make atonement " for
him " or " over him." But to the former the
objection seems insuperable that there is nothing
in the whole rite suggesting an atonement as
made for this living goat; while, on the other
hand, if the rendering " over " be adopted from
the margin, it may not unnaturally be under-
stood of the performance over this goat of that
part of the atonement ceremonial described as
follows: —
Vv. 20-22: " When he hath made an end of
atoning for the holy place, and the tent of meet-
ing, and the altar, he shall present the live go t
. . . and confess over him all the iniquities of
the children of Israel, and all their transgress-
ions, even all their sins; and he shall put them
upon the head of the goat, and shall send him
away by the hand of a man that is in readiness
into the wilderness: and the goat shall bear upon
him all their iniquities unto a solitary land: and
he shall let go the goat in the wilderness." And
with this ceremony the atonement was com-
pleted. Aaron now laid aside the robes which he
had put on for this service, bathed again, and put
on again his richly coloured garments of office,
came forth and offered the burnt-offering for
himself and for the people, and burnt the fat of
the sin-oflfering as usual on the altar (vv. 23-25),
while its flesh was burned, according to the law
for such sacrifices, without the camp (ver. 27).
What was the precise significance of this part
of the service, is one of the most difficult ques-
tions which arises in the exposition of this book;
the answer to which chiefly turns upon the mean-
ing which is attached to the expression, " for
Azazel" (O.V., "for a scapegoat"). What is
, the meaning of " Azazel " ?
There are three fundamental facts which stand
before us in this chapter, which must find their
place in any explanation which may be adopted.
I. Both of the eroats are declared to be " a sin-
ofTering;" the live goat, no less than the other.
«. In consistency with this, the live goat, no less
than the other, was consecrated to Jehovah, in
that he was " set alive before the Lord." ^. The
function expressly ascribed to him in the law
is the complete removal of the transgressions of
Israel, symbolically transferred to him as a bur-
den, by the laying on of hands with confession
of sin. Passing by, then, several interpretations,
which seem intrinsically irreconcilable with one
or otherof these facts, or are, for other reasons,
to be rejected, the case seems to be practically
narrowed down to this alternative. Either
Azazel is to be regarded as the name of an evil
spirit, conceived of as dwelling in the wilderness,
or else it is to be taken as an abstract noun, as in
the margin (R.V.), signifying " removal," " dis-
missal." That the word may have this meaning
is very commonly aamitteu even by those wlio
deny that meaning here; and if, with Bahr* and
others, we adopt it in this passage, all that fol-
lows is quite clear. The goat " for removal "
bears away all the iniquities of Israel, which are
symbolically laid upon him, into a solitary land;
that is, they are taken wholly away from the
presence of God and from the camp of His peo-
ple. Thus, as the killing and sprinkling of the
blood of the first goat visibly set forth the means
of reconciliation with God, through the sub-
stituted offering of an innocent victim, so the
sending away of the second goat, laden with
those sins, the expiation of which had been signi-
fied by the sacrifice of the first, no less vividly
set forth the eifect of that sacrifice, in the com-
plete rerroval of those expiated- sins from the
holy presence of Jehovah. That this effect of
atonement should have been adequately repre-
sented by the first slain victim was impossible;
hence the necessity for the second goat, ideally
identified with the other, as jointly constituting
with it one sin-offering, whose special use it
should be to represent the blessed effect of atone-
ment. The truth symbolised, as the goat thus
bore away the sins of Israel, is expressed in those
glad words (Psalm ciii. 12), " As far as the east
is from the west, so far hath He removed our
transgressions from us;" or, under another im-
age, by Micah (vii. 19), " Thou wilt cast all their
sins into the depth of the sea."
So far all seems quite clear, and this explana-
tion, no doubt, will always be accepted by many.
And yet there remains" one serious objection
to this interpretation; namely, that the mean-
ing we thus give this word " Azazel " is not what
we would expect from the phrase which is used,
regarding the casting of the lots (ver. 8): " One
lot for the Lord, and the other lot for Azazel."
These words do most naturally suggest that Az-
azel is the name of a person, who is here con-
trasted with Jehovah; and hence it is believed
by a large number of the best expositors that the
term must be taken here as the name of an evU
spirit, represented as dwelling in the wilderness,
to whom this goat, thus laden with Israel's sins,
is sent. In addition to this phraseology, it is
urged, in support of this interpretation, that even
the Scripture lends apparent sanction to the
Jewish belief that demons are, in some special
sense, the inhabitants of waste and desolate
places; and, in particular, that Jewish demon-
ology does in fact recognise a demon named
Azazel, also called Sammael. It is admitted, in-
deed, that the name Azazel does not occur in the
Scripture as the name of Satan or of any evil
spirit; and, moreover, that there is no evidence
that the Jewish belief concerning the existence of
a demon called Azazel dates nearly so far back
as Mosaic days; and, again, that even the rabbis
themselves are not agreed on this interpreta-
tion here, many of them rejecting it, even on
traditional grounds. Still the interpretation has
secured the support of the majority of the best
modern expositors, and must claim respectful
consideration.
But if Azazel indeed denotes an evil spirit to
whom the second goat of the sin-oflfering is thus
sent, laden with the iniquities of Israel, the ques-
* " Symbolik des Mosaischen Cultus," 2 Band., p. 668.
Leviticus xvi. 1-34.]
GREAT DAY OF ATONEMENT.
305
tion then arises: How then, on this supposition,
is the ceremony to be interpreted?
The notion of some, that we have in this rite
a relic of the ancient demon-worship, is utterly
inadmissible. For this goat is expressly said
(ver. 5) to have been, equally with the goat that
was slain, " a sin-offering," and (vv. 10, 20) it is
placed " before the Lord," as an offering to
Him; nor is there a hint, here or elsewhere, that
this goat was sacrificed in the wilderness to this
Azazel; while, moreover, in this very priest-code
(xvii. 7-9, R.V.) this special form of idolatry is
forbidden, under the heaviest penalty.
That the goat sent to Azazel personified, by
way of warning and in a typical manner, Israel,
as rejecting the great Sin-olYering, and thus
laden with iniquity, and therefore delivered over
to Satan, is an idea equally untenable. For the
goat, as we have seen, is regarded as ideally one
with the goat which is slain; they jointly consti-
tute one sin-ofTering. If, therefore, the slain
goat represented in type Christ as the Lamb of
God, our Sin-oflfering, so also must this goat
represent Him as our Sin-oflfering. Further, the
ceremonial which is performed over him is ex-
plicitly termed an "atonement;" that is, it was
an essential part of a ritual designed to sym-
bolise, not the condemnation of Israel for sin, but
their complete deliverance from the guilt of their
sins.
Not to speak of other explanations, more or
less untenable, which have each found their ad-
vocates, the only one which, upon this under-
standing of the meaning of Azazel, the context
and the analogy of the Scripture will both admit,
appears to be the following. Holy Scripture
teaches that Satan has power over man, only
because of man's sin. Because of his sin, man
is judicially left by God in Satan's power (i
John v. 19, R.V.). When as " the prince of this
world " he came to the sinless Man, Jesus Christ,
he had nothing in Him, because He was the
Holy One of God; while, on the other hand, he
is represented (Heb. ii. 14) as having over men
under sin " the authority of death." In full ac-
cord with this conception, he is represented, both
in the Old and the New Testament, as the accuser
of God's people. He is said to have accused Job
before God (Job i. 9-1 1; ii. 4, 5). Wiien Zecha-
riah (iii. i) saw Joshua the high-priest standing
before the angel of Jehovah, he saw Satan also
standing at his right hand to be his " adversary."
So, again, in the Apocalypse (xii. 10) he is called
" the Accuser of our brethren, which accuseth
them before our God day and night," and who is
only overcome by means of " the blood of the
Lamb."
To this Evil One, then, the Accuser and Ad-
versary of God's people in all ages — if we assume
the interpretation before us — the live goat was
symbolically sent, bearing on him the sins of
Israel. But does he bear their sins as forgiven,
or as unforgiven? Surely, as forgiven; for the
sins which he symbt)lically carries are those very
sins of the bygone year for which expiating
blood had just been offered and accepted in the
Holy of Holies. Moreover, he is sent as being
ideally one with the goat that was slain. As sent
to Azazel, he therefore symbolically announces
to the Evil One that with the expiation of sin
by sacrificial blood the foundation of his power
over forgiven Israel is gone. His accusations are
now no longer in place: for the whole question
of Israel's sin has been met and settled in the
atoning blood. Thus, as the acceptance of the
blood of the one goat offered in the Holiest
symbolised the complete propitiation of the of-
fended holiness of God and His pardon of Is-
rael's sin, so the sending of the goat to Azazel
symbolised the effect of this expiation, in ^ the
complete removal of all the penal effects of sin,
through deliverance by atonement from the
power of the Adversary as the executioner of
God's wrath. '
Which of these two interpretations shall be ac-
cepted must be left to the reader: that neither is
without difficulty, those who have most studied
this very obscure question will most readily ad-
mit; that either is at least consistent with the
context and with other teachings of Scripture,
should be sufificiently evident. In either case, the
symbolic intention of the first part of the ritual,
with the first goat, was to symbolise the means
of reconciliation with God; namely, through the
ofifering unto God of the life of an innocent vic-
tim, substituted in the sinner's place: in either
case alike, the purpose of the second part of the
ceremonial, with the second goat, was to sym-
bolise the blessed effect of this expiation; either,
if the reading of the margin be taken, in the com-
plete removal of the expiated sin from the pres-
ence of the Holy God, or, if Azazel be taken as
a proper name, in the complete deliverance of
the sinner, through expiatory blood presented in
the Holiest, from the power of Satan. If in the
former case, we think of the words already cited,
" As far as the east is from the west, so far hath
He removed our transgressions from us;" in the
latter the words from the Apocalypse (xii. 10,
11) come to mind, " The Accuser of our brethren
is cast down, which accuseth them before our
God day and night. And they overcame him be-
cause of the blood of the Lamb."
On other particulars in the ceremonial of the
day we need not dwell, as they have received
their exposition in earlier chapters of the law
of the offerings. Of the burnt-offerings, indeed,
which followed the dismissal of the living goat
of the sin-offering, little is said; it is, emphati-
cally, the sin-offering, upon which, above all
else, it was designed to centre the attention of
Israel on this occasion.
And so, with an injunction to the perpetual
observance of this day, this remarkable chapter
closes. In it the sacrificial law of Moses attains
its supreme expression; the holiness and the
grace alike of Israel's God, their fullest revela-
tion. For the like of the great day of atonement,
we look in vain in any other people. If every
sacrifice pointed to Christ, this most luminously
of all. What the fifty-third of Isaiah is to his
Messianic prophecies, that, we may truly say, is
the sixteenth of Leviticus to the whole system
of Mosaic types, — the most consummate flower
of the Messianic symbolism. All the sin-offer-
ings pointed to Christ, the great High Priest and
Victim of the future; but this, as we shall now
see, with a distinctness found in no other.
As the unique sin-offering of this day could
only be offered by the one high-priest, so was it
intimated that the High Priest of the future, who
should indeed make an end of sin, should be one
and only. As once only in the whole year, a
complete cycle of time, this great atonement was
offered, so did it point toward a sacrifice which
should indeed be "once for all" (Heb. ix. 26;
X. 10) : not only for the lesser aeon of the year,
but for the aeon of aeons which is the lifetime of
3o6
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
humanity. In that the high-priest, who was on
all other occasions conspicuous among his sons
by his bright garments maae for glory and for
beauty, on this occasion iaici them asiuc, and as-
sumed the same garb as his sons for whom he
was to make atonement; herein was shadowed
forth the truth that it behoved the great High
Priest of the future to be " in all things made
like unto His brethren " (Heb. ii. 17). When,
having offered the sin-offering, Aaron disap-
peared from the sight of Israel within the veil,
where in the presence of the unseen glory he
offered the incense and sprinkled the blood, it
was presigniried how " Christ having come a
High Priest of the good things to come, through
the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not
made with hands, . . . nor yet through the
blood of goats and calves, but through His own
blood, entered in once for all into the holy
place," even " into heaven itself, now to appear
before the face of God for us" (Heb. ix. ii, 12,
24). And, in like manner in that when the sin-
offering had been offered, the blood sprinkled,
and his work within the veil was ended, arrayed
again in his glorious garments, he reappeared to
bless the waiting congregation; it was again
foreshown how yet that must be fulfilled which
is written, that this same Christ, " having been
once offered to bear the sins of many, shall ap-
pear a second time, apart from sin, to them that
wait for Him, unto salvation " (Heb. ix. 28).
To all this yet more might be added of dis-
pensational truth typified by the ceremonial of
this day, which we defer to the exposition of
chap. XXV., where its consideration more prop-
erly belongs. But even were this all, what a
marvellous revelation here of the Lord Jesus
Christ! The fact of these correspondences be-
tween the Levitical ritual and the New Testa-
ment facts, let it be observed, is wholly inde-
pendent of the questions as to the date and ori-
gin of this law; and every theory on this sub-
ject must find a place for these correspondences
and account for them. But how can any one be-
lieve that all these are merely accidental coin-
cidences of a post-exilian forgery with the facts
of the incarnation, and the high-priestly work of
Christ in death and resurrection as set forth in
the Gospels? How can they all be adequately
accounted for except by assuming that to be true
which is expressly taught in the New Testament
concerning this very ritual: that in it the Holy
Ghost presignified things that were to come;
that, therefore, the ordinance must have been,
not of man, but of God; not a mere product of
the human mind, acting under the laws of a reli-
gious evolution, but a revelation from Him
unto whom " known are all His works from the
foundation of the world " ?
Nor must we fail to take in the blessed truth so
vividly symbolised in the second part of the cere-
monial. When the blood of the sin-offering had
l)een sprinkled in the Holiest, the sins of Israel
were then, by the other goat of the sin-offering,
borne far away. Israel stood there still a sinful
people; but their sin, now expiated by the blood,
was before God as if it were not. So does the
Holy Victim in the Antitype, who first by His
death expiated sin, then as the Living One bear
away all the believer's sins from the presence of
the Holy One into a land of forgetfulness. And
so it is that, as regards acceptance with God, the
believing sinner, though still a sinner, stands as
if he were sinless; all through the great Sin-
offering. To see this, to believe in it, and rest
in it, is life eternal; it is joy, and peace, and rest!
It is the Gospel!
PART II.
THE LAW OF THE DAILY LIFE.
Leviticus xi.-xv., xvii.-xxv.
Section i. The Law Concerning the Clean and the Un-
clean : xi.-xv.
Section 2. The Law of Holiness : xvii-xxii.
Section 3. The Law Concerning Sacred Times (with
Episode, xxiv.) : xxiii.-xxv.
CHAPTER XIV.
CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS, AND
DEFILEMENT BY DEAD BODIES.
Leviticus xi. 1-47.
With chap xi. begins a new section of this
book, extending to the end of chap, xv., of
which the subject is the law concerning various
bodily defilements, and the rites appointed for
their removal.
The law is given under four heads, as follows:
I. Clean and Unclean Animals, and Defilement
by Dead Bodies: chap. xi.
II. The Uncleanness of Child-birth: chap. xii.
III. The Uncleanness of Leprosy: chaps, xiii.,
xiv.
IV. The Uncleanness of Issues: chap. xv.
From the modern point of view this whole
subject appears to many, with no little reason,
to be encompassed with peculiar difficulties. We
have become accustomed to think of religion as
a thing so exclusively of the spirit, and so com-
pletely independent of bodily conditions, pro-
vided that these be not in their essential nature
sinful, that it is a great stumbling-block to many
that God should be represented as having given
to Israel an elaborate code of laws concerning
such subjects as are treated in these five chap-
ters of Leviticus: a legislation which, to not a
few, seems puerile and unspiritual, if not worse.
And yet, for the reverent believer in Christ, who
remembers that our blessed Lord did repeatedly
refer to this book of Leviticus as, without any
exception or qualification, the Word of His
Father, it should not be hard, in view of this
fact, to infer that the difficulties which most of us
have felt are presumably due to our very imper-
fect knowledge of the subject. Remembering
this, we shall be able to approach this part of the
law of Moses, and. in particular, this chapter,
with the spirit, not of critics, but of learners,
who know as yet but little of the mysteries of
God's dealings with Israel Var with the human
race.
Chap. xi. may be divided into two sections,
together with a concluding appeal and summary
(vv. 41-47). The first section treats of the law
of the clean and the unclean in relation to eating
(vv. 1-23). Under this head, the animals which
are permitted or forbidden are classified, after a
fashion not scientific, but purely empirical and
practical, into (i) the beasts which are upon the
earth (vv. 2-8) ; (2) things that are in the waters
Leviticus xi. 1-47.]
CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS.
307
(vv. 9-12); (3) flying things, — comprising, first,
birds and flying animals like the bat (vv. 13-19);
and, secondly, insects, " winged creeping things
that go upon all four" (vv. 20-23).
The second section treats of defilement by con-
tact with the dead bodies of these, whether un-
clean (vv. 24-38), or clean (vv. 39, 40).
Of the living things among the beasts that are
Tipon the ea^'th (vv. 2-8), those are permitted for
food which both chew the cud and divide the
hoof; every animal in which either of these
marks is wanting is forbidden. Of the things
which live in the waters, those only are allowed
for food which have both fins and scales; those
which lack either of these marks, such as, for
example, eels, oysters, and all the mollusca and
Crustacea, are forbidden (vv. 9-12). Of flying
things (vv. 13-19) which may be eaten, no special
mark is given; though it is to be noted that
nearly all of those which are by name forbidden
are birds of prey, or birds reputed to be unclean
in their habits. All insects, " winged creeping
things that go upon all four " (ver. 20), or
" whatsoever hath many feet," or " goeth upon
the belly," as worms, snakes, etc., are prohibited
(ver. 42). Of insects, a single class, described as
those " which have legs above their feet, to leap
withal upon the earth," is excepted (vv. 21, 22):
these are known to us as the order Saltatoria, in-
cluding, as typical examples, the cricket, the
grasshopper, and the migratory locust; all of
which, it may be noted, are clean feeders, living
upon vegetable products only. It is worthy of
notice that the law of the clean and the unclean
in food is not extended, as it was in Egypt, to
the vegetable kingdom.
The second section of the chapter (vv. 24-40)
comprises a number of laws relating chiefly to
defilement by contact with the dead bodies of
animals. In these regulations, it is to be ob-
served that the dead body, even of a clean ani-
mal, except when killed in accordance with the
law, so that its blood is all drained out (xvii.
10-16), is regarded as defiling him who touches
it; while, on the other hand, even an unclean
animal is not held capable of imparting defile-
ment by mere contact, so long as it is living.
Very minute charges are given (vv. 29-38) con-
cerning eight species of unclean animals, of
which six (vv. 29, 30, R. V.) appear to be differ-
ent varieties of the lizard family. Regarding
these, it is ordered that not only shall the person
be held unclean who touches the dead body of
one of them (ver. 31), but also anything becomes
unclean on which such a dead body may fall,
whether household utensil, or food, or drink
(vv. 32-35). The exception only is made (vv.
36-38), that fountains, or wells of water, or dry
seed for sowing, shall not be held to be by such
defiled.
That which has been made unclean must be
put into water, and be unclean until the even
(ver. 32) ; with the exception that nothing which
is made of earthenware, whether a vessel, or an
oven, or a range, could be thus cleansed; for the
obvious reason that the water could not ade-
quately reach the interior of its porous material.
It must therefore be broken in pieces (vv. 33,34)-
If a person be defiled by any of these, he re-
mained unclean until the even (ver. 31). No
washing is prescribed, but, from analogy, is
probably to be taken for granted.
Such is a brief summary of the law of the
•clean and the unclean as contained in this chap-
ter. To preclude adding needless difficulty to a
difficult subject, the remark made above should
be specially noted, — that so far as general marks
are given by which the clean is to be distin-
guished from the unclean, these marks are evi-
dently selected simply from a practical point of
view, as of easy recognition by the common
people, for whom a more exact and scientific
mode of distinction would have been useless.
We are not therefore for a moment to think of
cleanness or uncleanness as causally determined,
for instance, by the presence or absence of fins
or scales, or by the habit of chewing the cud,
and the dividing of the hoof, or the absence of
these marks, as if they were themselves the
ground of the cleanness or uncleanness, in any
instance. For such a fancy as this, which has
diverted some interpreters from the right line of
investigation of the subject, there is no warrant
whatever in the words of the law, either here or
elsewhere.
Than this law concerning things clean and un-
clean nothing will seem to many, at first, more
alien to modern thought, or more inconsistent
with any intelligent view of the world and of
man's relation to the things by which he is sur-
rounded. And, especially, that the strict observ-
ance of this law should be connected with re-
ligion, and that, upon what professes to be the
authority of God, it should be urged on Israel on
the ground of their call to be a holy people to a
holy God, — this, to the great majority of Bible
readers, certainly appears, to say the least, most
extraordinary and unaccountable. And yet the
law is here, and its observance is enforced by
this very consideration: for we read (vv. 43, 44):
" Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with
any creeping thing that creepeth, neither shall ye
make yourselves unclean with them, that ye
should be defiled thereby. For I am the Lord
your God: sanctify yourselves therefore, and be
ye holy; for I am holy." And, in any case, ex-
plain the matter as we may, many will ask. How,
since the New Testament formally declares this
law concerning clean and unclean beasts to be
no longer binding (Col. ii. 16, 20-23), is it pos-
sible to imagine that there should now remain
anything in this most perplexing law which
should be of spiritual profit still to a New Testa-
ment believer? To the consideration of these
questions, which so naturally arise, we now ad-
dress ourselves.
First of all, in approaching this subject it is
well to recall to mind the undeniable fact, that a
distinction in foods as clean and unclean, that is,
fit and unfit for man's use, has a very deep and
apparently irremovable foundation in man's
nature. Even we ourselves, who stumble at this
law, recognise a distinction of this kind, and
regulate our diet accordingly; and also, in like
manner, feel, more or less, an instinctive repug-
nance to dead bodies. As regards diet, it is true
that when the secondary question arises as to
what particular animals shall be reckoned clean
or unclean, fit or unfit for food, nations and
tribes differ among themselves, as also from the
law of Moses, in a greater or less degree; never-
theless, this does not alter the fact that such a
distinction is recognised among all nations of
culture; and that, on the other hand, in those
who recognise it not, and who eat, as some do,
without discrimination, whatever chances to
come to hand, — insects, reptiles, carrion, and so
on, — this revolting indifference in the matter of
3o8
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
food is always associated with gross intellectual
and moral degradation. Certainly these indis-
putable facts should suffice to dispose of the
charge of puerility, as sometimes made against
the laws of this chapter.
And not only this, but more is true. For while
even among nations of the highest culture and
Christian enlightenment many animals are eaten,
as, e. g., the oyster, the turtle, the flesh of the
horse and the hog, which the law of Moses pro-
hibits; on the other hand, it remains true that,
with the sole exception of creatures of the locust
tribe, the animals which are allowed for food by
the Mosaic code are reckoned suitable for food
by almost the entire human family. A notable
exception to the fact is indeed furnished in the
case of the Hindoos, and also the Buddhists
(who follow an Indian religion), who, as a rule,
reject all animal food, and especially, in the case
of the former, the flesh of the cow, as not to be
eaten. But this exception is quite explicable by
considerations into which we cannot here enter
at length, but which do not affect the significance
of the general fact.
And, again, on the other hand, it may also be
said that, as a general rule, the appetite of the
great majority of enlightened and cultivated
nations revolts against using as food the greater
part of the animals which this code prohibits.
Birds of prey, for instance, and the carnivora
generally, animals having paws, and reptiles, for
the most part, by a kind of universal instinct
among cultivated peoples, are judged unfit for
human food.
The bearing of these facts upon our exposition
is plain. They certainly suggest, at least, that
this law of Lev. xi. may, after all, very possibly
have a deep foundation both in the nature of
man and that of the things permitted or forbid-
den; and they also raise the question as to how
far exceptions and divergencies from this law,
among peoples of culture, may possibly be due
to a diversity in external physical and climatic
conditions, because of which that which may be
wholesome and suitable food in one place — the
wilderness of Sinai, or Palestine, for instance —
may not be wholesome and suitable in other
lands, under different physical conditions. We
do not yet enter into this question, but barely call
attention to it, as adapted to check the hasty
judgment of many, that such a law as this is
necessarily puerile and unworthy of God.
But while it is of no small consequence to note
this agreement in the fundamental ideas of this
law with widely extended instincts and habits of
mankind, on the other hand, it is also of impor-
tance to emphasise the contrast which it exhibits
with similar codes of law among other peoples.
For while, as has just been remarked, there are
many most suggestive points of agreement be-
tween the Mosaic distinctions of clean and un-
clean and those of other nations, on the other
hand, remarkable contrasts appear, even in the
case of those people with whom, like the Egyp-
tians, the Hebrews had been most intimately
associated. In the Egyptian system of dietary
law, for instance, the distinction of clean and un-
clean in food was made to apply, not only in the
animal, but also in the vegetable world; and,
again, while all fishes having fins and scales are
permitted as food in the Mosaic law, no fishes
whatever are permitted by the Egyptian code.
But more significant than such difference in de-
tails is the difference in the religious conception
upon which such distinctions are based. In
Egypt, for example, animals were reckoned clean
or unclean according as they were supposed to
have more predominant the character of the
good Osiris or of the evil Typhon. Among the
ancient Persians, those were reckoned clean
which were supposed to be the creation of Or-
mazd, the good Spirit, and those unclean whose
origin was attributed to Ahriman, the evil Spirit.
In India, the prohibition of flesh as food rests
on pantheistic assumptions. Not to multiply
examples, it is easy to see that, without antici-
pating anything here with regard to the principle
which determined the Hebrew distinctions, it is
certain that of such dualistic or pantheistic prin-
ciples as are manifested in these and other in-
stances which might be named, there is not a
trace in the Mosaic law. How significant and
profoundly instructive is the contrast here, will
only fully appear when we see what in fact ap-
pears to have been the determining principle in
the Mosaic legislation.
But when we now seek to ascertain upon what
principle certain animals were permitted and
others forbidden as food, it must be confessed
that we have before us a very difficult question,
and one to which, accordingly, very diverse an-
swers have been given. In general, indeed, we
are expressly told that the object of this legisla-
tion, as of all else in this book of laws, was moral
and spiritual. Thus, we are told in so many
words (vv. 43-45) that Israel was to abstain from
eating or touching the unclean, on the ground
that they were to be holy, because the Lord their
God was holy. But to most this only increases
the difficulty. What possible connection could
there be between eating, or abstinence from eat-
ing, animals which do not chew the cud, or fishes
which have not scales, and holiness of life?
In answer to this question, some have sup-
posed a mystical connection between the soul
and the body, such that the former is defiled by
the food which is received and assimilated by
the latter. In support of this theory, appeal has
been made to ver. 44 of this chapter, which, in
the Septuagint translation, is rendered literally:
" Ye shall not defile your souls." But, as often
in Hebrew, the original expression here is simply
equivalent to our compound pronoun " your-
selves," and is therefore so translated both in the
Authorised and the Revised Versions. As for
any other proof of such a mystical evil influence
of the various kinds of food prohibited in this
chapter, there is simply none at all.
Others, again, have sought the explication of
these facts in the undoubted Divine purpose of
keeping Israel separate from other nations; to
secure which separation this special dietetic code,
with other laws regarding the clean and the un-
clean, was given them. That these laws have
practically helped to keep the children of Israel
separate from other nations, will not be denied;
and we may therefore readily admit, that inas-
much as the food of the Hebrews has differed
from that of the nations among whom they
have dwelt, this separation of the nation may
therefore have been included in the purpose of
God in these regulations. However, it is to be
observed that in the law itself the separation of
Israel from other nations is represented, not as
the end to be attained by the observance of these
food laws, but instead, as a fact already existing,
which is given as a reason why they should keep
these laws (xx. 24, 2$). Moreover, it will be
Leviticus xi. 1-47.]
CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS.
309
found impossible, by reference to this principle
alone, to account for the details of the laws be-
fore us. For the question is not merely why
there should have been food laws, but also why
these laws should have been such as they are?
The latter question is not adequately explained
by reference to God's purpose of keeping Israel
separate from the nations.
Some, again, have held that the explanation of
these laws was to be found simply in the design
of God, by these restrictions, to give Israel a
profitable moral discipline in self-restraint and
control of the bodily appetites; or to impose, in
this way, certain conditions and limitations upon
their approach to Him, which should have the
effect of deepening in them the sense of awe and
reverence for the Divine majesty of God, as their
King. Of this theory it may be said, as of the
last-named, that there can be no doubt that in
fact these laws did tend to secure these ends; but
that yet, on the other hand, the explanation is
still inadequate, inasmuch as it only would show
why restrictions of some kind should have been
ordered, and not, in the least, why the restric-
tions should have been such, in detail, as we have
here.
Quite different from any of these attempted
explanations is that of many who have sought to
explain the law allegorically. We are told by
such that Israel was forbidden the flesh of cer-
tain animals, because they were regarded as
typifying by their character certain sins and
vices, as, on the other hand, those which were
permitted as food were regarded as typifying
certain moral virtues. Hence, it is supposed by
such that the law tended to the holiness of Israel,
in that it was. so to speak, a continual object-
lesson, a perpetually acted allegory, which should
continually remind them of the duty of abstain-
ing from the typified sins and of practising the
typified virtues. But, assuredly, this theory can-
not be carried out. Animals are in this law pro-
hibited as food whose symbolic meaning else-
where in Scripture is not always bad, but some-
times good. The lion, for example, as having
paws, is prohibited as food; and yet it is the
symbol of our blessed Lord, " the Lion of the
tribe of Judah." Nor is there the slightest evi-
dence that the Hebrews ever attached any such
allegorical significance to the various prescrip-
tions of this chapter as the theory would require.
Other expositors allegorise in a different but no
more satisfactory manner. Thus a popular, and,
it must be added, most spiritual and devout ex-
positor, sets forth the spiritual meaning of the
required conjunction of the two marks in clean
animals of the chewing of the cud and the divid-
ing of the hoof in this wise: "The two things
were inseparable in the case of every clean ani-
mal. And as to the spiritual application, it is
of the very last importance in a practical point
of view. . . A man may profess to love and feed
upon, to study and ruminate over, the Word of
God — the pasture of the soul; but if his footprints
along the pathway of life are not such as the
Word requires, he is not clean."
But it should be evident that such allegorising
interpretation as this can carry with it no au-
thority, and sets the door wide open to the most
extravagant fancy in the exposition of Scripture.
Others, again, find the only principle which
has determined the laws concerning defilement
by the dead, and the clean and unclean meats, to
be the presence in that which was reckoned un-
clean, of someftiing which is naturally repulsive
to men; whether in odour, or in the food of a
creature, or its other habits of life. But while
it is true that such marks distinguish many of the
creatures reckoned unclean, they are wanting in
others, and are also found in a few animals which
are nevertheless permitted. If this had been the
determining principle, surely, for example, the
law which permitted for food the he-goat and
forbade the horse, would have been exactly the
opposite; while, as regards fishes and insects per-
mitted and forbidden, it is hard to see any evi-
dence whatever of the influence of this principle.
Much more plausible, at first sight, and in-
deed much more nearly approaching the truth,
than any of the theories above criticised, is one
which has been elaborated with no little learning
and ingenuity by Sommer,* according to which
the laws concerning the clean and the unclean,
whether in regard to food or anything else, are
all grounded in the antithesis of death and life.
Death, everywhere in Holy Scripture, is set in
the closest ethical and symbolical connection
with sin. Bodily death is the wages of sin; and
inasmuch as it is the outward physical expression
and result of the inner fact that sin, in its very
nature, is spiritual death, therefore the dead is
always held to be unclean; and the various laws
enforcing this thought are all intended to keep
before the mind the fact that death is the visible
representation and evidence of the presence of
sin, and the consequent curse of God. Hence,
also, it will follow that the selection of foods
must be governed by a reference to this principle.
The carnivora, on this principle, must be for-
bidden,— as they are, — because they live by tak-
ing the life of other animals; hence, also, is ex-
plained the exclusion of the multitudinous varie-
ties of the insect world, as feeding on that which
is dead and corrupt. On the other hand, the
animals which chew the cud and divide the hoof
are counted clean; inasmuch as the sheep and the
cattle, the chief representatives of this class, were
by every one recognised as at the furthest pos-
sible remove from any such connection with
death and corruption in their mode of life; and
hence the familiar marks which distinguish them,
as a matter merely of practical convenience, were
taken as those which must distinguish every ani-
mal lawful for food.
But while this view has been elaborated with
great ability and skill, it yet fails to account for
all the facts. It is quite overlooked that if the
reason of the prohibition of carnivorous birds
and quadrupeds is to be found in the fact that
they live by the destruction of life, the same rea-
son should have led to the prohibition of all
fishes without exception, as in Egypt; inasmuch
as those which have fins and scales, no less than
others, live by preying on other living creatures.
On the other hand, by the same principle, all
insects which derive their sustenance from the
vegetable world should have been permitted as
food, instead of one order only of these.
Where so much learning and profound thought
has been expended in vain, one might well hesi-
tate to venture anything in exposition of so diffi-
cult a subject, and rest content, as some have,
with declaring that the whole subject is utterly
inexplicable. And yet the world advances in
knowledge, and we are therefore able to ap-
proach the subject with some advantage in this
respect over earlier generations. And in the
* "Biblische AbhandlunKen," pp. 230-270.
3IO
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
light of the most recent investigations, we be-
lieve it highly probable that the chief principle
determining the laws of this chapter will be
found in the region of hygiene and sanitation, as
relating, in this instance, to diet, and to the treat-
ment of that which is dead. And this in view of
the following considerations.
It is of much significance to note, in the first
place, that a large part of the animals which are
forbidden as food are unclean feeders. It is a
well-ascertained fact that even the cleanest ani-
mal, if its food be unclean, becomes dangerous
to health if its flesh be eaten. The flesh of a
cow which has drunk water contaminated with
typhoid germs, if eaten, especially if insufificiently
cooked, may communicate typhoid fever to him
who eats it. It is true, indeed, that not all ani-
mals that are prohibited are unclean in their
food; but the fact remains that, on the other
hand, among those which are allowed is to be
found no animal whose ordinary habits of life,
especially in respect of food, are unclean.
But, in the second place, an animal which is
not linclean in its habits may yet be dangerous
for food, if it be, for any reason, specially liable
to disease. One of the greatest discoveries of
modern science is the fact that a large number
of diseases to which animals are liable are due to
the presence of low forms of parasitic life. To
such diseases those which are unclean in their
feeding will be especially exposed, while none
will perhaps be found wholly exempt.
Another discovery of recent times which has
a no less important bearing on the question
raised by this chapter is the now ascertained fact
that many of these parasitic diseases are common
to both animals and men, and may be communi-
cated from the former to the latter. All are
familiar with the fact that the small-pox, in a
modified and mild form, is a disease of cattle as
well as of men, and we avail ourselves of this
fact in the practice of vaccination. Scarcely less
familiar is the communication of the parasitic
trichinae, which often infest the flesh of swine, to
those who eat such meat. And research is con-
stantly extending the number of such diseases.
Turkeys, we are now told, have the diphtheria,
and may communicate it to men; men also some-
times take from horses the loathsome disease
known as the glanders. Now in the light of
such facts as these, it is plain that an ideal dietary
law would, as far as possible, exclude from hu-
man food all animals which, under given condi-
tions, might be especially liable to these para-
sitic diseases, and which, if their flesh should be
eaten, might thus become a frequent medium of
communicating them to men.
Now it is a most remarkable and significant
fact that the tendency of the most recent investi-
gations of this subject has been to show that the
prohibitions and permissions of the Mosaic law
concerning food, as we have them in this chapter,
become apparently explicable in view of the
above facts. Not to refer to other authorities,
among the latest competent testimonies on this
subject is that of Dr. Noel Gueneau de Mussy,
in a paper presented to the Paris Academy of
Medicine in 1885, in which he is quoted as say-
ing: " There is so close a connection between the
thinking being and the living organism in man,
so intimate a solidarity between moral and ma-
terial interests, and the useful is so constantly
and so necessarily in harmony with the good,
that these two elements cannot be separated in
hygiene. . . It is this combination which has
exercised so great an influence on the preserva-
tion of the Israelites, despite the very unfavour-
able external circumstances in which they have
been placed. . . The idea of parasitic and in-
fectious maladies, which has conquered so great
a position in modern pathology, appears to have
greatly occupied the mind of Moses, and to have
dominated all his hygienic rules. He excludes
from Hebrew dietary animals partictilary liable to
parasites; and as it is in the blood that the germs
or spores of infectious disease circulate, he
orders that they must be drained of their blood
before serving for food."
If this professional testimony, which is ac-
cepted and endorsed by Dr. Behrends, of Lon-
don, in his remarkable paper on " Diseases
caught from Butcher's Meat," * be admitted, it is
evident that we need look no further for the ex-
planation of the minute prescriptions of these
dietary laws which we find here and elsewhere in
the Pentateuch.
And, it may be added, that upon this principle
we may also easily explain, in a rational way, the
very minute prescriptions of the law with regard
to defilement by dead bodies. For immediately
upon death begins a process of corruption which
produces compounds not only obnoxious to the
senses, but actively poisonous in character; and
what is of still more consequence to observe, in
the case of all parasitic and infectious diseases,
the energy of the infection is specially intensi-
fied when the infected person or animal dies.
Hence the careful regulations as to cleansing of
those persons or things which had been thus de-
filed by the dead; either by water, where prac-
ticable; or where the thing could not be thus
thoroughly cleansed, then by burning the article
with fire, the most certain of all disinfectants.
But if this be indeed the principle which under-
lies this law of the clean and the unclean as here
given, it will then be urged that since the He-
brews have observed this law with strictness for
centuries, they ought to show the evidence of this
in a marked immunity from sickness, as com-
pared with other nations, and especially from dis-
eases of an infectious character; and a consequent
longevity superior to that of the Gentiles who
pay no attention to these laws. Now it is the
fact, and one which evidently furnishes another
powerful argument for this interpretation of these
laws, that this is exactly what we see. In this
matter we are not left to guessing; the facts are
before the world, and are undisputed. Even so
long ago as the days when the plague was deso-
lating Europe, the Jews so universally escaped
infection that, by this their exemption, the popu-
lar suspicion was excited into fury, and they were
accused of causing the fearful mortality among
their Gentile neighbours by poisoning the wells
and springs. In our own day, in the recent
cholera epidemic in Italy, a correspondent of the
Jewish Chronicle testifies that the Jews enjoyed
almost absolute immunity, at least from fatal
attack.
Professor Hosmer says: "Throughout the en-
tire history of Israel, the wisdom of the ancient
lawgivers in these respects has been remarkably
show'n. In times of pestilence the Jews have
suffered far less than others; as regards
longevity and general health, they have in every
age been noteworthy, and. at the present day, in
the life-insurance offices, the life of a Jew is said
* In T/te Ninetfenth Century, September, 1889.
l^eviticus xi. 1-47.] CLEAN AND UNCLEAN ANIMALS. 311
to be worth much more than that of men of That, as regards the body, and, in no small de-
other stock." gree, the mind as well, this involves the duty of
Of the facts in the modern world which sus- the preservation of health so far as in our
tain these statements, Dr. Behrends gives abun- power; and that this, again, is conditioned by
dant illustration in the article referred to, such the use of a proper diet, as one factor of prime
as the following: " In Prussia, the mean dura- importance, will be denied by no one. If, then,
tion of Jewish life averages five years more than sufficient reason can be shown for recognising
that of the general population. In Furth, the the determining influence of hygienic considera-
average duration of Jewish life is 27^ ^"d of tions in the laws of this chapter concerning the
Christians 26 years. In Hungary, an exhaustive clean and the unclean, this fact will only be in
study of the facts shows that the average dura- the fullest harmony with all that is said in this
tion of life with the Croats is 20.2, of the Ger- connection, and elsewhere in the law, as to the
mans 26.7, but of the Jews 46.5 years, and that relation of their observance to Israel's holiness
although the latter generally are poor, and live as a consecrated nation.
under much more unfavourable sanitary condi- It may very possibly be asked, by way of
tions than their Gentile neighbours." further objection to this interpretation of these
In the light of such well-certified facts, the laws: Upcwi this understanding of the immediate
conclusion seems certainly to be warranted, that purpose of these laws, how can we account for
at least one chief consideration which, in the Di- the selection of such test marks of the clean and
vine wisdom, determined the allowance or prohi- the unclean as the chewing of the cud, and the
bition, as the food of Israel, of the animals dividing of the hoof, or having scales and fins?
named in this chapter, has been their fitness or What can the presence or absence of these pe-
unfitness as diet from a hygienic point of view, culiarities have to do with the greater or less
especially regarding their greater or less liability freedom from parasitic disease of the animals in-
to have, and to communicate to man, infectious, eluded or excluded in the several classes? To
parasitic diseases. which question the answer may fairly be given,
From this position, if it be justified, we can that the object of the law was not to give accu-
now perceive a secondary reference in these laws rately distributed categories of animals, scien-
to the deeper ethical truth which, with much tifically arranged, according to hygienic prin-
reason, Sommer has so emphasised; namely, the ciples, but was purely practical; namely, to
moral significance of the great antithesis of death secure, so far as possible, the observance by the
to life; the former being ever contrasted in Holy whole people of such a dietary as in the land of
Scripture with the latter, as the visible manifesta- Palestine would, on the whole, best tend to
tion of the presence of sin in the world, and of secure perfect bodily health. It is not affirmed
the consequent curse of God. For whatever that every individual animal which by these tests
tends to weakness or disease, by that fact tends may be excluded from permitted food is there-
to death, — to that death which, according to the fore to be held specially liable to disease; but
Scriptures, is, for man, the penal consequence of only that the limitation of the diet by these test
sin. But Israel was called to be a people re- marks, as a practical measure, would, on the
deemed from the power of death to life, a life of whole, secure the greatest degree of immunity
full consecration to God. Hence, because re- from disease to those who kept the law.
deemed from death, it was evidently fitting that It may be objected, again, by some who have
the Israelite should, so far as possible in the looked into this question, that, according to
flesh, keep apart from death, and all that in its recent researches, it appears that cattle, which
nature tended, or might specially tend, to disease occupy the foremost place in the permitted diet
and death. of the Hebrews, are found to be especially liable
It is very strange that it should have been ob- to tubercular disease, and capable, apparently,
jected to this view, that since the law declares the under certain conditions, of communicating it to
reason for these regulations to have been re- those who feed upon their flesh. And it has
ligious, therefore any supposed reference herein been even urged that to this source is due a large
to the principles of hygiene is by that fact ex- part of the consumption which is responsible for
eluded. For surely the obligation so to live as so large part of our mortality. To which ob-
to conserve and promote the highest bodily jection two answers may be given. First, and
health must be regarded, both from a natural, most important, is the observation that we have
and a Biblical and Christian point of view, as as yet no statistics as to the prevalence of disease
being no less really a religious obligation than of this kind among cattle in Palestine and that,
truthfulness or honesty. If there appear suffi- presumably, if we may argue from the climatic
cient reason for believing that the details of these conditions of its prevalence among men, it would
laws are to be explained by reference to hygienic be found far less frequently there among cattle
■considerations, surely this, so far from contra- than in Europe and America. Further, it must
dieting the reason which is given for their be remembered that, in the case even of clean
observance, helps us rather the more clearly to cattle, the law very strictly provides elsewhere
see how, just because Israel was called to be the that the clean animal which is slain for food
holy people of a holy God. they must needs shall be absolutely free from disease; so that still
keep this law. For the central idea of the Le- we see here, no less than elsewhere, the hygienic
vitical holiness was consecration unto God, as principles ruling the dietary law.
the Creator and Redeemer of Israel, — consecra- It will be perhaps objected, again, that if all
tion in the most unreserved, fullest possible this be true, then, since abstinence from un-
sense, for the most perfect possible service. But wholesome food is a moral duty, the law con-
the obligation to such a consecration, as the cerning clean and unclean meats should be of
essence of a holy character, surely carried with universal and perpetual obligation; whereas, in
it by necessary consequence, then, as now, the fact, it is explicitly abrogated in the New Testa-
obligation to maintain all the powers of mind ment, and is not held to be now binding on any
and body also in the highest possible perfection, one. But the abrogation of the law of Moses
312
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
touching clean and unclean food can be easily
explained, in perfect accord with all that has
been said as to its nature and intent. In the first
place, it is to be remembered that it is a funda-
mental characteristic of the New Testament law
as contrasted with that of the Old, that on all
points it leaves much more to the liberty of the
individual, allowing him to act according to the
exercise of an enlightened judgment, under the
law of supreme love to the Lord, in many
matters which, in the Old Testament day, were
made a subject of specific regulation. This is
true, for instance, regarding all that relates to
the public worship of God, and also many things
in the government and administration of the
Church, not to speak of other examples. This
does not indeed mean that it is of no consequence
what a man or a Church may do in matters of
this kind; but it is intended thus to give the indi-
vidual and the whole Church a discipline of a
higher order than is possible under a system
which prescribes a large part of the details of
human action. Subjection to these " rudiments "
of the law, according to the Apostle, belongs to
a condition of religious minority (Gal. iv. 1-3),
and passes away when the individual, or the
Church, so to speak, attains majority. Precisely
so it is in the case of these dietary and other
laws, which, indeed, are selected by the Apostle
Paul (Col. ii. 20-22) in illustration of this char-
acteristic of the new dispensation. That such
matters of detail should no longer be made
matter of specific command is only what we
should expect according to the analogy of the
whole system of Christian law. This is not, in-
deed, saying that it is of no consequence in a re-
ligious point of view what a man eats; whether,
for instance, he eat carrion or not, though this,
which was forbidden in the Old Testament, is
nowhere expressly prohibited in the New. But
still, as supplying a training of higher order, the
New Testament uniformly refrains from giving
detailed commandments in matters of this kind.
But, aside from considerations of this kind,
there is a specific reason why these laws of
Moses concerning diet and defilement by dead
bodies, if hygienic in character, should not have
been made, in the New Testament, of universal
obligation, however excellent they might be.
For it is to be remembered that these laws were
delivered for a people few in number, living in
a small country, under certain definite climatic
conditions. But it is well known that what is
unwholesome for food in one part of the world
may be, and often is, necessary to the mainte-
nance of health elsewhere. A class of animals
which under the climatic conditions of Palestine
may be specially liable to certain forms of para-
sitic disease, under different climatic conditions
may be comparatively free from them. Absti-
nence from fat is commanded in the law of
Moses (iii. 17), and great moderation in this
matter is necessary to health in hot climates;
but, on the contrary, to eat fat largely is neces-
sary to life in the polar regions. From such
facts as these it would follow, of necessity, that
when the Church of God, as under the new dis-
pensation, was now to become a worldwide or-
ganisation, still to have insisted on a dietetic law
perfectly adapted only to Palestine would have
been to defeat the physical object, and by con-
sequence the moral end for which that law was
given. Under these conditions, except a special
law were to be given for each land and climate,
there was and could be, if we have before us the
true conception of the ground of these regula-
tions, no alternative but to abrogate the law.
This exposition has been much prolonged; but
not until we have before us a definite conception
as to the principle underlying these regulations,
and the relation of their observance to the holi-
ness of Israel, are we in a position to see and
appreciate the moral and spiritual lessons which
they may still have for us. As it is, if the con-
clusions to which our exposition has conducted
be accepted, such lessons lie clearly before us.
While we have here a law which, as to the letter,
is confessedly abrogated, and which is supposed
by the most to be utterly removed from any
present-day use for practical instruction, it is
now evident that, annulled as to the letter, it is
yet, as to the spirit and intention of it, in full
force and vital consequence to holiness of life
in all ages.
In the first place, this exposition being
granted, it follows, as a present-day lesson of
great moment, that the holiness which God re-
quires has to do with the body as well as the
soul, even with such commonplace matters as
our eating and drinking. This is so, because the
body is the instrument and organ of the soul,
with which it must do all its work on earth for
God, and because, as such, the body, no less than
the soul, has been redeemed unto God by the
blood of His Son. There is, therefore, no re-
ligion in neglecting the body, and ignoring the
requirements for its health, as ascetics have in
all ages imagined. Neither is there religion in
pampering, and thus abusing, the body, after the
manner of the sensual in all ages. The prin-
ciple which inspires this chapter is that which is
expressed in the New Testament by the words:
" Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatso-
ever ye do, do all to the glory of God " (i Cor.
X. 31). If, therefore, a man needlessly eats such
things, or in such a manner, as may be injurious
to health, he sins, and has com.e short of the law
of perfect holiness. It is therefore not merely a
matter of earthly prudence to observe the laws
of health in food and drink and recreation, in a
word, in all that has to do with the appetite and
desires of the body, but it is essential to holiness.
We are in all these things to seek to glorify God,
not only in our souls, but also in our bodies.
The momentous importance of this thought
will the more clearly appear when we recall to
mind that, according to the law of Moses (v. 2),
if a man was defiled by any unclean thing, and
neglected the cleansing ordered by this law, even
though it were through ignorance or forgetful-
ness, he was held to have incurred guilt before
God. For it was therein declared that when a
man defiled by contact with the dead, or any un-
clean thing, should for any reason have omitted
the cleansing ordered, his covenant relation with
God could only be re-established on his presenta-
tion of a sin-offering. By parity of reasoning it
follows that the case is the same now; and that
God will hold no man guiltless who violates any
of those laws which He has established in nature
as the conditions of bodily health. He who does
this is guilty of a sin which requires the applica-
tion of the great atonement.
How needful it is even in our day to remind
men of all this, could not be better illustrated
than by the already mentioned argument of many
expositors, that hygienic principles cannot have
dominated and determined the details of these
Leviticus xv. 1-33. J
UNCLEANNESS OF ISSUES.
3^3
laws, because the law declares that they are
grounded, not in hygiene, but in religion, and
have to do with holiness. As if these two were
exclusive, one of the other, and as if it made no
difference in respect to holiness of character
whether a man took care to have a sound body
or not!
No less needful is the lesson of this law to
many who are at the opposite extreme. For as
there are those who are so taken up with the
soul and its health, that they ignore its relation
to the body, and the bearing of bodily conditions
upon character; so there are others who are so
preoccupied with questions of bodily health,
sanitation, and hygiene, regarded merely as pru-
dential measures, from an earthly point of view,
that they forget that man has a soul as well as a
body, and that such questions of sanitation and
hygiene only find their proper place when it is
recognised that health and perfection of the
body are not to be sought merely that man may
become a more perfect animal, but in order that
thus, with a sound mind in a sound body, he
may the more perfectly serve the Lord in the life
of holiness to which we are called. Thus it ap-
pears that this forgotten law of the clean and the
unclean in food, so far from being, at the best,
puerile, and for us now certainly quite useless,
still teaches us the very important lesson that a
due regard to wholeness and health of body is
essential to the right and symmetrical develop-
ment of holiness of character. In every dispen-
sation, the law of God combines the bodily and
the spiritual in a sacred synthesis. If in the New
Testament we are directed to glorify God in our
spirits, we are no less explicitly commanded to
glorify God in our bodies (i Cor. vi. 20). And
thus is given to the laws of health the high sanc-
tion of the Divine obligation of the moral law,
as summed up in the closing words of this chap-
ter: " Be ye holy; for I am holy."
This law concerning things unclean, and clean
and unclean animals, as thus expounded, is also
an apologetic of no small value. It has a direct
and evident bearing on the question of the Di-
vine origin and authority of this part of the law.
For the question will at once come up in every
reflecting mind: Whence came this law? Could
it have been merelv an invention of crafty Jew-
ish priests? Or is it possible to account for it
as the product merely of the mind of Moses? It
appears to have been ordered with respect to
certain facts, especially regarding various in-
visible forms of noxious parasitic life, in their
bearing on the causation and propagation of dis-
ease, — facts which, even now, are but just ap-
pearing within the horizon of modern science.
Is it probable that Moses knew about these
things three thousand years ago? Certainly, the
more we study the matter, the more we must feel
that this is not to be supposed.
It is common, indeed, to explain much that
seems very wise in the law of Moses by referring
to the fact that he was a highly educated man,
" instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians."
But it is just this fact of his Egyptian education
that makes it in the last degree improbable that
he should have derived the ideas of this law from
Egypt. Could he have taken his ideas with re-
gard, for instance, to defilement by the dead,
from a system of education which ta'ie:ht the
contrary, and which, so ^ar from regarding those
who had to do w'th <-he '^end as vndean. held
them especially sacred? And so with regard to
the dietetic laws: these are not the laws of
Egypt; nor have we any evidence that those
were determined, like these Hebrew laws, by
such scientific facts as those to which we have
referred.* In this day, when, at last, men of all
schools, and those with most scientific knowl-
edge, most of all, are joining to extol the exact
wisdom of this ancient law, a wisdom which has
no parallel in like laws among other nations, is
it not in place to press this question? Whence
had this man this unique wisdom, three thousand
years in advance of his times? There are many
who will feel compelled to answer, even as Holy
Scripture answers; even as Moses, according to
the record, answers. The secret of this wisdom
will be found, not in the court of Pharaoh, but
in the holy tent of meeting; it is all explained if
we but assume that what is written in the first
verse of this chapter is true: "The Lord spake
unto Moses and unto Aaron."
CHAPTER XV.
OF THE UNCLEANNESS OF ISSUES.
Leviticus xv. 1-33.
Inasmuch as the law concerning defilement
from issues is presupposed and referred to in
that concerning the defilement of child-bearing,
in chap, xii., it will be well to consider this be-
fore the latter. For this order there is the more
reason, because, as will appear, although the two
sections are separated, in the present arrange-
ment of the book, by the law concerning defile-
ment by leprosy (xiii., xiv.), they both refer to
the same general topic, and are based upon the
same moral conceptions.
The arrangement of the law in chap. xv. is
very simple. Verses 2-18 deal with the cases of
ceremonial defilement by issues in men; vv. 19-
30, with analogous cases in women. The prin-
ciple in both classes is one and the same; the
issue, whether normal or abnormal, rendered the
person affected unclean; only, when abnormal,
the defilement was regarded as more serious
than in other cases, not only in a physical, but
also in a ceremonial and legal aspect. In all
such cases, in addition to the washing with
water which was always required, it was com-
manded that on the eighth day from the time of
the cessation of the issue, the person who had
been so affected should come before the priest
and present for his cleansing a sin-offering and a
burnt-offering.
What now is the principle which underlies
these regulations?
In seeking the answer to this question, we at
once note the suggestive fact that this law con-
cerning issues takes cognisance only of such as
are connected with the sexual organisation. All
others, however, in themselves, from a merely
physical point of view, equally unwholesome or
loathsome, are outside the purview of the Mosaic
code. They do not render the person affected,
according to the law, ceremonially unclean. It
is therefore evident that the lawgiver must have
had before him something other than merely
the physical peculiarities of these defilements,
and that, for the true meaning of this part of the
law, we must look deeper than the surface. It
* See above, p. 310.
3^4
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
should also be observed here that this character-
istic of the law just mentioned, places the law
of issues under the same general category with
the law (chap, xii.) concerning the uncleanness
of child-bearing, as indeed the latter itself inti-
mates (xii. 2). The question thus arises: Why-
are these particular cases, and such as these only,
regarded as ceremonially defiling?
To see the reason of this, we must recur to
facts which have already come before^us. When
our first parents sinned, death was denounced
against them as the penalty of their sin. Such
had been the threat: " In the day that thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt die." The death denounced
indeed affected the whole being, the spiritual as
well as the physical nature of man; but it com-
prehended the death of the body, which thus be-
came, what it still is, the most impressive mani-
festation of the presence of sin in every person
who dies. Hence, as we have seen, the law kept
this connection between sin and death steadily
before the mind, in that it constantly applied the
principle that the dead defiles. Not only so,
but, for this reason, such things as tended to
bring death were also reckoned unclean; and
thus the regulations of the law concerning clean
and unclean meats, while strictly hygienic in
character, were yet grounded in this profound
ethical fact of the connection between sin and
death; had man not sinned, nothing in the world
had been able to bring in death, and all things
had been clean. For the same reason, again,
leprosy, as exemplifying in a vivid and terrible
way disease as a progressive death, a living
manifestation of the presence of the curse of
God, and therefore of the presence of sin, a type
of all disease, was regarded as involving cere-
monial defilement and therefore as requiring
sacrificial cleansing.
But in the curse denounced upon our first
parents was yet more. It was specially taught
that the curse should affect the generative power
of the race. For we read (Gen. iii. 16) : " Unto
the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy
sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt
bring forth children." Whatever these words
may precisely mean, it is plain that they are in-
tended to teach that, because of sin, the curse of
God fell in some mysterious way upon the sexual
organisation. And although the woman only is
specifically mentioned, as being " first in the
transgression," that the curse fell also upon the
same part of man's nature is plain from the
words in Gen. v. 3, where the long mortuary
record of the antediluvians is introduced by the
profoundly significant statement that Adam be-
gan the long line, with its inheritance of death,
by begetting a son " in his own likeness, after
his image." Fallen himself under the curse of
death, physical and spiritual, he therewith lost
the capacity to beget a creature like himself in
his original state, in the image of God, and could
only be the means of bringing into the world a
creature who was an inheritor of physical weak-
ness and spiritual and bodilv death.
In the light of this ancient record, which must
have been before the mind of the Hebrew law-
giver, we can now" see why the law concerning
unclean issues should have had special relation
to that part of man's physical organisation which
has to do with the propagation of the race. Just
as death defiled, because it was a visible repre-
sentation of the presence of the curse of God,
and thus of sin, as the ground of the curse, even
so was it with all the issues specified in this law:.
They were regarded as making a man unclean,
because they were manifestations of the curse in
a part of man's nature which, according to the
Word of God, sin has specially affected. For
this reason they fell under the same law as death.. «
They separated the person thus affected from the-
congregation, and excluded him from the public
worship of a holy God, as making him " un-
clean."
It is impossible now to miss the spiritual mean-
ing of these laws concerning issues of this class.
In that these alone, out of many others, which
from a merely physical point of view are equally
offensive, were taken under the cognisance of
this law, the fact was thereby symbolically em-
phasised that the fountain of life in man is de-
filed. To be a sinner were bad enough, if it
only involved the voluntary and habitual prac-
tice of sin. But this law of issues testifies to us,
even now, that, as God sees man's case, it is far
worse than this. The evil of sin is so deeply
seated that it could lie no deeper. The curse
has in such manner fallen on our being, as that
in man and woman the powers and faculties
which concern the propagation of their kind have
fallen under the blight. All that any son of
Adam can now do is to beget a son in his own
physical and moral image, an heir of death, and
by nature unclean and unholy. Sufficiently dis-
tasteful this truth is in all ages; but in none per-
haps ever more so than our own, in which it has
become a fundamental postulate of much popu-
lar theology, and of popular politics as well, that
man is naturally not bad, but good, and, on the
whole, is doing as well as under the law of evo-
lution, and considering his environment, can
reasonably be expected. The spiritual principle
which underlies the law concerning defilement
by issues, as also that concerning the unclean-
ness of child-bearing, assumes the exact opposite.
It is indeed true that similar causes of cere-
monial uncleanness have been recognised in an-
cient and in modern times among many other
peoples. But this is no objection to the truth of
the interpretation of the Mosaic law here given.
For in so far as there is genuine agreement, the
fact may rather confirm than weaken the argu-
ment for this view of the case, as showing that
there is an ineradicable instinct in the heart of
man which connects all that directly or indirectly
has to do with the continuance of our race, in a
peculiar degree, with the ideas of uncleanness;
and shame. And, on the other hand, the differ^
ences in such cases from the Mosaic law show-
us just what we should expect, — a degree of
moral confusion and a deadening of the moral
sense among the heathen nations, which is most
significant. As has been justly remarked, the
Hindoo has one law on this subject for the
Brahman, another for others; the outcast for
some deadly sin, often of a purely frivolous;
nature, and a new-born child, are reckoned
equally unclean. Or, — to take the case of a
people contemporary with the Hebrews, — among
the ancient Chaldeans, while these same issues
were accounted ceremonially defiling, as in the
law of Moses, with these were also reckoned in-
the same category, as unclean, whatsoever was
separated from the body, even to the cuttings of
the hair and the parings of the nails. Evidently,
we thus have here, not likeness, but a profound
and most suggestive moral contrast between the
Chaldean and the Hebrew law. Of the pro--
J^eviticus xii. i-8 ]
UNCLEANNESS OF CHILD-BEARING.
315
found ethical truth which vitalises and gives
deep significance to the law of Moses, we find
no trace in the other system. And it is no won-
der if, indeed, the one law is, as declared, a reve-
lation from the holy God, and the other the work
of sinful and sin-blinded man.
It is another moral lesson which is brought
before us in these laws that, as God looks at the
matter, sin pertains not only to action, but also
to being. Not only actions, from which we can
abstain, but operations of nature which we can-
not help, alike defile; defile in such a manner and
degree as to require, even as voluntary acts of
sin, the cleansing of water, and the expiatory
blood of a sin-ofTering. One could not avoid
rnany of the defilements mentioned in this chap-
ter, but that made no difference; he was unclean.
For the lesser grades of uncleanness it sufficed
that one be purified by washing with water; and
a sin-offering was only required when this puri-
fication had been neglected; but in al' cases
where the defilement assumed its extreme form,
the sin-offering and the burnt-offering must be
brought, and be offered for the unclean person
by the priest. So is it, we are taught, with that
sin of nature which these cases symbolised; we
cannot help it, and yet the washing of regenera-
tion and the cleansing of the blood of Christ is
required for its removal. Very impressive in its
teaching now becomes the miracle in which our
Lord healed the poor woman afflicted with the
issue of blood (Mark v. 25-34), ^or which she had
vainly sought cure. It was a case like that cov-
ered by the law in chap. xv. 25-27; and he who
will read and consider the provisions of that law
will understand, as otherwise he could not, how
great her trial and how heavy her burden must
have been. He will wonder also, as never be-
fore, at the boldness of her faith, who, although,
according to the law, her touch should defile the
Lord, yet ventured to believe that not only
should this not be so, but that the healing power
which went forth from Him should neutralise the
defilement, and carry healing virtue to the very
centre of her life. Thus, if other miracles repre-
sent our Lord as meeting the evil of sin in its
various manifestations in action, this miracle
represents His healing power as reaching to the
very source and fountain of life, where it is
needed no less.
The law concerning the removal of these de-
filements, after all that has preceded, will admit
only of one interpretation. The washing of
water is the uniform symbol of the cleansing of
the soul from pollution by the power of the Holy
Ghost: the sacrifices point to the sacrifice of
Christ, in its twofold aspect as burnt-offering
and sin-offering, as required by and availing for
the removal of the sinful defilement which, in
the mind of God, attaches even to that in human
nature which is not under the control of the will.
At the same time, whereas in all these cases the
sin-offering prescribed is the smallest known to
the law, it is symbolised, in full accord with the
teaching of conscience, that the gravity of the
defilement, where there has not been the active
concurrence of the will, is less than where the
will has seconded nature. In all cases of pro-
longed defilement from these sources, it was re-
quired that the afl'ccted person should still be re-
garded as unclean for seven days after the cessa-
tion of the infirmity, and on the eighth day came
the sacrificial cleansing. The significance of the
sevci; .ar, the covenant number, the number also
wherein was completed the old creation, has been
already before us: that of " the eighth " will best
be considered in connection with the provisions
of chap, xii., to which we next turn our attention.
The law of this chapter has a formal closing, in
which are used these words (ver. 31): "Thus
shall ye separate the children of Israel from
their uncleanness; that they die not in their un-
cleanness, when they defile My tabernacle that
is in the midst of them."
Of which the natural meaning is this, that the
defilements mentioned, as conspicuous signs of
man's fallen condition, were so offensive before
a holy God, as apart from these purifications to
have called down the judgment of death on those
in whom they were found. In these words lies
also the deeper spiritual thought — if we have
rightly apprehended the symbolic import of these
regulations — that not only, as in former cases
mentioned under the law of offerings, do volun-
tary acts of sin separate from God and if un-
atoned for call down His judgment, but that
even our infirmities and the involuntary motions
of sin in our nature have the same effect, and,
apart from the cleansing of the Holy Spirit and
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, ensure the
final judgment of death.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE UNCLEANNESS OF CHILD-BEARING.
Leviticus xii. 1-8.
The reference in xii. 2 to the regulations given
in XV. 19, as remarked in the preceding chapter,
shows us that the author of these laws regarded
the circumstances attending child-birth as fall-
ing under the same general category, in a cere-
monial and symbolic aspect, as the law of issues.
As a special case, however, the law concerning
child-birth presents some very distinctive and
instructive features.
The period during which the mother was re-
garded as unclean, in the full comprehension of
that term, was seven days, as in the analogous
case mentioned in xv. 19, with the remarkable
exception, that when she had borne a daughter
this period was doubled. At the expiration of
this period of seven days, her ceremonial un-
cleanness was regarded as in so far lessened that
the restrictions affecting the ordinary relations of
life, as ordered, xv. 19-23, were removed. She
was not, however, yet allowed to touch any hal-
lowed thing or to come into the sanctuary, until
she had fulfilled, from the time of the birth of the
child, if a son, forty days; if a daughter, twice
forty, or eighty days. At the expiration of the
longer period, she was to bring, as in the law
concerning the prolonged issue of blood (xv. 25-
30), a burnt-offering and a sin-offering unto the
door of the tent of meeting, wherewith the priest
was to make an atonement for her; when first
she should be accounted clean, and restored to
full covenant privileges. The only difference
from the similar law in chap. xv. is in regard to
the burnt-offering commanded, which was larger
and more costly. — a lamb, instead of a turtle
dove, or a young pigeon. Still, in the same
spirit of gracious accommodation to the poor
which was illustrated in the general law of the
sin-offering, it was ordered (ver. 8.): "If her
means suffice not for a lamb, then she shall take
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
two turtledoves, or two young pigeons; the one
for a burnt-offering, and the other for a sin-
offering." The law then applied, according to
XV. 29, 30. A gracious provision this was, as all
will remember, of which the mother of our Lord
availed herself (Luke ii. 22-24), as being one of
those who were too poor to bring a lamb for a
burnt-offering.
To the meaning of these regulations, the key
is found in the same conceptions which we have
seen to underlie the law concerning issues. In the
birth of a child, the special original curse against
the woman is regarded by the law as reach-
ing its fullest, most consummate and significant
expression. For the extreme evil of the state of
sin into which the first woman, by that first sin,
brought all womanhood, is seen most of all in
this, that now woman, by means of those powers
given her for good and blessing, can bring into
the world only a child of sin. And it is, appar-
ently, because we here see the operation of this
curse in its most conspicuous form, that the time
of her enforced separation from the tabernacle
worship is prolonged to a period either of forty
or eighty days.
It has been usual to speak of the time of the
mother's uncleanness, and subsequent continued
exclusion from the tabernacle worship, as being
doubled in the case of the birth of a daughter;
but it were, perhaps, more accurate to regard the
normal length of these periods as being respect-
ively fourteen and eighty days, of which the for-
mer is double of that required in xv. 28. This
normal period would then be more properly re-
garded as shortened by one half in the case of a
male child, in virtue of his circumcision on the
eighth day.
The Ordinance of Circumcision.
Leviticus xii. 3.
"And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be
circumcised."
Although the rite of circumcision here receives
a new and special sanction, it had been appointed
long before by God as the sign of His covenant
with Abraham (Gen. xvii. 10-14). Nor was cir-
cumcision, probably, even then a new thing.
That the ancient Egyptians practised it is well
known; so also did the Arabs and Phcenicians;
in fact, the custom has been very extensively ob-
served, not only by nations with whom the
Israelites came in contact, but by others who
have not had, in historic times, connection with
any civilised peoples: as, for example, the Congo
negroes, and certain Indian tribes in South
America.
The fundamental idea connected with circum-
cision, by most of the peoples who have practised
it, appears to have been physical purification;
indeed, the Arabs call it by the name tatur, which
has this precise meaning. And it deserves to be
noticed that for this idea regarding circumcision
there is so much reason in fact, that high medical
authorities have attributed to it a real hygienic
value, especially in warm climates.
No one need feel any difficulty in supposing
that this common conception attached to the
rite also in the minds of the Hebrews. Rather
all the more fitting it was, if there was a basis in
fact for this familiar opinion, that God should
thus have taken a ceremony already known to
the surrounding peoples, and in itself of a whole-
some physical effect, and constituted it for Abra-
ham and his seed a symbol of an analogous
spiritual fact; namely, the purification of sin at
its fountain-head, the cleansing of the evil nature
with which we all are born. It should be plain
enough that it makes nothing against this as the
true interpretation of the rite, even if that be
granted which some have claimed, that it has
had, in some instances, a connection with the
phallic worship so common in the East, or that
it has been regarded by some as a sacrificial cere-
mony. Only the more noteworthy would it thus
appear that the Hebrews should have held strictly
to that view of its significance which had a solid
basis in physical fact, — a fact, moreover, which
made it a peculiar^ fitting symbol of the spiritual
grace which the Biblical writers connect with it.
For that it was so regarded by them will not be
disputed. In this very book (xxvi. 41) we read
of an " uncircumcised heart;" as also in Deuter-
onomy, the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel,
and other books of Scripture.
All this, as intimating the signification of cir-
cumcision as here enjoined, is further established
by the New Testament references. Of these the
most formal is perhaps that in Col. ii. 10, II,
where we read that believers in Christ, in virtue
of their union with Him in whom the unclean
nature has been made clean, are said to be " cir-
cumcised with a circumcision not made with
hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh,
in the circumcision of Christ;" so that Paul else-
where writes to the Philippians (iii. 3): " We are
the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of
God, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no con-
fidence in the flesh."
And that God, in selecting this ancient rite to
be the sign of His covenant in the flesh of Abra-
ham and his seed (Gen. xvii. 13), had regard to
the deep spiritual meaning which it could so
naturally carry is explicitly declared by the
Apostle Paul (Rom. iv. 11), who tells us that
this sign of circumcision was " a seal of the
righteousness of faith," even the righteousness
and the faitn concerning which, in the pre-
vious context, he was arguing; and which are
still, for all men, the one, the ground, and the
other, the condition, of salvation. It is truly
strange that, in the presence of these plain words
of the Apostle, any should still cling to the idea
that circumcision had reference only to the cove-
nant with Israel as a nation, and not, above all,
to this profound spiritual truth which is basal to
salvation, whether for the Jew or for the Gentile.
And so, when the Hebrew infant was circum-
cised, it signified for him and for his parents
these spiritual realities. It was an outward sign
and seal of the covenant of God with Abraham
and with his seed, to be a God to him and to his
seed after him; and it signified further that this
covenant of God was to be carried out and made
effectual only through the putting away of the
flesh, the corrupt nature with which we are born,
and of all that belongs to it. m order that, thus
circumcised with the circumcision of the heart,
every child of Abraham might indeed be an
Israelite in whom there should be no guile.
And the law commands, in accord with the
original command to Abraham, that the circum-
cision should take place on the eighth day. This
is the more noticeable, that among other nations
which practised, or still practise, the rite, the
time is different. The Egyptians, for example,
Leviticus xii. i-8.]
UNCLEANNESS OF CHILD-BEARING.
317
circumcised their sons between the sixth and
tenth years, and the modern Mohammedans be-
tween the twelfth and fourteenth year. What is
the significance of this eighth day?
In the first place, it is easy to see that we have
in this direction a provision of God's mercy; for
if delayed beyond infancy or early childhood, as
among many other peoples, the operation is
much more serious, and may even involve some
danger; while in so early infancy it is compara-
tively trifling, and attended with no risk.
Further, by the administration of circum
cision at the very opening of life, it is suggested
that in the Divine ideal the grace which was sig-
nified thereby, of the cleansing of nature, was to
be bestowed upon the child, not first at a late
period of life, but from its very beginning, thus
anticipating the earliest awakening of the prin-
ciple of inborn sin. It was thus signified that
before ever the child knew, or could know, the
grace that was seeking to save him, he was to be
taken into covenant relation with God. So even
under the strange form of this ordinance we dis-
cover the same mind that was in Him who said
concerning infant children (Luke xviii. 16):
" Sutter the little children to come unto Me, and
forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of
God." Thus we may well recollect, in passing,
that, although the law has passed away in the
Levitical form, the mind of the Lawgiver con-
cerning the little children of His people is still
the same.
But the question still remains. Why was the
eighth day selected, and not rather, for instance,
the sixth or the seventh, which would have no
less perfectly represented these ideas? The an-
swer is to be found in the symbolic significance
of the eighth day. As the old creation was com-
pleted in six days, with a following Sabbath of
rest, so that six is ever the number of the old
creation, as under imperfection and sin; the
eighth day, which is the first day of a new week,
everywhere in Scripture appears as the number
symbolic of the new creation, in which all things
shall be restored in the great redemption through
the Second Adam. The thought finds its fullest
expression in the resurrection of Christ, as the
First-born from the dead, the Beginning and the
Lord of the new creation, who in His resurrec-
tion-body manifested the first-fruits in physical
life of the new creation, rising from the dead on
the first, or, in other words, the day after the
seventh, the eighth day. This gives the key to
the use of the number eight in the Mosaic sym-
bolism. Thus in the law of the cleansing of the
man or the woman that had an issue, the sacri-
fices which effectuated their formal deliverance
from the curse under which, through the weak-
ness of their old nature, they had suffered, were
to be oflfered on the eighth day (xv. 14, 29) ; the
priestly cleansing of the leper from the taint of
his living death was also effected on the eighth
day (xiv. 10) ; so also the cleansing of the Naza-
rite who had been defiled by the dead (Numb.
vi. 10). So also the holy convocation which
closed the feast of tabernacles or ingathering —
the feast which, as we shall see, typically pre-
figured the great harvest of Avhich Christ was the
First-fruits — was ordained, in like manner, for
the eighth day (xxiii. 36). With good reason,
then, was circumcision ordered for the eighth
<fay, seeing that what it symbolically signified
v?as precisely this: the putting off of the flesh
vfith which we are born through the circum-
'21— Vol. I.
cision of Christ, and therewith the first beginning
of a new and purified nature — a change so pro-
found and radical, and in which the Divine effi-
ciency is so immediately concerned, that Paul
said of it that if any man was in Christ, in whose
circumcision we are circumcised (Col. ii. 11),
" there is a new creation " (2 Cor. v. 17, margin,
R. v.).
Purification after Child-birth.
Leviticus xii. 4-8.
" And she shall continue in the blood of her purifying
three and thirty days ; she shall touch no hallowed thing,
nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purify-
ing be fulfilled. But if she bear a maid child, then she
shall be unclean two weeks, as in her impurity : and she
shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore
and six days. And when the days of her purifying are
fulfilled, for a son, or for a daughter, she shall bring a
Iamb of the first year for a burnt offering, and a young
pigeon, or a turtledove, for a sin offering, unto the door
of the tent of meeting, unto the priest : and he shall offer
it before the Lord, and make atonement for her ; and she
shall be cleansed from the fountain of her blood. This is
the law for her that beareth, whether a male or a female.
And if her means suffice not for a lamb, then she shall
take two turtledoves, or two young pigeons ; the one for
a burnt offering, and the other for a sin offering : and the
priest shall make atonement for her, and she shall be
clean."
Until the circumcision of the new-born child,
on the eighth day, he was regarded by the law as
ceremonially rtill in a state of nature, and there-
fore as symbolically unclean. For this reason,
again, the mother who had brought him into the
world, and whose life was so intimately con-
nected with his life, was regarded as unclean also.
Unclean, under analogous circumstances, accord-
ing to the law 01 xv. 19, she was reckoned doubly
unclean in this case,— unclean because of her
issue, and unclean because of her connection with
this child, uncircumcised and unclean. But
when the symbolic cleansing of the child took
place by the ordinance of circumcision, then her
uncleanness, so far as occasioned by her imme-
diate relation to him, came to an end. She was
not indeed completely restored; for, according to
the law, in her still continuing condition, it was
impossible that she should be allowed to come
into the tabernacle of the Lord, or touch any
hallowed thing; but the ordinance which ad-
mitted her child, admitted her also again to the
fellowship of the covenant people.
The longer period of forty — or, in the case of
the birth of a female child, of twice forty — days
must also be explained upon symbolical grounds.
Some have indeed attempted to account for these
periods, as also for the difiference in their length
in the two cases, by a reference to beliefs of the
ancients with regard to the physical condition of
the mother during these periods; but such
notions of the ancients are not justified by facts;
nor, especially, would they by any means account
for the greatly prolonged period of eighty days
in the case of the female child. It is possible
that in the forty, and twice forty, we may have
a reference to the forty weeks during which the
life of the unborn child had been identified with
that of the mother, — a child which, it must be
remembered, according to the uniform Biblical
view, was not innocent, but conceived in sin; for
each week of which connection of life, the
mother suffered a judicial exclusion of one, or,
in the case of the birth of a daughter, of two
days; the time being doubled in the latter case
3iS
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
with allusion to the double curse which, accord-
ing to Genesis, rested upon the woman, as " first
in the transgression." But. apart from this,
however difficult it may be to give a satisfactory
explanation of the fact, it is certain that through-
out Scripture the number forty appears to have
a symbolic meaning; and one can usually trace
in its application a reference, more or less dis-
tinct, to the conception of trial or testing. Thus
for forty days was Moses in the mount, — a time
of testing for Israel, as for him: forty days, the
spies explored the promised land; forty years,
Israel was tried in the wilderness; forty days,
abode Elijah in the wilderness; forty days, also,
was our Lord fasting in the wilderness; and
forty days, again. He abode in resurrection life
upon the earth.
The forty (or eighty) days ended, the mother
was now formally reinstated in the fulness of her
privileges aj a daughter of Israel. The cere-
monial, as in the law of issues, consisted in the
presentation of a burnt-ofifering and a sin-
oflfering, with the only variation that, wherever
possible, the burnt-offering must be a young
lamb, instead of a dove or pigeon; the reason for
which variation is to be found either in the fact
that the burnt-offering was to represent not her-
self alone, but also her child, or, possibly, as
some have suggested, it was because she had
been so much longer excluded from the taber-
nacle service than in the other case.*
The teaching of this law, then, is twofold: it
concerns, first, the woman; and, secondly, the
child which she bears. As regards the woman,
it emphasises the fact that, because " first in the
transgression," she is under special pains and
penalties in virtue of her sex. The capacity of
motherhood, which is her crown and her glory,
though still a precious privilege, has yet been
made, because of sin, an inevitable instrument of
pain, and that because of her relation to the first
sin. We are thus reminded that the specific
curse denounced against the woman, as recorded
in the book of Genesis, is no dead letter, but a
fact. No doubt, the conception is one which
raises difificulties which in themselves are great,
and to modern thought are greater than ever.
Nevertheless, the fact abides unaltered, that even
to this day woman is under special pains and
disabilities, inseparably connected with her power
of motherhood. Modern theorists, men and
women with nineteenth-century notions concern-
ing oolitics and education, may persist in ignor-
ing this; but the fact abides, and cannot be got
rid of by passing resolutions in a mass-meeting,
or even by Act of Parliament or Congress.
And so, as it is useless to object to facts, it is
only left to object to the Mosaic view of the
facts, which connects them with sin, and, in par-
ticular, with the first sin. Why should all the
daughters of Eve suffer because of her sin?
Where is the justice in such an ordinance? A
question this is to which we cannot yet give any
satisfactory answer. But it does not follow thai
because in any proposition there are difficulties
which at present we are unable to solve, there-
fore the proposition is false. And, further, it is
important to observe that this law, under which
womanhood abides, is after all only a special
case under that law of the Divine government
which is announced in the second commandment,
* This latter reason, however, would rather appear to
have demanded, as in the case of the leper, a guilt-offer-
ing.
by which the iniquities of the fathers are visited
upon the children. It is most certainly a law
which, to our apprehension, suggests great moral
difficulties, even to the most reverent spirits; but
it is no less certainly a law which represents a
conspicuous and tremendous fact, which is illus-
trated, for instance, in the family of every
drunkard in the world. And it is well worth
observing, that while the ceremonial law, which
was specially intended to keep this fact before
the mind and the conscience, is abrogated, the
fact that woman is still under certain Divinely
imposed disabilities because of that first sin, is
reaffirmed in the New Testament, and is by
apostolic authority applied in the administration
of Church government. For Paul wrote to
Timothy (i Tim. ii. 12, 13): "I permit not a
woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a
man. . . For Adam was not beguiled, but the
woman being beguiled hath fallen into transgres-
sion." Modern theorists, and so-called " re-
formers " in Church, State, and society, busy
with their social, governmental, and ecclesiastical
novelties, would do well to heed this apostolic
reminder.
All the more beautiful, as against this dark
background of mystery, is the word of the
Apostle which follows, wherein he reminds us
that, through the grace of God, even by means
of those very powers of motherhood on which
the curse has so heavily fallen, has come the re-
demption of the woman; so that "she shall be
saved through the childbearing, if they continue
in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety "
(I Tim. ii. 15, R. V.); seeing that "in Christ
Jesus," in respct of the completeness and free-
ness of salvation, " there can be no male and
female " (Gal. iii. 28, R. V.).
But, in the second place, we may also derive
abiding instruction from this law, concerning the
child which is of man begotten and of woman
born. It teaches us that not only has the curse
thus fallen on the woman, but that, because she
is herself a sinful creature, she can only bring
forth another sinful creature like herself; and if
a daughter, then a daughter inheriting all her
own peculiar infirmities and disabilities. The
law, as regards both mother and child, expresses
in the language of symbolism those words of
David in his penitential confession (Psalm Ii. 5):
" Behold, I was shapen in iniouity; and in sin
did my mother conceive me." Men may contemp-
tuously call this " theology," or even rail at it
as "Calvinism;" but it is more than theology,
more than Calvinism; it is a fact, to which until
this present time history has seen but one excep-
tion, even that mysterious Son of the Virgin,
who claimed, however, to be no mere man, but
the Christ, the Son of the Blessed!
And yet many, who surely can think but super-
ficially upon the solemn facts of life, still object
to this most strenuously, that even the new-born
child should be regarded as in nature sinful and
unclean. Difficulty here we must all admit, —
difficulty so great that it is hard to overstate it —
regarding the bearing of this fact on the char-
acter of the holy and merciful God, who in the
beginning made man. And yet surely, deeper
thought must confess that herein the Mosaic
view of infant nature — a view which is assumed
and taught throughout Holy Scripture— however
humbling to our natural pride, is only in strictest
accord with what the admitted principles of the
most exact science compel us to admit. For
Leviticus xiii. 1-46.]
UNCLEANNESS OF LEPROSY.
319
whenever, in any case, we find all creatures of
the same class doing, under all circumstances,
any one thing, we conclude that the reason for
this can only lie in the nature of such creatures,
antecedent to any influence of a tendency to
imitation. If, for instance, the ox everywhere
and always eats the green thing of the earth, and
not flesh, the reason, we -say, is found simply in
the nature of the ox as he comes into being. So
when we see all men, everywhere, under all cir-
cumstances, as soon as ever they come to the
time of free moral choice, always choosing and
committing sin, what can we conclude — regard-
ing this, not as a theological, but merely as a
scientific question — but that man, as he comes
into the world, must have a sinful nature? And
this being so, then why must not the law of
heredity apply, according to which, by a law
which knows of no exceptions, like ever produces
its like?
Least of all, then, should those object to the
view of child-nature which is represented in this
law of Leviticus, who accept these commonplaces
of modern science as representing facts. Wiser
it were to turn attention to the other teaching of
the law, that, notwithstanding these sad and
humiliating facts, there is provision made by
God, through the cleansing by grace of the very
nature in which we are born, and atonement for
the sin which without our fault we inherit, for a
complete redemption from all the inherited cor-
ruption and guilt.
And, last of all. especially should Christian
parents with joy and thankfulness receive the
manifest teaching of this law, — teaching re-
affirmed by our blessed Lord in the New Testa-
ment,— that God our Father offers to parental
faith Himself to take in hand our children, even
from the earliest beginning of their infant days,
and, purifying the fountain of their life through
" a circumcision made without hands." receive
the little ones into covenant relation with Him-
self, to their eternal salvation. And thus is the
word of the Apostle fulfilled. " Where sin
abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly:
that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace
reign through righteousness unto eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord."
CHAPTER XVn.
THE UNCLEANNESS OF LEPROSY.
Leviticus 3ciii. 1-46.
The interpretation of this chapter presents no
little difficulty. The description of the diseases
with which the law here deals is not given in a
scientific form; the point of view, as the pur-
pose of all, is strictly practical. As for the He-
brew word rendered " leprosy," it does not itself
give any light as to the nature of the disease thus
designated. The word simply means " a stroke,"
as also does the generic term used in ver. 2 and
elsewhere, and translated " plague." Inasmuch
as the Septuagint translators rendered the former
term by the Greek word " lepra " (whence our
word " leprosy "). and as, it is said, the old
Greek physicians comprehended under that term
only such scaly cutaneous eruptions as are now
Known as psoriasis {vulg., " salt-rheum "), and
for what is now known as leprosy reserved the
term " elephantiasis,"* it has been therefore
urged by high authority that in these chapters is
no reference to the leprosy of modern speech,
but only to some disease or diseases much less
serious, either psoriasis or some other, consisting,
like that, of a scaly eruption on the skin.f To
the above argument it is also added that the signs
which are given for the recognition of the disease
intended, are not such as we should expect if it
were the modern leprosy; as, for example, there
is no mention of the insensibility of the skin,
which is so characteristic a feature of the dis-
ease, at least, in a very common variety; more-
over, we find in this chapter no allusion to the
hideous mutilation which so commonly results
from leprosy.
When the use of the Hebrew term rendered
" leprosy " is examined, in this law and else-
where, it certainly seems to be used with great
definiteness to describe a disease which had as a
very characteristic feature a whitening of the
skin throughout, together with other marks
common to the early stages of leprosy as given
in this chapter. Only in ver. 12 does the He-
brew word appear to be applied to a disease of a
different character, though also marked by the
whitening of the skin. As for the symptoms
indicated, the undoubted absence of many con-
spicuous marks of leprosy may be accounted for
by the following considerations. In the first
place, with a single exception (vv. 9-11), the
earliest stages of the disease are described; and,
secondly, it may reasonably be assumed that,
through the desire to ensure the earliest possible
separation of a leprous man from the congrega-
tion, signs were to be noted and acted upon,
which might also be found in other forms of
skin disease. The aim of the law is that, if pos-
sible, the man shall be removed from the camp
before the disease has assumed its most unam-
biguous and revolting form. As for the omis-
sion to mention the insensibility of the skin of
the leper, this seems to be sufficiently explained
when we remember that this symptom is char-
acteristic of only one, and that not the most fatal,
variety of the disease.
But, it has also been urged, that elsewhere in
the Scripture the so-called lepers appear as min-
gling with other people — as, for example, in the
case of Naaman and Gehazi — in a way which
shows that the disease was not regarded as con-
tagious; whence it is inferred, again, that the
leprosy of which we read in the Bible cannot be
the same with the disease which is so called in
our time. But, in reply to this objection, it may
be answered that even modern medical opinion
has been by no means as confident of the con-
tagiousness of the disease — at least, until quite
recently — as were people in the middle ages; nor,
moreover, can we assume that the prevention of
contagion must have been the chief reason for
the segregation of the leper, according to the Le-
vitical law, seeing that a like separation was en-
joined in many other cases of ceremonial un-
cleanness where any thought of contagion or in-
fection was quite impossible.
In further support of the more common
opinion, which identifies the disease chiefly re-
♦This word, it should be noted, is now popularly used
to denote a disease quite distinct from leprosy, known
also as " Barbadoes leg," which consists essentially of an
elephantine enlargement of the lower extremities.
t This opinion has been ably argued by Sir Uisdon Ben-
nett, U. D., LL. D.. F. R. S.. in " By-paths of Bible Knowl-
edge," vol. ix., " The Diseases of the Bible."
320
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
ferred to in this chapter with the leprosy of
modern times, the following considerations ap-
pear to be of no little weight. In the first place,
the words themselves which are applied to the
disease in these chapters and elsewhere, —
tsara'ath and nega', both meaning, etymologically,
" a stroke," i. e., a stroke in some eminent sense,*
— while peculiarly fitting if the disease be that
which we now know as leprosy, seem very
strangely chosen if, as Sir Risdon Bennett thinks,
they only designate varieties of a disease of so
little seriousness as psoriasis. Then, again, the
words used by Aaron to Moses (Numb. xii. 12),
referring to the leprosy of Miriam, deserve great
weight here: "Let her not, I pray, be as one
dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed."
These words sufficiently answer the allegation
that there is no certain reference in Scripture to
the mutilation which is so characteristic of the
later stages of the disease. It would not be easy
to describe in more accurate language the condi-
tion of the leper as the plague advances; while,
on the other hand, if the leprosy of the Bible be
only such a light affection as " salt-rheum," these
words and the evident horror which they express,
are so exaggerated as to be quite unaccountable.
Then, again, we cannot lose sight of the place
which the disease known in Scripture language
as leprosy holds in the sight of the law. As a
matter of fact, it is singled out from a multitude
of diseases as the object of the most stringent
and severe regulations, and the most elaborate
ceremonial, known to the law. Now, if the dis-
ease intended be indeed the awful elephantiasis
Gracorum of modern medical science, popularly
known as leprosy, this is most natural and rea-
sonable; but if, on the other hand, only some
such non-malignant disease as psoriasis be in-
tended, this fact is inexplicable. Further, the
tenour of all references to the disease in the
Scripture implies that it was deemed so incurable
that its removal in any case was regarded as a
special sign of the exercise of Divine power.
The reference of the Hebrew maid of Naaman to
the prophet of God (2 Kings v. 3), as one who
could cure him, instead of proving that it was
thought curable — as has been strangely urged —
by ordinary means, surely proves the exact oppo-
site. Naaman, no doubt, had exhausted medical
resources; and the hope of the maid for him is
not based on the medical skill of Elisha, but on
the fact that he was a prophet of God. and there-
fore able to draw on Divine oower. To the same
effect is the word of the King of Israel, when he
received the letter of Naaman (2 Kings v. 7) :
" Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this
man doth send unto me to recover a man of his
leprosy? " In full accord with this is the appeal
of our Lord (Matt. xi. 5) to His cleansing of the
lepers, as a sign of His Messiahship which He
ranks for convincing power along with the rais-
ing of the dead.
Nor is it a fatal objection to the usual under-
standing of this matter, that because the Leviti-
cal law prescribes a ritual for the ceremonial
cleansing of the leper in case of his cure, there-
fore the disease so called could not be one of the
gravity and supposed incurability of the true
leprosy. For it is to be noted, in the first place,
that there is no intimation that recovery from the
leprosy was a common occurrence, or even that
it was to be expected at all, apart from the direct
* Compare our frequent use of the word to denote
paralysis.
power of God; and, in the second place, that
the Scriptural narrative represents God as now
and then — though very rarely — interposing for
the cure of the leper. And it may perhaps be
added, that while a recent authority writes, and
with truth, that " medical skill appears to have
been more completely foiled by this than by any
other malady," it is yet remarked that, when of
the anaesthetic variety, " some spontaneous cures
are recorded."
The chapter before us calls for little detailed
exoosition. The diagnosis of the disease by the
priest is treated under four different heads: (i)
the case of a leprosy rising spontaneously (vv.
1-17, 38, 39); (2) leprosy rising out of a boil (vv.
18-24) ; (3) rising out of a burn (vv. 24-28) ; (4)
leprosy on the head or beard (vv. 29-37, 40-44).
The indications which are to be noted are de-
scribed (vv. 2, 3, 24-27, etc.) as a rising of the
surface, a scab (or scale), or a bright spot (very
characteristic), the presence in the spot of hair
turned white, the disease apparently deeper than
the outer or scarf skin, a reddish-white colour of
the surface, and a tendency to spread. The pres-
ence of " raw flesh " is mentioned (ver. 10) as an
indication of a leprosy already somewhat ad-
vanced, " an old leprosy." In cases of doubt,
the suspected case is to be isolated for a period
of seven or, if need be, fourteen days, at the ex-
piration of which the priest's verdict is to be
given, as the symptoms may then indicate.
Two cases are mentioned which the priest is
not to regard as leprosy. The first (vv. 12, 13)
is that in which the plague " covers all the skin
of him that hath the plagues from his head even
to his feet, as far as appeareth to the priest," so
that he " is all turned white." At first thought,
this seems quite unaccountable, seeing that
leprosy finally affects the whole body. But the
solution of the difficulty is not far to seek. For
the next verse provides that, in such a case, if
" raw flesh " aooear, he shall be held to be un-
clean. The explanation of this provision of ver.
12 is therefore apparently this: that if an erup-
tion had so spread as to cover the whole body,
turning it white, and yet no raw flesh had ap-
peared in any place, the disease could not be
true leprosy as, if it were, then, by the time that
it had so extended, " raw flesh " would certainly
have appeared somewhere. The disease indi-
cated by this exception was indeed well known
to the ancients, as it is also to the moderns as
the " dry tetter;" which, although an affection
often of long duration, frequently disappears
spontaneously, and is never malignant.
The second case which is specified as not to be
mistaken for leprosy is mentioned in vv. 38, 39,
where it is described as marked by bright spots
of a dull whiteness, but without the white hair,
and other characteristic signs of leprosy. The
Hebrew word by which it is designated is ren-
dered in the Revised Version "tetter;" and the
disease, a non-malignant tetter or eczema, is stil!
known in the East under the same name (bohak)
which is here used.
Verses 4=;, 46, give the law for him who has
been by the priest adjudged to be a leper. He
must go with clothes rent, with his hair neg-
lected, his lip covered, crying, "Unclean! un-
clean! " without the camp, and there abide alone
for so long as he continues to be afflicted with
the disease. In other words, he is to assume all
the ordinary signs of mourning for the dead; he
Leviticus xiii. 1-46.]
UNCLEANNESS OF LEPROSY.
321
is to regard himself, and all others are to regard
him. as a dead man. As it were, he is a con-
tinual mourner at his own funeral.
Wherein lay the reason for this law? One
might answer, in general, that the extreme loath-
someness of the disease, which made the pres-
ence of those who had it to be abhorrent even to
their nearest friends, would of itself make it only-
fitting, however distressing might be the neces-
sity, that such persons should be excluded from
every possibility of appearing, in their revolting
corruption, in the sacred and pure precincts of
the tabernacle of the holy God, as also from
mingling with His people. Many, however,
have seen in the regulation only a wise law of
public hygiene. That a sanitary intent may very
probably have been included in the purpose of
this law, we are by no means inclined to deny.
In earlier times, and all through the middle ages,
the disease was regarded as contagious; and
lepers were accordingly segregated, as far as
practicable, from the people. In modern times,
the weight of opinion until recent years has been
against this older view; but the tendency of
medical authority now appears to be to reaffirm
the older belief. The alarming increase of this
horrible disease in all parts of the world, of late,
following upon a general relaxation of those pre-
cautions against contagion which were formerly
thought necessary, certainly supports this judg-
ment; and it may thus be easily believed that
there was just sanitary ground for the rigid
regulations of the Mosaic code. And just here
it may be remarked, that if indeed there be any
degree of contagiousness, however small, in this
plague, no one who has ever seen the disease, or
understands anything of its incomparable horror
and loathsomeness, will feel that there is any
force in the objections which have been taken to
this part of the Mosaic law as of inhuman harsh-
ness toward the sufferers. Even were the risk
of contagion but small, as it probably is, still, so
terrible is the disease that one would more justly
say that the only inhumanity were to allow those
afflicted with it unrestricted intercourse with
their fellow-men. The truth is, that the Mosaic
law concerning the treatment of the leper, when
compared with regulations touching lepers which
have prevailed among other nations, stands con-
trasted with them by its comparative leniency.
The Hindoo law, as is well known, even insists
that the leper ought to put himself out of exist-
ence, requiring that he shall be buried alive.
But if there be included in these regulations a
sanitary intent, this certainly does not exhaust
their significance. Rather, if this be admitted,
it only furnishes the basis, as in the case of the
laws concerning clean and unclean meats, for
still more profound spiritual teaching. For, as
remarked before, it is one of the fundamental
thoughts of the Mosaic law, that death, as being
the extreme visible manifestation of the presence
of sin in the race, and a sign of the consequent
holy wrath of God against sinful man, is insepar-
ably connected with legal uncleanness. But all
disease is a forerunner of death, an incipient
dying; and is thus, no less really than actual
death, a visible manifestation of the presence and
power of sin working in the body through death.
And yet it is easy to see that it would have been
quite impracticable to carry out a law that there-
fore all disease should render the sick person
ceremonially unclean; while, on the other hand,
it was of consequence that Israel, and we as well,
should be kept in remembrance of this connec-
tion between sin and disease, as death beginning.
What could have been more fitting, then, than
this, that the one disease which, without exagger-
ation, is of all diseases the most loathsome,
which is most manifestly a visible representa-
tion of that which is in a measure true of all dis-
ease, that it is death working in life, that disease
which is, not in a merely rhetorical sense, but
in fact, a living image of death, — should be
selected from all others for the illustration of
this principle: to be to Israel and to us, a visible,
perpetual, and very awful parable of the nature
and the working of sin?
And this is precisely what has been done.
This explains, as sanitary considerations alone
do not, not merely the separation of the leper
from the holy people, but also the solemn sym-
bolism which required him to assume the ap-
pearance of one mourning for the dead; as also
the symbolism of his cleansing, which, in like
manner, corresponded very closely with that of
the ritual of cleansing from defilement by the
dead. Hence, while all sickness, in a general
way, is regarded in the Holy Scriptures as a fit-
ting symbol of sin, it has always been recog-
nised that, among all diseases, leprosy is this in
an exceptional and pre-eminent sense. This
thought seems to have been in the mind of
David, when, after his murder of Uriah and
adultery with Bathsheba, bewailing his iniquity
(Psalm li. 7), he prayed, " Purge me with
hyssop, and I shall be clean." For the only use
of the hyssop in the law, which could be alluded
to in these words is that which is enjoined (xiv.
4-7) in the law for the cleansing of the leper, by
the sprinkling of the man to be cleansed with
blood and water with a hyssop branch.
And thus we find that, again, this elaborate
ceremonial contains, not merely an instructive
lesson in public sanitation, and practical sugges-
tions in hygiene for our modern times; but also
lessons, far more profound and momentous, con-
cerning that spiritual malady with which the
whole human race is burdened, — lessons there-
fore of the gravest personal consequence for
every one of us.
From among all diseases, leprosy has been
selected by the Holy Ghost to stand in the law as
the supreme type of sin, as seen by God! This
is the very solemn fact which is brought before
us in this chapter. Let us well consider it and
see that we receive the lesson, however humiliat-
ing and painful, in the spirit of meekness and
penitence. Let us so study it that we shall with
great earnestness and true faith resort to the
true and heavenly High Priest, who alone can
cleanse us of this sore malady. And in order to
this, we must carefully consider what is involved
in this type.
In the first place, leprosy is undoubtedly se-
lected to be a special type of sin, on account of
its extreme loathsomeness. Beginning, indeed, as
an insignificant spot, " a bright place," a mere
scale on the skin, it goes on spreading, progress-
ing ever from worse to worse, till at last limb
drops from limb, and only the hideous mutilated
remnant of what was once a man is left. A
vivid picture of the horrible reality has been
given by that veteran missionary and very accu-
rate observer, the Rev. William Thomson, D. D.,
who writes thus: " As I was approaching Jerusa-
lem, I was startled by the sudden apparition of a
crowd of beggars, sans eyes, sans nose, sans
322
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
hair, sans everything:. . . They held up their
handless arms, unearthly sounds gurgled through
throats without palates, — in a word, I was horri-
fied." * Too horrible is this to be repeated or
thought of? Yes! But then all the more sol-
emnly instructive is it that the Holy Spirit should
have chosen this disease, the most loathsome of
all, as the most fatal of all, to symbolise to us
the true nature of that spiritual malady which
affects us all, as it is seen by the omniscient and
most holy God.
But it will very naturally be rejoined by some:
Surely it were gross exaggeration to apply this
horrible symbolism to the case of many who,
although indeed sinners, unbelievers also in
Christ, yet certainly exhibit truly lovely and at-
tractive characters. That this is true regarding
many who, according to the Scriptures, are yet
unsaved, cannot be denied. We read of one
such in the Gospel, — a young man, unsaved, who
yet was such that " Jesus looking upon him
loved him" (Mark x. 21). But this fact only
makes the leprosy the more fitting symbol of sin.
For another characteristic of the disease is its
insignificant and often even imperceptible beginning.
We are told that in the case of those who inherit
the taint, it frequently remains quite dormant in
early life, only gradually appearing in later years.
How perfectly the type, in this respect, then,
symbolises sin! And surely any thoughtful man
will confess that this fact makes the presence of
the infection not less alarming, but more so. No
comfort then can be rightly had from any com-
placent comparison of our own characters with
those of many, perhaps professing more, who are
much worse than we, as the manner of some is.
No one who knew that from his parents he had
inherited the leprous taint, or in whom the
leprosy as yet appeared as only an insignificant
bright spot, would comfort himself greatly by
the observation that other lepers were much
worse; and that he was, as yet, fair and goodly to
look upon. Though the leprosy were in him
but just begun, that would be enough to fill him
with dismay and consternation. So should it be
with regard to sin.
And it would so affect such a man the more
surely, when he knew that the disease, however
slight in its beginnings, was certainly progressive.
This is one of the unfailing marks of the disease.
It may progress slowly, but it progresses surely.
To quote again the vivid and truthful description
of the above-named writer, " It comes on by de-
grees in different parts of the body: the hair falls
from the head and evebrows: the nails loosen,
decay, and drop off; joint after joint of the fin-
gers and toes shrinks up and slowly falls away;
the gums are absorbed, and the teeth disappear;
the nose, the eyes, the tongue, and the palate are
slowly consumed; and, finally, the wretched vic-
tim sinks into the earth and disappears."
In this respect again the fitness of the disease
to stand as an eminent type of sin is undeniable.
No man can morally stand still. No one has
ever retained the innocence of childhood. Ex-
cept as counteracted by the efficient grace of the
Holy Spirit in the heart, the Word (2 Tim. iii.
13) is ever visibly fulfilled. " evil men wax worse
and worse." Sin may not develop in all with
equal rapidity, but it does progress in every
natural man, outwardly or inwardly, with equal
certainty.
It is another mark of leprosy that sooner or
* "The Land ami the Book," vol. i., pp. 530, 531.
later it affects the whole man; and in this, again,
appears the sad fitness of the disease to stand as
a symbol of sin. For sin is not a partial dis-
order, affecting only one class of faculties, or one
part of our nature. It disorders the judgment;
it obscures our moral perceptions; it either per-
verrs the affections, or unduly stimulates them
in one direction, while it deadens them in an-
other; it hardens and quickens the will for evil,
while it paralyses its power for the volition of
that which is holy. And not only the Holy
Scripture, but observation itself, teaches us that
sin, in many cases, also affects the body of man,
weakening its powers, and bringing in, by an in-
exorable law, pain, disease, and death. Sooner
or later, then, sin affects the whole man. And
for that reason, again, is leprosy set forth as its
pre-eminent symbol.
It is another remarkable feature of the disease
that, as it progresses from bad to worse, the vic-
tim becomes more and more insensible. This
numbness or insensibility of the spots affected —
in one most common variety at least — is a con-
stant feature. In some cases it becomes so ex-
treme that a knife may be thrust into the affected
limb, or the diseased flesh may be burnt with
fire, and yet the leper feels no pain. Nor is the
insensibility confined to the body, but, as the
leprosy extends, the mind is affected in an analo-
gous manner. A recent writer says: "Though a
mass of bodily corruption, at last unable to
leave his bed. the leper seems happy and con-
tented with his sad condition." Is anything
more characteristic than this of the malady of
sin? The sin which, when first committed, costs
a keen pang, afterward, when frequently re-
peated, hurts not the conscience at all. Judg-
ments and mercies, which in earlier life affected
one with profound emotion, in later life leave the
impenitent sinner as unmoved as they found him.
Hence we all recognise the fitness of the com-
mon expression, " a seared conscience," as also
of the Apostle's description of advanced sinners
as men who are " past feeling " (Eph. iv. 19).
Of this moral insensibility which sin produces,
then, we are impressively reminded when the
Holy Spirit in the Word holds before us leprosy
as a type of sin.
Another element of the solemn fitness of the
type is found in the persistently hereditary nature
ot leprosy. It may indeed sometimes arise of
itself, even as did sin in the case of certain of the
holy angels, and with our first parents; but when
once it is introduced, in the case of any person,
the terrible infection descends with imfailing cer-
tainty to all his descendants; and while, by suita-
ble hj'giene, it is possible to alleviate its violence,
and retard its development, it is not possible to
escape the terrible inheritance. Is anything
more uniformly characteristic of sin? We may
raise no end of metaphysical difificulties about
the matter, and put unanswerable questions about
freedom and responsibility; but there is no deny-
ing the hard fact that since sin first entered the
race, in our first parents, not a child of man, of
human father begotten, has escaped the taint.
If various external influences, as in the case of
leprosy, may. in some instances, modify its mani-
festations, yet no individual, in any class or con-
dition of mankind, escapes the taini. The most
cultivated and the most barbarous alike, come
into the world so constituted that, quite antece-
dent to any act of free choice on the'r part, we
know that it is not more certain that they will
Leviticus xiv. x-32.]
CLEANSING OF THE LEPER.
2,^^
eat than that, when they begin to exercise free-
dom, they will, each and every one, use their
moral freedom wrongly, — in a word, will sin.
No doubt, then, when such prominence is given
to leprosy among diseases, in the Mosaic sym-
bolism and elsewhere, it is with intent, among
other truths, to keep before the mind this very
solemn and awful fact with regard to the sin
which it so fitly symbolises.
And, again, we find yet another analogy in the
fact that, among the ancient Hebrews, the dis-
ease was regarded as incurable by human means;
and, notwithstanding occasional announcements
in our day that a remedy has been discovered for
the plague, this seems to be the verdict of the
best authorities in medical science still. That in
this respect leprosy perfectly represents the sorer
malady of the soul, every one is witness. No
possible etiort of will or fixedness of determina-
tion has ever availed to free a man from sin.
Even the saintliest Christian has often to confess
with the Apostle Paul (Rom. vii. 19), "The evil
which I would not, that I practise." Neither is
culture, whether intellectual or religious, of any
more avail. To this all human history testifies.
In our day. despite the sad lessons of long ex-
perience, many are hoping for much from im-
proved government, education, and such like
means; but vainly, and in the face of the most
patent facts. Legislation may indeed impose re-
strictions on the more flagrant forms of sin,
even as it may be of service in restricting the
devastations of leprosy, and ameliorating the
condition of lepers. But to do away with sin,
and abolish crime by any conceivable legislation,
is a dream as vain as were the hope of curing
leprosy by a good law or an imperial proclama-
tion. Even the perfect law of God has proved
inadequate for this end: the Apostle (Rom. viii.
3) reminds us that in this it has failed, and could
not but fail, " in that it was weak through the
flesh." Nothing can well be of more importance
than that we should be keenly alive to this fact;
that so we may not, through our present appar-
ently tolerable condition, or by temporary allevi-
ations of the trouble, be thrown ofT our guard,
and hope for ourselves or for the world, upon
grounds which afford no just reason for hope.
Last of all. the law of leprosy, as given in this
chapter, teaches the supreme lesson, that as with
the symbolic disease of the body, so with that of
the soul, sin shuis out from God and from
the fellowship of the holy. As the leper was ex-
cluded from the camp of Israel and from the
tabernacle of Jehovah, so must the sinner, ex-
cept cleansed, be shut out of the Holy City,
and from the glory of the heavenly temple.
What a solemnly significant parable is this
exclusion of the leper from the camp! He is
thrust forth from the congregation of Israel,
wearing the insignia of mourning for the
dead! Within the camp, the multitude of them
that go to the sanctuary of God, and that joyfully
keep holy day; without, the leper dwelling alone,
in his incurable corruption and never-ending
mournine! And so, while we do not indeed
deny a sanitary intention in these regulations of
the law, but are rather inclined to affirm it; yet of
far more consequence is it that we heed the
spiritual truth which this solemn symbolism
teaches. It is that which is written in the
Apocalypse (xxi. 27; xxii. 15) concerning the
New Jerusalem: "There shall in no wise enter
into it anything unclean. . . Without are the
dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and
the murderers, and the idolaters, and every one
that loveth and maketh a lie."
In view of all these correspondences, one need
not wonder that in the symbolism of the law
leprosy holds the place which it does. For what
other disease can be named which combines in
itself, as a physical malady, so many of the most
characteristic marks of the malady of the soul?
In its intrinsic loathsomeness, its insignificant-
beginnings, its slow but inevitable progress, ii
the extent of its effects, in the insensibility which
accompanies it. in its hereditary character, in its
incurability, and. finally, in the fact that accord-
ing to the law it involved the banishment of the
leper from the camp of Israel. — in all these re-
spects, it stands alone as a perfect type of sin;
it is sin, as it were, made visible in the flesh.
This is indeed a dark picture of man's natural
state, and very many are exceedingly loth to be-
lieve that sin can be such a very serious matter.
Indeed, the fundamental postulate of much of
our nineteenth-century thought, in matters both
of politics and religion, denies the truth of this
representation, and insists, on the contrary, that
man is naturally not bad, but good; and that, on
the whole, as the ages go by, he is gradually be-
coming better and better. But it is imperative
that our views of sin and of humanity shall agree
with the representations held before us in the
Word of God. When that Word, not only in
type, as in this chapter, but in plain language
(Jer. xvii. 9, R. V.), declares that " the heart is
deceitful above all things, and it is desperately
sick," it must be a very perilous thing to deny
this.
It is a profoundly instructive circumstance that,
according to this typical law, the case of the sup-
posed leper was to be judged by the priest (vv.
2, 3, et passim). All turned for him upon the
priest's verdict. If he declared him clean, it was
well: but if he pronounced him unclean, it made
no difference that the man did not believe it, or
that his friends did not believe it; or that he or
they thought better in any respect of his case
than the priest, — out of the camp he must go.
He might plead that he was certainly not nearly
in so bad a case as some of the poor, mutilated,
dying creatures outside the camp; but that would
have no weight, however true. For still he, no
less really than they, was a leper; and. until made
whole, into the fellowship of lepers he must go
and abide. Even so for us all; everything turns,
not on our own opinion of ourselves, or on what
other men may think of us: but solely on the ver-
dict of the heavenly Priest.
The picture thus set before us in the symbolism
of this chapter is sad enough; but it would be
far more sad did the law not now carry forward
the symbolism into the region of redemption, in
making provision for the cleansing of the leper,
and his re-admission into the fellowship of the
holy people. To this our attention is called in
the next chapter.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER.
Leviticus xiv. 1-32.
The ceremonies for the restoration of the
leper, when healed of his disease, to full cove-
nant privileges, were comprehended in two dis-
324
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
tinct series. The first part of the ceremonial
took place without the camp, and sufficed only
to terminate his condition as one ceremonially
dead, and allow of his return into the camp, and
his association, though still under restriction,
with his fellow-Israelites. The second part of
the ceremonial took up his case on the eighth
day thereafter, where the former ceremonial had
left him, as a member, indeed, of the holy people,
but a member still under defilement such as de-
barred him from approach to the presence of Je-
hovah; and, by a fourfold ofifering and an anoint-
ing, restored him to the full enjoyment of all his
covenant privileges before God.
This law for the cleansing of the leper certainly
implies that the disease, although incurable by
human skill, yet, whether by the direct power of
God, as in several instances in Holy Scripture,
or for some cause unknown, might occasionally
cease its ravages. In this case, although the
visible effects of the disease might still remain,
in mutilations and scars, yet he would be none
the less a healed man. That occasionally in-
stances have occurred of such arrest of the dis-
ease, is attested by competent observers, and the
law before us thus provides for the restoration
of the leper in such cases to the position from
which his leprosy had excluded him.
The first part of the ceremonial (vv. 3-9) took
place without the camp; for until legally cleansed
the man was in the sight of the law still a leper,
and therefore under sentence of banishment from
the congregation of Israel. Thus, as the outcast
could not go to the priest, the priest, on receiv-
ing word of his desire, went to him. For the
ceremony which was to be performed, he pro-
vided himself with two living, clean birds, and
with cedar-wood, and scarlet, and hyssop; also
he took with him an earthen vessel filled with
living water, — i. e., with water from some spring
or flowing stream, and therefore presumably pure
and clean. One of the birds was then killed in
such a manner that its blood was received into
the vessel of water; then the living bird and the
hyssop — bound, as we are told, with the scarlet
band to the cedar-wood — were dipped into the
mingled blood and water, and by them the leper
was sprinkled therewith seven times by the priest,
and was then pronounced clean; when the living
bird, stained with the blood of the bird that was
killed, was allowed to fly away. Thereupon, the
leper washed his clothes, shaved off all his hair,
bathed in water, and entered the camp. This
completed *;he first stadium of his restoration.
Certain things about this symbolism seem very
clear. First of all, whereas the leper, affficted, as
it were, with a living death, had become, as re-
gards Israel, a man legally dead, the sprinkling
with blood, in virtue of which he was allowed to
take his place again in the camp as a living
Israelite, symbolised the impartation of life; and,
again, inasmuch as death is defiling, the blood
was mingled with water, the uniform symbol of
cleansing. The remaining symbols emphasise
thoughts closely related to these. The cedar-
wood (or juniper), which is almost incorruptible,
signified that with this new life was imparted
also freedom from corruption. Scarlet, as a
colour, is the constant symbol, again, like the
blood, of life and health. What the hyssop was
is still in debate; but we can at least safely say
that it was a plant supposed to have healing and
purifying virtues.
So far all is clear. But what is the meaning of
the slaying of the one bird, and the loosing after-
ward of the other, moistened with the blood of
its fellow? Some have said that both of the
birds symbolised the leper: the one which was
slain, the leper as he was, — namely, as one dead,
or under sentence of death by his plague; the
other, naturally, then, the leper as healed, who,
even as the living bird is let fly whither it will,
is now set at liberty to go where he pleases. But
when we consider that it is by means of being
sprinkled with the blood of the slain bird that the
leper is cleansed, it seems quite impossible that
this slain bird should typify the leper in his state
of defilement. Indeed, if this bird symbolised
him as under his disease, this supposition seems
even absurd; for the blood which cleansed must
then have represented his own blood, and his
blood as diseased and unclean!
Neither is it possible that the other bird, which
was set at liberty, should represent the leper as
healed, and its release, his liberation; however
plausible, at first thought, this explanation may
seem. For the very same ceremony as this with
the two birds was also to be used in the cleansing
of a leprous house (vv. 50-53), where it is evi-
dent that the loosing of the living bird could not
have any such significance; since the notion of a
liberty given would be wholly inapplicable in the
case of a house. But whatever the true mean-
ing of the symbolism may be, it is clear that it
must be one which will apply equally well in
each of the two cases, the cleansing of the
leprous house, no less than that of the leprous
person.
We are therefore compelled to regard the slay-
ing of the one bird as a true sacrifice. No doubt
there are difficulties in the way, but they do not
seem insuperable, and are, in any case, less than
those which beset other suppositions. It is true
that the birds are not presented before Jehovah
in the tabernacle; but as the ceremony took place
outside the camp, and therefore at a distance
from the tabernacle, this may be explained as
merely because of the necessity of the case. It is
true, again, that the choice of the bird was not
limited, as in the tabernacle sacrifices, to the
turtle-dove or pigeon; but it might easily be that
when, as in this case, the sacrifice was elsewhere
than at the tabernacle, the rules for service there
did not necessarily apply. Finally and decisively,
when we turn to the law for the cleansing of the
leprous house, we find that atoning virtue is ex-
plicitly ascribed to this rite with the birds (ver.
53) : " He shall make atonement for the house."
But sacrifice is here presented in a different
aspect from elsewhere in the law. In this cere-
monial the central thought is not consecration
through sacrifice, as in the burnt-offering; nor
expiation of guilt through sacrifice, as in the
sin-ottering; nor yet satisfaction for trespass
committed, as in the guilt-offering. It is sacri-
fice as procuring for the man for whom it is
offered purity and life, which is the main thought.
But, according to vv. 52, 53, the atonement is
made with both the dead and the living bird.
The special thought which is emphasised by the
use of the latter, seems to be merely the full com-
pleteness of the work of cleansing which has
been accomplished through the death of the
other bird. For the living bird was represented
as ideally identified with the bird which was slain,
by being dipped in its blood; and in that it was
now loosed from its captivity, this was in token
of the fact that the bird, having now given its
Leviticus xiv. 1-32.]
CLEANSING OF THE LEPER.
325
life to impart cleansing and life to the leper, has
fully accomplished that end.
Obviously, this explanation is one that will
apply no less readily to the cleansing of the
leprous house than of the leprous person. For
the leprosy in the house signifies the working of
corruption and of decay 'and death in the wall of
the house, in a way adapted to its nature, as
really as in the case of the person; and the cere-
monial with the birds and other material pre-
scribed means the same with it as with the other,
— namely, the removal of the principle of corrup-
tion and disease, and impartation of purity and
wholesomeness. In both cases the sevenfold
sprinkling, as in analogous cases elsewhere in the
law, signified the completeness of the cleansing.
to which nothing was lacking, and also certified
to the leper that by this impartation of new life,
and by his cleansing, he was again brought into
covenant relations with Jehovah.
With these ceremonies, the leper's cleansing
was now in so far effected that he could enter the
camp; only he must first cleanse himself and his
clothes with water and shave his hair, — cere-
monies which, in their primary meaning, are
most naturally explained by the importance of an
actual physical cleansing in such a case. Every
possible precaution must be taken that by no
chance he bring the contagion of his late disease
into the camp. Of what special importance in
this connection, besides the washing, is the shav-
ing of the hair, will be apparent to all who know
how peculiarly retentive is the hair of odours and
infections of every kind.
The cleansed man might now come into the
camp; he is restored to his place as a living
.Israelite. And yet he may not come to the taber-
nacle. For even an Israelite might not come, if
defiled for the dead; and this is precisely the
leper's status at this point. Though delivered
from the power of death, there is yet persisting
such a connection of his new self with his old
leprous self as precludes him from yet entering
the more immediate presence of God. The
reality of this analogy will appear to any one
who compares the rites which now follow (vv.
10-20) with those appointed for the Nazarite,
when defiled by the dead (Numb. vi. 9-12).
Seven days, then, as in that case, he remains
away from the tabernacle. On the seventh day,
he again shaves himself even to the eyebrows,
thus ensuring the most absolute cleanness, and
washes himself and his clothes in water. The
final restoration ceremonial took place on the
eighth day, — the day symbolic of the new crea-
tion,— when he appeared before Jehovah at the
tent of meeting with a he-lamb for a guilt-offer-
ing, and another for a sin-offering, and a ewe-
lamb for a burnt-offering; also a meal-offering of
three tenth-deals, one tenth for each sacrifice,
mingled with oil, and a log (3.32 qts.) of oil.
The oil was then waved for a wave-offering be-
fore the Lord, as also the whole lamb of the
guilt-offering (an unusual thing), and then the
lamb was slain and offered after the manner of
the guilt-offering.
And now followed the most distinctive part of
the ceremonial. As in the case of the consecra-
tion of the priests was done with the blood of
the peace-offering and with the holy oil, so was
it done here with the blood of the guilt-offering
and with the common oil — now by its waving
consecrated to Jehovah — which the cleansed
leper had brought. The priest anoints the man's
right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the
great toe of his right foot, first with the blood of
the guilt-offering, and then with the oil, having
previously sprinkled of the oil seven times with
his finger before the Lord. The remnant of the
oil in the hand of the priest he then pours upon
the cleansed leper's head; then offers for him the
sin-offering, the burnt-offering, and the meal-
offering; and therewith, at last, the atonement is
complete, and the man is restored to his full
rights and privileges as a living member of the
people of the living God.
The chief significance of this ceremonial lies
in the prominence given to the guilt-offering.
This is evidenced, not only by the special and
peculiar use which is made of its blood, in apply-
ing it to the leper, but also in the fact that in the
case of the poor man, while the other offerings
are diminished, there is no diminution allowed as
regards the lamb of the guilt-offering, and the
log of oil. Why should the guilt-offering have
received on this occasion such a place of special
prominence? The answer has been rightly given
by those who point to the significance of the
guilt-offering as representing reparation and
satisfaction for loss of service due. By the fact
of the man's leprosy, and consequent exclusion
from the camp of Israel, God had been, for the
whole period of his excision, defrauded, so to
speak, of His proper dues from hnii in respect
of service and offerings; and the guilt-offering
precisely symbolised satisfaction made for this
default in service which he had otherwise been
able to render.
Nor is it a fatal objection to this understanding
of the matter that, on this principle, he also that
for a long time had had an issue should have
been required, for his prolonged default of serv-
ice, to bring a guilt-offering in order to his
restoration; whereas from him no such demand
was made. For the need, before the law, for the
guilt-offering lay, not in the duration of the
leprosy, as such apprehend it, but in the nature
of the leprosy, as being, unlike any other visita-
tion, in a peculiar sense, a death in life. Even
when the man with an issue was debarred from
the sanctuary, he was not, like the leper, re-
garded by the law as a dead man; but was still
counted among them that were living in Israel.
And if precluded for an indefinite time from the
service and worship of God at the tabernacle, he
yet, by his public submission to the demands of
the law, in the presence of all, rendered still to
God the honour due from a member of the liv-
ing Israel. But in that the leper, unlike any
other defiled person, was reckoned ceremonially
dead, obviously consistency in the symbolism
made it impossible to regard him as having in
any sense rendered honour or service to God so
long as he continued a leper, any more than if he
had been dead and buried. Therefore he must
bring a guilt-offering, as one who had, however
unavoidably, committed " a trespass in the holy
things of the Lord." And so this guilt-offering,
in the case of the leper, as in all others, repre-
sented the satisfaction of debt; and as the reality
or the amount of a debt cannot be affected by the
poverty of the debtor, the offering which sym-
bolised satisfaction for the debt must be the same
for the poor leper as for the rich leper.
And the application of the blood to ear, hand,
and foot meant the same as in the case of the
consecration of the priests. Inducted, as one
now risen from the dead, into the number of the
326
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
priestly people, he receives the priestly conse-
cration, devoting ear, hand, and foot to the
service of the Lord. And as it was fitting that
the priests, because brought into a relation of
special nearness to God, in order to be minis-
ters of reconciliation to Israel, should therefore
be consecrated with the blood of the peace-ofTer-
ing, which specially emphasised the realisation of
reconciliation, — so the cleansed leper, who was
re-established as a living member of the priestly
nation, more especially by the blood of the guilt-
offering, was therefore fittingly represented as
consecrated in virtue, and by means of that fact.
So, like the priests, he also was anointed by
the priest with oil; not indeed with the holy oil,
for he was not admitted to the priestly order; yet
with common oil, sanctified by its waving before
God, in token of his consecration as a member of
the priestly people. Especially suitable in his
case was this anointing, that the oil constantly
stands as a symbol of healing virtue, which in his
experience he had so wondrously received.
Remembering in all this how the leprosy
stands as a pre-eminent type of sin, in its aspect
as involving death and corruption, the applica-
tion of these ceremonies to the antitypical cleans-
ing, at least in its chief aspects, is almost self-
evident. As in all the Levitical types, so in this
case, at the very entrance on the redeemed life
stands the sacrifice of a life, and the service of a
priest as mediator between God and man.
Blood must be shed if the leper is to be admitted
again into covenant standing with God: and the
blood of the sacrifice in the law ever points to
the sacrifice of Christ. But that great Sacrifice
may be regarded in various aspects. Sin is a
many-sided evil, and on every side it must be
met. As often repeated, because sin as guilt re-
quires expiation, hence the type of the sin-
ofTering; in that it is a defrauding of God of His
just rights from us, satisfaction is required, hence
the type of the guilt-offering; as it is absence of
consecration, life for self instead of life for God,
hence the type of the burnt-offering. And yet
the manifold aspects of sin are not all enumer-
ated. For sin, again, is spiritual death; and, as
death, it involves corruption and defilement. It
is with special reference to this fact that the work
of Christ is brought before us here. In the clean
bird, slain that its blood may be applied to the
leper for cleansing, we see typified Christ, as
giving Himself, that His very life may be im-
parted to us for our life. In that the blood of
the bird is mingled with water, the symbol of the
Word of God, is symbolised the truth, that with
the atoning blood is ever inseparably united the
purifying energy of the Holy Ghost through the
Word. Not the water without the blood, nor
the blood without the water, saves, but the blood
with the water, and the water with the blood.
So it is said of Him to whom the ceremony
pointed (i John v. 6) : " This is He that came by
water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with the
water only, but with the water and with the
blood."
But the type yet lacks something for com-
])letcness; and for this reason we have the second
bird, who, when by his means the blood has
been sprinkled on the leper, and the man is now
pronounced clean, is released and flies away
heavenward. What a beautiful symbol of that
other truth, without which even thf atonement
of the Lord were naught, that He who died, hav-
ing by that death for us procured >..\" life, was
then released from the bonds of death, rising
from the dead on the third day, and ascending to
heaven, like the freed bird, in token that His
life-giving, cleansing work was done. Thus the
message which, as the liberated bird flies carol-
ling awa}', sweet as a heavenly song, seems to
fall upon the ear, is this, " Delivered up for our
trespasses, and raised for our justification "
(Rom. iv. 25; see Gr.).
But although thus and then restored to his
standing as a member of the living people of
God, not yet was the cleansed leper allowed to
appear in the presence of God at the tent of
meeting. There was a delay of a week, and only
then, on the eighth day, the day typical of resur-
rection and new creation, does He appear before
God. Is there typical meaning in this delay?
We would not be too confident. It is quite pos-
sible that this delay of a week, before the
cleansed man was allowed to present himself for
the completion of the ceremonial which rein-
stated him in the plenary enjoyment of all the
rights and privileges of a child of Israel, may
have been intended merely as a precautionary
rule, of which the purpose was to guard against
the possibility of infection, and the defilement
of the sanctuary by his presence, through re-
newed activity of the disease; while, at the same
time, it would serve as a spiritual discipline to
remind the man, now cleansed, of the extreme
care and holy fear with which, after his defile-
ment, he should venture into the presence of the
Holy One of Israel; and thus, by analogy, it
becomes a like lesson to the spiritually cleansed
in all ages.
But perhaps we may see a deeper significance
in this week of delay, and his appointed appear-
ance before the Lord on the eighth day. If the
whole course of the leper, from the time of his
infection till his final reappearine in the presence
of Jehovah at the tent of meeting, be intended to
typify the history and experience of a sinner as
saved from sin; and if the cleansing of the leper
without the camp, and his reinstatement there-
upon as a member of God's Israel, represents in
type the judicial reinstatement of the cleansed
sinner, through the application of the blood and
Spirit of Christ, in the number of God's people;
one can then hardly fail to recognise in the
week's delay appointed to him, before he could
come into the immediate presence of God. an
adumbration of the fact that between the sinner's
acceptance and the appointed time of his appear-
ing, finally and fully cleansed, before the Lord,
on the resurrection morning, there intervenes a
period of delay, even the whole lifetime of the
believer here in the flesh and in the disembodied
state. For only thereafter does he at last, wholly
perfected, appear before God in the heavenly
Zion. But before thus appearing, the accepted
man once and again had to cleanse his garments
and his person, that so he might remove every-
thing in which by any chance uncleanness might
still lurk. Which, translated into New Testa-
ment language, gives us the charge of the
Apostle Paul (2 Cor. vii. i) addressed to those
who had indeed received the new life, but were
still in the flesh: " Let us cleanse ourselves from
all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holi-
ness in the fear of God.
But, at last, the week of delay is ended. After
its seventh day follows an eighth, the first-day
morning of a new week, the morning typical of
resurrection and therewith completed redemp-
Leviticus xiv. 1-32.]
CLEANSING OF THE LEPER.
327
tion, and the leper now, completely restored, ap-
pears before God in the holy tabernacle. Even
so shall an eighth-day morning dawn for all who
by the cleansing blood have been received into
the number of God's people. And when that day
comes, then, even as when the cleansed man ap-
peared at the tent of meeting, he presented guilt-
ofifering, sin-ofifering, and burnt-ofTering, as the
warrant for his presence there, and the ground
of his acceptance, so shall it be in that day of
resurrection, when every one of God's once lep-
rous but now washed and accepted children shall
appear in Zion before Him. They will all ap-
pear there as pleading the blood, the precious
blood of Christ; Christ, at last apprehended and
received by them in all His fulness, as expiation,
satisfaction, and righteousness. For so John
represents it in the apocalyptic vision of the
blood-washed multitude in the heavenly glory
(Rev. vii. 14, 15): "These are they which come
out of the great tribulation, and they washed
their robes, and made them white in the blood
of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the
throne of God; and they serve Him day and
night in His temple."
And as it is written (Rom. viii. 11) that the
final quickening of our mortal bodies shall be
accomplished by the Spirit of God, so the leper,
now in God's presence, receives a special anoint-
ing; a type of the unction of the Holy Ghost in
resurrection power, consecrating the once leprous
ear, hand, and foot, and therewith the whole
body, now cleansed from all defilement, to the
glad service of Jehovah our God and our Re-
deemer.
Such, in outline at least, appears to be the
typical significance of this ceremonial of the
cleansing of the leper. Some details are indeed
still left unexplained, but, probably, the whole
reason for some of the regulations is to be fotind
in the immediate practical necessities of tiie
leper's condition.
Of Leprosy in a Garment or House.
Leviticus xiii. 47-59; xiv. 33-53.
"The garment al.so that the plague of leprosy is in,
■whether it be a woollen garment, or a linen garment ;
■whether it be in warp, or woof; of linen, or of woollen ;
whether in a skin, or in any thing made of skin ; if the
plague be greenish or reddish in the garment, or in the
skin, or in the warp, or in the woof, or in any thing of
jikin ; it is the plague of leprosy, and shall be shewed unto
the priest : and the priest shall look upon the plague, and
shut up that which hath the plague seven days: and he
.shall look .-;n the plague on the seventh day : if the plague
be spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the
woof, or m the skin, whatever service skin is used for ;
the plague is a fretting leprosy; it is unclean. And he
shall burn the garment, whether the warp or the woof, in
woollen or in linen, or any thing of skin, wherein the
plague is : for it is a fretting leprosy ; it shall be burnt in
the fire. And if the priest shall look, and, behold, the
plague be not spread in the garment, either in the ■^varp,
or in the woof, or in any thing of skin ; then the priest shall
command that they wash the thing wherein the plague is,
and he shall shut it up seven days m.ore : and the priest
shall look, after that the plague is washed : and, behold,
if the plague have not changed its colour, and the plague
be not spread, it is unclean ; thou shalt burn it in the fire :
it is a fret, whether the bareness be within or without.
And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be dim after
the washing thereof, then he shall rend it out of the gar-
ment, or out of the skin, or out of the warp, or out of the
w-oof : and if it appear still in the garment, either in the
warp, or in che woof, or in any thing of skin, it is breaking
out: thou .-.:ialt burn that wherein the plague is with fire.
And the garment, either the warp, or the woof, or what-
soever thir.<- of skin it be, which thou shalt wash, if the
plague be departed from them, then it shall be washed
the second time, and shall be clean. This is the law of the
plague of leprosy in a garment of woollen or linen, either
in the warp, or the woof, or any thing of skin, to pro-
nounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean. . . . And the
Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, sajdng. When ye
be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a
possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of
the land of your possession ; then he that owneth the
house shall come and tell the priest, sayihg. There seem-
eth to me to be as it were a plague in the house : and the
priest shall command that they empty the house, before
the priest go in to see the plague, that all that is in the
house be not made unclean : and afterward the priest shall
go in to see the house : and he shall look on the plague,
and, behold, if the plague be in the walls of the house with
hollow strakes, greenish or reddish, and the appearance
thereof be lower than the wall ; then the priest shall go
out of the house to the door of the house, and shut up the
house seven days: and the priest shall come again the
seventh day, and shall look : and, behold, if the plague be
spread in the walls of the house ; then the priest shall com-
mand that they take out the stones in which the plague is.
and cast them into an unclean place without the city : and
he shall cause the house to be scraped within round about,
and they shall pour out the mortar that they scrape off
■without the city into an unclean place : and they shall take
other stones, and put them in the place of those stones ;
and he shall take other mortar and shall plaister the
house. And if the plague come again, and break out in the
house, after that he hath taken out the stones, and after
he hath scraped the house, and after it is plaistered ; then
the priest shall come in and look, and, behold, if the plague
be spread in the house, it is a fretting leprosy in the
house : it is unclean. And he shall break down the house,
the stones of it, and the timber thereof, and all the mor-
tar of the house ; and he shall carry them forth out of the
city into an unclean place. Moreover he that goeth into
the house all the while that it is shut up shall be unclean
until the even. And he that lieth in the house shall wash
his clothes ; and he that eateth in the house shall wash his
clothes. And if the priest shall come in, and look, and,
behold, the plague hath not spread in the house, after the
house was plaistered ; then the priest shall pronounce the
house clean, because the plague is healed. And he shall
take to cleanse the house two birds, and cedar wood, and
scarlet, and hyssop : and he shall kill one of the birds in an
earthen vessel over running water : and he shall take the
cedar wood, and the hyssop, and the scarlet, and the liv-
ing bird, and dip them in the blood of the slain bird, and
in the running water, and sprinkle the house seven times :
and he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird,
fand with the running water, and with the living bird, and
with the cedar wood, and with the hyssop, and with the
scarlet : but he shall let go the living bird out of the city
into the open field: so shall he make atonement for the
house : and it shall be clean."
There has been much debate as to what we are
to imderstand by the leprosy in the garment or
in a house. Was it an afifection identical in
nature with the leprosy of the body? or was it
merely so called from a certain external simi-
larity to that plague?
However extraordinary the former supposition
might once have seemed, in the present state of
medical science we are at least able to say that
there is nothing inconceivable in it. We have
abundant experimental evidence that a large
number of diseases, and, not improbably, leprosy
among them, are caused by minute parasitic
forms of vegetable life; and, also, that in many
cases these forms of life may, and do, exist and
multiply in various other suitable media besides
the fluids and tissues of the human body. If, as
is quite likely, leprosy be caused by some such
parasitic life in the human body, it is then evi-
dently possible that such parasites, under favour-
able conditions of heat, moisture, etc., should
exist and propagate themselves, as in other
analogous cases, outside the body;* as, for in-
stance, in cloth, or leather, or in the plaster of a
house; in which case it is plain that such gar-
ments or household implements, or such dwell-
ings, as might be thus infected, would be cer-
tainly unwholesome, and presumably capable of
communicating the leprosy to the human subject.
But we have not yet sufficient scientific observa-
tion to settle the question whether this is really
328
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
so; we can, however, safely say that, in any case,
the description which is here given indicates a
growth in the affected garment or house of some
kind of mould or mildew; which, as we know, is
a form of life produced under conditions which
always imply an unwholesome state of the article
or house in -which it appears. We also know
that if such growths be allowed to go on un-
checked, they involve more or less rapid proc-
esses of decomposition in that which is affected.
Thus, even from a merely natural point of view,
one can see the high wisdom of the Divine King
of Israel in ordering that, in all such cases, the
man whose garment or house was thus affected
should at once notify the priest, who was to
come and decide whether the appearance was of
a noxious and unclean kind or not, and then take
action accordingly.
Whether the suspicious spot were in a house
or in some article it contained, the article or
house (the latter having been previously-
emptied) was first shut up for seven days (xiii.
50; xiv. 38). If in the garment or other article
affected it was found then to have spread, it was
without any further ceremony to be burnt (xiii.
51, 52). If it had not spread, it was to be washed
and shut up seven days more, at the end of which
time, even though it had not spread, if the green-
ish or reddish colour remained unchanged, it was
still to be adjudged unclean, and to be burned
(xiii. 55). If, on the other hand, the colour had
somewhat " dimmed," the part affected was to
be cut out; when, if it spread no further, it was
to be washed a second time and be pronounced
clean (xiii. 58). If, however, after the excision
of the affected part, the spot appeared again, the
article, without further delay, was to be burned
(xiii. 57).
The law, in the case of the appearing of a
leprosy in a house (xiv. 33-53), was much more
elaborate. As in the former case, when the
occupant of the house suspects, " as it were a
plague in the house," he is to go and tell the
priest; who is, first of all, to order the emptying
of the house before he goes in, lest that which is
in the House, should it prove to be the plague,
be made unclean (ver. 36). The diagnosis re-
minds us of that of the leprosy in the body;
greenish or reddish streaks, in appearance
" lower than the wall," i. e., deep-seated (ver. 37).
Where this is observed, the empty house is to
be shut up for seven days (ver. 38) ; and at the
end of that time, if the spot has spread, " the
stones in which the plague is " are to be taken
out, the plaster scraped off the walls of the house,
and all carried out into an unclean place outside
of the city, and new stones and new plaster put
in the place of the old (vv. 40-42). If, after this,
the plague yet reappear, the house is to be ad-
judged unclean, and is to be wholly torn down,
and all the material carried into an unclean place
without the city (vv. 44, 45). If, on the other
hand, after this renewal of the interior of the
house, the spots do not reappear, the priest
" shall pronounce the house clean, because the
plague is healed " (ver. 48). But, unlike the
case of the leprous garment, this does not end
the ceremonial. It is ordered that the priest
shall take to cleanse (lit. " to purge the house
from sin ") (ver. 49) two birds, scarlet, cedar,
and hyssop, which are then used precisely as in
the case of the purgation of the leprous man;
and at the end, " he shall let go the living bird
out of the city into the open field: so shall he
make atonement for the house: and it shall be
clean " (vv. 50-53).
For the time then present, one can hardly fall
to see in this ceremonial, first, a merciful sani-
tary intent. By the observance of these regula-
tions not only was Israel to be saved from many
sicknesses and various evils, but was to be con-
stantly reminded that Israel's God, like a wise
and kind Father, had a care for everything that
pertained to their welfare; not only for their per-
sons, but also for their dwellings, and even all
the various articles of daily use. The lesson is
always in force, for God has not changed. He
is not a God who cares for the souls of men only,
but for their bodies also, and everything around
them. His servants do well to remember this,
and in this imitate Him, as happily many are
doing more and more. Bibles and tracts are
good, and religious exhortation; but we have
here left us a Divine warrant not to content our-
selves with these things alone, but to have a
care for the clothing and the homes of those we
would reach with the Gospel. In all the large
cities of Christendom it must be confessed that
the principle which underlies these laws con-
cerning houses and garments, is often terribly
neglected. Whether the veritable plague of
leprosy be in the walls of many of our tenement
houses or not, there can be no doubt that it could
not be much worse if it were; and Christian
philanthropy and legislation could scarcely do
better in many cases than vigorously to enforce
the Levitical law, tear down, re-plaster, or, in
many cases, destroy from the foundation, tene-
ment houses which could, with little exaggera-
tion, be justly described as leprous through-
out.
But all which is in this law cannot be thus ex-
plained. Even the Israelite must have looked
beyond this for the meaning of the ordinance of
the two birds, the cedar, scarlet, and hyssop, and
the " atonement " for the house. He would
have easily perceived that not only leprosy in the
body, but this leprosy in the garment and the
house, was a sign that both the man himself, and
his whole environment as well, was subject to
death and decay; that, as already he would have
learned from the Book of Genesis, even nature
was under a curse because of man's sin; and that,
as in the Divine plan, sacrificial cleansing was
required for the deliverance of man, so also it
was somehow mysteriously required for the
cleansing of his earthly abode and surroundings,
in default of which purgation they must be de-
stroyed.
And from this to the antitypical truth pre-
figured by these laws it is but a step; and a step
which we take with full New Testament light to
guide us. For if the leprosy in the body visibly
typified the working of sin and death in the soul
of man, then, as clearly, the leprosy in the house
must in this law be intended to symbolise the
working of sin in the material earthly creation,
which is man's abode. The type thus brings be-
fore us the truth which is set forth by the Apostle
Paul in Rom. viii. 20-22. where we are taught in
express words that, not man alone, but the whole
creation also, because, of sin, has come under a
" bondage of corruption." " The creation was
subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by
reason of him who subjected it. . . For we know
that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth
in pain together until now." This is one truth
which is shadowed forth in this type.
Leviticus xvii. 1-16.]
HOLINESS IN EATING.
329
But the type also shows us how, as Scripture
•elsewhere clearly teaches, if after such partial
purgation as was effected by means of the deluge
the bondage of corruption still persist, then the
abode of man must itself be destroyed; "the
earth and the works that are therein shall be
burned up " (2 Peter iii. 10). Nothing less than
fire will sufifice to put an end to the working in
material nature of this mysterious curse. And
yet beyond the fire is redemption. For the
atonement shall avail not only for the leprous
man, but for the purifying of the leprous abode.
The sprinkling of sacrificial blood and water by
means of the cedar, and hyssop, and scarlet, and
the living bird, which efTected the deliverance of
the leper, are used also in the same way and for
the same end, for the leprous house. And so
" according to his promise, we look for new
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness" (2 Peter iii. 13); and it shall be
brought in through the virtue of atonement inade
by a Saviour slain, and applied by a Saviour
alive from the dead; so that, as the free bird
flies away in token of the full completion of de-
liverance from the curse, so " the creation itself
also shall be delivered from the bondage of cor^
ruption into the liberty of the glory of the chil-
dren of God " (Rom. viii. 21).
But there was also a leprosy of the garment.
If the leprosy in the body typified the efifect of
sin in the soul, and the leprosy in the house, the
effect of sin in the earthly creation, which is
man's home; the leprosy of the garment can
scarcely typify anything else than the presence
and effects of sin in those various relations in
life which constitute our present environment.
Whenever, in any of these, we suspect the work-
ing of sin, first of all we are to lay the case be-
fore the heavenly Priest. And then, if He wi'n
the " eyes like a fiame of fire " (Rev. i. 14, ii. li?)
declare anything unclean, then that in which the
stain is found must be without hesitation cut
out and thrown away. And if still, after this, we
find the evil reappearing, then the whole gar-
ment must go, fair and good though the most of
it may still appear. In other words, those rela-
'tions and engagements in which, despite all pos-
sible care and precaution, we find manifest sin
persistently reappearing, as if there were in
them, however inexplicably, an ineradicable ten-
dency to evil, — these we must resolutely put
away, " hating even the garment spotted by the
flesh."
The leprous garment must be burnt. For its
restoration or purification the law made no pro-
vision. For here, in the antitype, we are dealing
-with earthly relationships, which have only to do
with the present life and order. " The fashion
of this world passeth away" (i Cor. vii. 31).
There shall be " new heavens and a new earth,"
but in that new creation the old environment
shall be found no longer. The old garments,
even such as were best, shall be no longer used.
The redeemed shall walk with the King and Re-
deemer, clothed in the white robes which He
shall give. No more leprosy then in person,
house, or garment! -For we shall be set before
the presence of the Father's glory, without
blemish, in exceeding joy, " not having spot, or
wrinkle, or any such thing. ' Wherefore " to the
only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our
Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and power,
before all time, and now, and for evermore,
/^meru"
CHAPTER XIX.
HOLINESS IN EATING.
Leviticus xvii. 1-16.
With this chapter begins another subdivision
of the law. Hitherto we have had before us
only sacrificial worship and matters of merely
ceremonial law. The law of holy living con-
tained in the following chapters (xvii.-xx.), on
the other hand, has to do for the most part with
matters rather ethical than ceremonial, and con-
sists chiefly of precepts designed to regulate
morally the ordinary engagements and relation-
ships of every-day life. The fundamental
thought of the four chapters is that which is ex-
pressed, e. g., in xviii. 3: Israel, redeemed by Je-
hovah, is called to be a holy people; and this
holiness is to be manifested in a total separa-
tion from the ways of the heathen. This prin-
ciple is enforced by various specific commands
and prohibitions, which naturally have particular
regard to the special conditions under which
Israel was placed, as a holy nation consecrated
to Jehovah, the one, true God, but living in the
midst of nations of idolaters.
The whole of chapter xvii., with the exception
of vv. 8, 9, has to do with the application of this
law of holy living to the use even of lawful food.
At first thought, the injunctions of the chapter
might seem to belong rather to ceremonial than
to moral law; but closer observation will show
that all the injunctions here given have direct
reference to the avoidance of idolatry, especially
as connected with the preparation and use of
food.
It was not enough that the true Israelite should
abstain from food prohibited by God, as in chap,
xii. ; he must also use that which was permitted
in a way well-pleasing to God, carefully shunning
even the appearance of any complicity with sur-
rounding idolatry, or fellowship with the
heathen in their unholy fashions and customs.
Even so for the Christian: it is not enough that
he abstain from what is expressly forbidden;
even in his use of lawful food, he must so use it
that it shall be to him a means of grace, in help-
ing him to maintain an uninterrupted walk with
God.
In vv. 1-7 is given the law to regulate the use
of such clean animals for food as could be
offered to God in sacrifice; in vv. 10-16, of such
as, although permitted for food, were not allowed
for sacrifice.
The directions regarding the first class may
be summed up in this: all such animals were to
be treated as peace-offerings. No private person
in Israel was to slaughter any such animal any-
where in the camp or out of it, except at the
door of the tent of meeting. Thither they were
to be brought " unto the priest," and offered for
peace-offerings (ver. 5) ; the blood must be
sprinkled on the altar of burnt-offering; the fat
parts burnt " for a sweet savour unto the Lord "
(ver. 6); and then only, the priest having first
taken his appointed portions, the remainder
might now be eaten by the Israelite, as given
back to him by God, in peaceful fellowship with
Him.
The law could not have been burdensome, as
some might hastily imagine. Even when obtain-
able, meat was probably not used as food by
33^
IHE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
them so freely as with us; and in the wilderness
the lack of flesh, it will be remembered, was so
great as to have occasioned at one time a rebel-
lion among the people, who fretfully complained
(Numb. xi. 4): "Who shall give us flesh to
eat? "
Even the uncritical reader must be able to see
how manifest is the Mosaic date of this part of
Leviticus. The terms of this law suppose a
camp-life; indeed, the camp is explicitly named
(ver. 3). That which was enjoined was quite
practicable under the conditions of life in the
wilderness, when, at the best, flesh was scarce,
and the people dwelt compactly together; but
would have been utterly inapplicable and imprac-
ticable at a later date, after they were settled
throughout the land of Canaan, when to have
slaughtered all beasts used for food at the central
sanctuary would have been impossible. Hence
we find that, as we should expect, the modified
law of Deuteronomy (xii. 15, 16, 20-24), assum-
ing the previous existence of this earlier law, ex-
plicitly repeals it. To suppose that forgers of a
later day, as, for instance, of the time of Josiah.
or after the Babylonian exile, should have need-
lessly invented a law of this kind, is an hypothe-
sis which is rightly characterised by Dillmann as
" simply absurd." *
This regulation for the wilderness days is
said (vv. 5, 7) to have been made " to the end
that the children of Israel may bring their sacri-
fices, which they sacrifice in the open field . . .
unto the Lord, . . . and sacrifice them for sacri-
fices of peace offerings unto the Lord. . . And
they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices unto
the he-goats, after whom they go a whoring."
There can be no doubt that in the last sentence,
" he-goats," as in the Revised Version, instead
of " devils," as in the Authorised, is the right
rendering. The worship referred to was still in
existence in the days of the monarchy; for it is
included in the charges against " Jeroboam, the
son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin " (2 Chron.
xi. 15), that " he appointed him priests, . . . for
the he-goats, and for the calves which he had
made." Nor can here we agree with Dillmann f
that in this worship of he-goats here referred to,
there is " no occasion to think of the goat-wor-
ship of Egypt." For inasmuch as we know that
the worship of the sacred bull and that of the he-
goat prevailed in Egypt in those days, and inas-
much as in Ezekiel xx. 6, 7, 15-18, repeated refer-
ence is made to Israel's having worshipped " the
idols of Egypt," one can hardly avoid combining
these two facts, and thus connecting the goat-
worship to which allusion is here made, with
that which prevailed at Mendes, in Lower Egypt.
This cult at that place was accompanied with
nameless revolting rites, such as give special
significance to the description of this worship
(ver. 7) as "a whoring" after the goats; and
abundantly explain and justify the severity of
the penalty attached to the violation of this law
(ver. 4) in cutting ofif the ofifender from this
people; all the more when we observe the fear-
ful persistency of this horrible goat-worship in
"Israel, breaking out anew, as just remarked,
som*: five hundred years later, in the reign of
Jeroboam.
The words imply that the ordinary slaughter
of animals for food was often connected with
some idolatrous ceremony related to this goat-
•"Die Biicher Exodus und Leviticus." 2 Aufl., p. 535.
t Jiiid., p. 537-
worship. What precisely it may have been, we
know not; but of such customs, connecting the
preparation of the daily food with idolatry, we
have abundant illustration in the usages of the
ancient Persians, the Hindoos, and the heathen
Arabs of the days before Mohammed. The law
was thus intended to cut out this every-day idol-
atry by the root. With these " field-devils," as
Luther renders the word, the holy people of the
Lord were to have nothing to do.
Very naturally, the requirement to present all
slaughtered animals as peace-offerings to Je-
hovah gives occasion to turn aside for a little
from the matter of food, which is the chief sub-
ject of the chapter, in order to extend this prin-
ciple beyond animals slaughtered for food, and
insist particularly that all burnt-oflferings and
.■sacrifices of every kind should be sacrificed at
the door of the tent of meeting, and nowhere
else. This law, we are told (ver. 8), was to be
applied, not only to the Israelites themselves, but
also to " strangers" among them; such as, e. g..
were the Gibeonites. No idolatry, nor anything
likely to be associated with it. was to be tolerated
from any one in the holy camp.
The principle which underlies this stringent
law. as also the reason which is given for it. is of
constant application in modern life. There was
nothing wrong in itself in slaying an animal in
one place more than another. It was abstractly
possible — as, likely enough, many an Israelite
may have said to himself — that a man could
just as really " eat imto the Lord " if he slaugh-
tered and ate his animal in the field, as any-
where else. Nevertheless this was forbidden
under the heaviest penalties. It teaches us that
he who will be holy must not only abstain from
that which is in itself always wrong, but must
carefully keep himself from doing even lawful or
necessary things in such a way, or under such
associations and circumstances, as may out-
wardly compromise his Christian standing, or
which may be proved by experience to have an
almost unavoidable tendency toward sin. The
laxity in such matters which prevails in the so-
called " Christian world " argues little for the
tone of spiritual life in our day in those who in-
dulge in it, or allow it, or apologise for it. It
may be true enough, in a sense, that as many
say, there is no harm in this or that. Perhaps
not; but what if experience have shown that,
though in itself not sinful, a certain association
or amusement almost always tends to worldli-
ness, which is a form of idolatry? Or — to use the
apostle's illustration — what if one be seen,
though with no intention of wrong, " sitting at
meat in an idol's temple," and he whose con-
science is weak be thereby emboldened to do
what to him is sin? There is only one safe prin-
ciple, now as in the days of Moses: everything
must be brought " before the Lord;" used as
from Him and for Him. and therefore used
under such limitations and restrictions as His
wise and holy law imposes. Only so shall we be
safe; only so abide in living fellowship with God.
Very beautiful and instructive, again, was the
direction that the Israelite, in the cases specified,
should make his daily food a peace-ofTering.
This involved a dedication of the daily food to
the Lord; and in his receiving it back again then
from the hand of God, the truth was visibly
represented that our daily food is from God;
while also, in the sacrificial acts which preceded
the eating, the Israelite was continually reminded
Leviticus xvii. i-iC]
HOLINESS IN EATING.
)3f
that it was upon the ground of an accepted atone-
ment that even these every-day mercies were re-
ceived. Such also should be, in spirit, the often
neglected prayer before each of our daily meals.
It should be ever offered with the remembrance
of the precious blood which has purchased for us
even the most common mercies; and should thus
sincerely recognise what, in the confusing com-
plexity of the second causes through which we
receive our daily food, we so easily forget: that
the Lord's prayer is not a mere form of words
when we say, " Give us this day our daily bread;"
but that working behind, and in, and with, all
these second causes, is the kindly Providence of
God, who, opening His hand, supplies the want
of every living thing. And so, eating in grateful,
loving fellowship with our Heavenly Father that
which His bounty gives us. to His glory, every
meal shall become, as it were, a sacramental re-
membrance of the Lord. We may have wondered
at what we have read of the world-wide custom
of the Mohammedan, who, whenever the knife of
slaughter is lifted against a beast for food, utters
his " Bism allah," " In the name of the most mer-
ciful God;" and not otherwise will regard his
food as being made halal, or "lawful;" and, no
doubt, in all this, as in many a Christian's prayer,
there may often be little heart. But the thought
in this ceremony is even this of Leviticus, and
we do well to make it our own, eating even our
daily food " in the name of the most merciful
God," and with uplifting of the heart in thank-
ful worship toward Him.
But there were many beasts which, although
they might not be offered to the Lord in sacri-
fice, were yet " clean," and permitted to the
Israelites as food. Such, in particular, were
clean animals that are taken in the hunt or chase.
In vv. 10-16 the law is given for the use of these.
It is prefaced by a very full and explicit prohibi-
tion of the eating of blood;* for while, as re-
gards the animals to be offered to the Lord, pro-
vision was made with respect to the blood, that
it was to be sprinkled around the altar, there was
the danger that in other cases, where this was
not permissible, the blood might be used for
food. Hence the prohibition against eating
"any manner of blood," on a twofold ground:
first (vv. II, 14), that the life of the flesh is the
blood; and second (ver. 11), that, for this rea-
son, God had chosen the blood to be the symbol
of life substituted for the life of the guilty in
atoning sacrifice: " I have given it to you upon
the altar to make atonement for your souls."
Hence, in order that this relation of the blood to
the forgiveness of sins might be constantly kept
before the mind, it was ordained that never
should the Israelite eat of flesh except the blood
should first have been carefully drained out.
And it was to be treated with reverence, as hav-
ing thus a certain sanctity; when the beast was
taken in hunting, the Israelite must (ver. i.^)
" pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with
dust;" — an act by which the blood, the life, was
symbolically returned to Him who in the begin-
ning said (Gen. i. 24), " Let the earth bring forth
the living creature after its kind." And because,
in the case of " that which dieth of itself," or is
" torn of beasts," the blood would not be thus
♦These verses have been partially expounded, indeed,
before, in so far as was necessary to a complete exposition
of the sin-offering ; but in this context the subject is
brought forward in another relation, which renders nec-
essary this additional exDosition.
carefully drained off, all such animals (ver. 15)
are prohibited as food.
It is profoundly instructive to observe that
here, again, we come upon declarations and a
command, the deep truth and fitness of which is
only becoming clear now after three thousand
years. For, as the result of our modern discov-
eries with regard to the constitution of the blood,
and the exact nature of its functions, we in this
day are able to say that it is not far from a
scientific statement of the facts, when we read
(ver. 14), " As to the life of all flesh, the blood
thereof is all one with the life thereof." For it
is in just this respect that the blood is most dis-
tinct from all other parts of the body; that,
whereas it conveys and mediates nourishment to
all, it is itself nourished by none; but by its
myriad cells brought immediately in contact with
the digested food, directly and immediately
assimilates it to itself. We are compelled to say
that as regards the physical life of man — which
alone is signified by the original term here — it is
certainly true of the blood, as of no other part
of the organism, that " the life of all flesh is the
blood thereof."
And while it is true that, according to the text,
a spiritual and moral reason is given for the pro-
hibition of the use of blood as food, yet it is well
worth noting that, as has been already remarked
in another connection, the prohibition, as we are
now beginning to see, had also a hygienic rea-
son. For Dr. de Mussy, in his paper before the
French Academy of Medicine already referred
to,* calls attention to the fact that, not only did
the Mosaic laws exclude from the Hebrew
dietary animals " particularly liable to parasites;"
but also that " it is in the blood," so rigidly pro-
hibited by Moses as food, " that the germs or
spores of infectious disease circulate." Surely no
one need fear, with some expositors, lest this
recognition of a sanitary intent in these laws
shall hinder the recognition of their moral and
spiritual purport, which in this chapter is so ex-
pressly taught. Rather should this cause us the
more to wonder and admire the unity which thus
appears between the demands and necessities of
the physical and the moral and spiritual life; and,
in the discovery of the marvellous adaptation of
these ancient laws to the needs of both, to find a
new confirmation of our faith in God and in His
revealed Word. For thus do they appear to be
laws so far beyond the wisdom of that time, and
so surely beneficent in their working, that in
view of thie it should be easy to believe that it
must indeed have been the Lord God, the Maker
and Preserver of all flesh, who spake all these
laws unto His servant Moses.
The moral and spiritual purpose of this, law
concerning the use of blood was apparently two-
fold. In the first place, it was intended to
educate the people to a reverence for life, and
purify them from that tendency to bloodthirsti-
ness which has so often distinguished heathen
nations, and especially those with whom Israel
was to be brought in closest contact. But sec-
ondly, and chiefly, it was intended, as in the
former part of the chapter, everywhere and al-
ways to keep before the mind the sacredness of
the blood as being the appointed means for the
expiation of sin; given by God upon the altar to
make atonement for the soul of the sinner, " by
reason of the life " or soul with which it stood
in such immediate relation. Not only were they
* See p. 310.
332
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
therefore to abstain from the blood of such ani-
mals as could be offered on the altar, but even
from that of those which could not be offered.
Thus the blood was to remind them, every time
that they ate flesh, of the very solemn truth that
without shedding of blood there was no remis-
sion of sin. The Israelite must never forget
this; even in the heat and excitement of the
chase, he must pause and carefully drain the
blood from the creature he had slain, and rev-
erently cover it with dust;— a symbolic act which
should ever put him in mind of the Divine ordi-
nance that the blood, the life, of a guiltless vic-
tim must be given, in order to the forgiveness of
sin.
A lesson lies here for us regarding the sacred-
ness of all that is associated with sacred things.
All that is connected with God, and with His
worship, especially all that is connected with His
revelation of Himself for our salvation, is to be
treated with the most profound reverence. Even
though the blood of the deer killed in the chase
could not be used in sacrifice, yet, because it
was blood, was in its essential nature like unto
that which was so used, therefore it must be
treated with a certain respect, and be always
covered with earth. It is the fashion of our age
— and one which is increasing in an alarming
degree — to speak lightly of things which are
closely connected with the revelation and wor-
ship of the holy God. Against everything of this
kind the spirit of this law- warns us. Nothing
which is associated in any way with w-hat is
sacred is to be spoken of or treated irreverently,
lest we thus come to think lightly of the sacred
things themselves. This irreverent treatment of
holy things is a crying evil in many parts of the
English-speaking world, as also in continental
Christendom. We need to beware of it. After
irreverence, too often, by no obscure law, comes
open denial of the Holy One and of His Holy
Son, our Lord and Saviour. The blood of
Christ, which represented that holy life which
was given on the cross for our sins, is holy — an
infinitely holy thing ! And what is God's esti-
mate of its sanctity we may perhaps learn —
looking through the symbol to that which was
symbolised — from this law; which required that
all blood, because outwardly resembling the holy
blood of sacrifice, and, like it, the seat and
vehicle of life, should be treated with most care-
ful reverence. And it is safe to say that just those
most need the lesson taught by this command
who find it the hardest to appreciate it, and to
whom its injunctions still seem regulations
puerile and unworthy, according to their fancy,
of the dignity and majesty of God.
CHAPTER XX.
THE LAW OF HOLINESS: CHASTITY.
Leviticus xviii. 1-30.
Chapters xviii., xix., and xx., by a formal in-
troduction (xviii. 1-5) and a formal closing (xx.
22-26), are indicated as a distinct section, very
commonly known by the name, " the Law of
Holiness." As this phrase indicates, these chap-
ters— unlike chap, xvii., v/hich as to its contents
has a character intermediate between the cere-
monial and moral law — consist substantially of
moral prohibitions and commandments through-
out. Of the three, the first two contain the pro-
hibitions and precepts of the law; the third (xx.),
the penal sanctions by which many of these were
to be enforced.
The section opens (vv. i, 2) with Jehovah's
assertion of His absolute supremacy, and a re-
minder to Israel of the fact that He had entered
into covenant relations with them: " I am the
Lord your God." With solemn emphasis the
words are again repeated, ver. 4; and yet again in
ver. 5: " I am the Lord."* They would naturally
call to mind the scene at Sinai, with its august
and appalling grandeur, attesting amid earthquake
and fire and tempest at once the being, power,
and unapproachable holiness of Him who then
and there, with those stupendous solemnities, in
inexplicable condescension, took Israel into
covenant with Himself, to be to Himself " a
kingdom of priests and a holy nation/' There
could be no question as to the right of the God
thus revealed to impose law ; no question as to
the peculiar obligation upon Israel to keep His
law; no question as to His intolerance of sin, and
full power and determination, as the Holy One,
to enforce whatever He commanded. All these
thoughts — thoughts of eternal moment — would
be called up in the mind of every devout Israelite,
as he heard or read this preface to the law of
holiness.
The prohibitions which we find in chap xviii.
are not given as an exhaustive code of laws upon
the subjects traversed, but rather deal with cer-
tain gross offences against the law of chastity,
which, as we know from other sources, were
horribly common at that time among the sur-
rounding nations. To indulgence in these
crimes, Israel, as the later history sadly shows,
would be especially liable; so contagious are evil
example and corrupt associations! Hence the
general scope of the chapter is announced in
this form (ver. 3) : " After the doings of the land
of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and
after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I
bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk
in their statutes."
Instead of this, they were (ver. 4) to do God's
judgments, and keep His statutes, to walk in
them, bearing in mind whose they were. And as
a further motive it is added (ver. 5) : " which if
a man do, he shall live in them;" that is, as the
Chaldee paraphrast, Onkelos, rightly interprets
in the Targum, " with the life of eternity."
Which far-reaching promise is sealed by the
repetition, for the third time, of the words, " I
am the Lord." That is enough; for what Je-
hovah promises, that shall certainly be!
The law begins (ver. 6) with a general state-
ment of the principle which underlies all particu-
lar prohibitions of incest: " None of you shall
approach to any that is near of kin to him, to
uncover their nakedness;" and then, for the
fourth time, are iterated the words, " I am the
Lord." The prohibitions which follow require
little special explanation. As just remarked,
they are directed in particular to those breaches
of the law of chastity which were most common
with the Egyptians, from the midst of whom
Israel had come; and with the Canaanites, to
whose land they were going. This explains, for
* It deserves to be noticed that in this phrase, which re-
curs with such frequency in this "Law of Holiness," the
orig:inal, with evident allusion to Exod. iii. 15 ; vi. 2-4, al-
ways has the covenant name of God, commonly anglicised
"Jehovah." The retention of the term " Lord " here, as
in many other places, is much to be regretted, as seri-
ously weakening and obscuring the sense to the ordinary
reader.
Leviticus xviii. 1-30.]
LAW OF HOLINESS: CHASTITY.
333
instance, the fulness of detail in the prohibition
of incestuous union with a sister or half-sister
(vv. 9, 11), — an iniquity very common in Egypt,
having the sanction of royal custom from the
days of the Pharaohs down to the time of the
Ptolemies. The unnatural alliance of a man
with his mother prohibited in ver. 8, of which
Paul declared (i Cor. v. i) that in his day it did
not exist among the Gentiles, was yet the distin-
guishing infamy of the Medes and Persians for
many centuries. Union with an aunt, by blood
or by marriage, prohibited in vv. 12-14, — a con-
nection less gross, and less severely to be pun-
ished than the preceding, — seems to have been
permitted even among the Israelites themselves
while in Egypt, as is plain from the case of
Amram and Jochebed (Exod. vi. 20). To the
law forbidding connection with a. brother's wife
(ver. 16), the later Deuteronomic law (Deut.
XXV. 5-10), made an exception, permitting that
a man might marry the widow of his deceased
brother, when the latter had died without chil-
dren, and " raise up seed unto his brother." In
this, however, the law but sanctioned a custom
which — as we learn from the case of Onan (Gen.
xxxviii.) — had been observed long before the
days of Moses, both by the Hebrews and other
ancient nations, and, indeed, even limited and
restricted its application; with good reason pro-
viding for exemption of the surviving brother
from this duty, in cases where for any reason it
might be repugnant or impracticable.
The case of a connection with both a woman
and her daughter or granddaughter is next men-
tioned (ver. 17); and, with special emphasis, is
declared to be " wickedness," or " enormity."
The prohibition (ver. 18) of marriage with
a sister-in-law, as is well known, has been, and
stiU is, the occasion of much controversy, into
which it is not necessary here to enter at length.
But, whatever may be thought for other reasons
as to the lawfulness of such a union, it truly
seems quite singular that this verse should ever
have been cited as prohibiting such an alliance.
No words could well be more explicit than those
which we have here, in limiting the application
of the prohibition to the life-time of the wife:
" Thou shalt not take a woman to her sister, to
be a rival to her, to uncover her nakedness, beside
the other in her life time " (R.V.). The law there-
fore does not touch the question for which it is
so often cited, but was evidently only intended
as a restriction on prevalent polygamy. Polyg-
amy is ever likely to produce jealousies and
heart-burnings; but it is plain that this phase of
the evil would reach its most extreme and odious
expression when the new and rival wife was a
sister to the one already married; when it would
practically annul sisterly love, and give rise to
such painful and peculiarly humiliating dissen-
sions as we read of between the sisters Leah and
Rachel. The sense of the passage is so plain,
that we are told that this interpretation " stood
its ground unchallenged from the third century
B. c. to the middle of the sixteenth century a. d."
Whatever opinion any may hold therefore as to
the expediency, upon other grounds, of this much
debated alliance, this passage, certainly, cannot
be fairly cited as forbidding it; but is far more
naturally understood as by natural implication
permitting the union, after the decease of the first
wife. The laws concerning incest therefore ter-
minate with ver. 17; and ver. 18, according to
this interpretation, must be regarded as a re-
22— Vol. I.
striction upon polygamous connections, as ver.
19 is upon the rights of marriage.
It seems somewhat surprising that the question
should have been raised, even theoretically,
whether the Mosaic law, as regards the degrees
of affinity prohibited in marriage, is of perma-
nent authority. The reasons for these prohibi-
tions, wherever given, are as valid now as then;
for the simple reason that they are grounded
fundamentally in a matter of fact, — namely, the
nature of the relation between husband and wife,
whereby they become " one flesh," implied in
such phraseology as we find in ver. 16; and also
the relation of blood between members of the
same family, as in vv. 10, etc. Happily, how-
ever, whatever theory any may have held, the
Church in all ages has practically recognised
every one of these prohibitions, as binding on all
persons; and has rather been inclined to err, if
at all, by extending, through inference and
analogy, the prohibited degrees even beyond the
Mosaic code. So much, however, by way of
guarding against excess in such inferential ex-
tensions of the law, we must certainly say: ac-
cording to the law itself, as further applied in
chap. xxi. 1-4, and limited in Deut. xxv. 5-10,
relationship by marriage is not to be regarded
as precisely equivalent in degree of affinity to
relationship by blood. We cannot, for instance,
conceive that, under any circumstances, the pro-
hibition of the marriage of brothers and sisters
should have had any exception; and yet, as we
have seen, the marriage between brother and
sister-in-law is explicitly authorised, in the case
of the levirate marriage, and by implication al-
lowed in other cases, by the language of ver.
18 of this chapter.
But in these days, when there is such a mani-
fest inclination in Christendom, as especially in
the United States and in France, to ignore the
law of God in regard to marriage and divorce,
and regulate these instead by a majority vote, it
assuredly becomes peculiarly imperative that, as
Christians, we exercise a holy jealousy for the
honour of God and the sanctity of the family,
and ever refuse to allow a majority vote any au-
thority in these matters, where it contravenes the
law of God. While we must observe caution
that in these things we lay no burden on the
conscience of any, which God has not first placed
there, we must insist — all the more strenuously
because of the universal tendency to license —
upon the strict observance of all that is either
explicitly taught or by necessary implication in-
volved in the teachings of God's Word upon this
question. Nothing more fundamentally con-
cerns the well-being of society than the relation
of the man and the woman in the constitution of
the family; and while, unfortunately, in our
modern democratic communities, the Church
may not be able always to control and determine
the civil law in these matters, she can at least
utterly refuse any compromise where the civil
law ignores what God has spoken; and with un-
wavering firmness deny her sanction, in any way,
to any connection between a man and a woman
which is not according to the revealed will of
God, as set before us in this most holy, good,
and beneficent law.
The chapter before us casts a light upon the
moral condition of the most cultivated heathen
peoples in those days, among whom many of
the grossest of these incestuous connections, as
already remarked, were quite common, even
334
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
among those of the highest station. There are
many in our day more or less affected with the
present fashion of admiration for the ancient
(and modern) heathenisms, who would do well
to heed this light, that their blind enthusiasm
might thereby be somewhat tempered.
On the other hand, these laws show us, in a
very striking contrast, the estimate which God
puts upon the maintenance of holiness, purity,
and chastity between man and woman; and His
very jealous regard for the sanctity of the family
in all its various relations. Even in the Old
Testament we have hints of ''a reason for this,
deeper than mere expediency, — hints which re-
ceive a definite form in the clearer teaching of the
New Testament, which tells us that in the Divine
plan it is ordained that in these earthly relations
man shall be the shadow and image of God. If,
as the Apostle tells us (Eph. iii. 15, R.V.), " every
family in heaven and on earth " is named from
the Father; and if, as he again teaches (Eph. v.
29-32), the relation of husband and wife is in-
tended to be an earthly type and symbol of the
relation between the Lord Jesus Christ and His
Church, which is His Bride, — then we cannot
wonder at the exceedingly strong emphasis
which marks these prohibitions. Everything
must be excluded which would be incompatible
with this holy ideal of God for man; that not only
in the constitution of his person, but in these
sacred relations which belong to his very nature,
as created male and female, he should be the im-
age of the invisible God.
Thus, he who is a father is ever to bear in
mind that in his fatherhood he is appointed to
shadow forth the ineffable mystery of the eternal
relation of the only-begotten and most holy Son
to this everlasting Father. As husband, the man
is to remember that since he who is joined to his
wife becomes with her " one flesh," therefore
this union becomes, in the Divine ordination, a
type and pattern of the yet more mysterious
union of life between the Son of God and the
Church, which is His Bride. As brothers and
sisters, again, the children of God are to remem-
ber that brotherly love, in its purity and unself-
ish devotion, is intended of God to be a living
ilku; ration of the love of Him who has been
made of God to be " the firstborn among many
brethren " (Rom. viii. 29). And thus, with the
family life pervaded through and through by
these ideas, will license and impurity be made
impossible, and, as happily now in many a
Christian home, it will appear that the family,
no less truly than the Church, is appointed of
God to be a sanctuary of purity in a world im-
pure and corrupt by wicked works, and, no less
really than the Church, to be an effective means
of Divine grace, and of preparation for the
eternal life of the heavenly kingdom, when all
of God's " many sons " shall have been brought
to glory, the " many Tjrethren " of the First-Be-
gotten, to abide with Him in the Father's house
for ever and ever.
After the prohibition of adultery in ver. 20, we
have what at first seems like a very abrupt intro-
duction of a totally different subject; for ver.
21 refers, not to the seventh, but to the second,
and, therewith also, to the sixth commandment.
It reads: " Thou shalt not give any of thy seed to
make them pass through the fire to Molech.
neither shalt thou orofane the name of thy God."
But the connection of tbous-ht is found in the
historical relation of the licentious practices pro-
hibited in the preceding verses to idolatry, of
which this Molech-worship is named as one of
the most hideous manifestations. Some, indeed,
have supposed that this frequently recurring
phrase does not designate an actual sacrifice ot
the children, but only their consecration to Mo-
lech by some kind of fire-baptism. But certainly
such passages as 2 Kings xvii. 31, Jer. vii. 31,
xix. 5, distinctly require us to understand an
actual offering of the children as " burnt-offer-
ings." They were not indeed burnt alive, as a
late and untrustworthy tradition has it, but were
first slain, as in the case of all burnt-sacrifices,
and then burnt. The unnatural cruelty of the
sacrifice, even as thus made, was such, that both
here and in xx. 3 it is described as in a special
sense a '" profaning " of God's holy name, — a
profanation, in that it represented Him, the Lord
of love and fatherly mercy, as requiring such a
cruel and unnatural sacrifice of parental love, n
the immolation of innocent children.
The inconceivably unnatural crimes prohibited
in vv. 22, 23 were in like manner essentially con-
nected with idolatrous worship: the former with
the worship of Astarte or Ashtoreth; the latter
with the worship of the he-goat at Mendes in
Egypt, as the symbol of the generative power in
nature. What a hideous perversion of the moral
sense was involved in these crimes, as thus con-
nected with idolatrous worship, is illustrated
strikingly by the fact that men and women, thus
prostituted to the service of false gods, were
designated by the terms qddesh and qddeshdh.
" sacred," '" huly " 1* No wonder that the
sacred writer brands these horrible crimes es, in
a peculiar and almost solitary sense, " abomin-
ation," " confusion."
In these days of ours, when it has become the
fashion among a certain class of cultured writers
— who would still, in many instances, apparently
desire to be called Christian — to act as the
apologist of idolatrous, and, according to Holy
Scripture, false religions, the mention of these
crimes in this connection may well remind the
reader of what such seem to forget, as they cer-
tainly ignore; namely, that in all ages, in the
modern heathenism no less than in the ancient,
idolatry and gross licentiousness ever go hand
in hand. Still, to-day, even in Her Majesty's
Indian Empire, is the most horrible licentious-
ness practised as an office of religious worship.
Nor are such revolting perversions of the moral
sense confined to the " Maharajas " of (.he tem-
ples in Western India, who figured ir certain
trials in Bombay a few years ago; for ^ven the
modern " reformed " Hindooism, fron<. which
some hope so much, has not always beei- able to
shake itself free from the pollution i){ these
things, as witness the argument condixted in
recent numbers of the Arya Patrikd of Lahore,
to justify the infamous custom known as Niyoga,
practised to this day in India, c. g., by the Panday
Brahmans of Allahabad; — a practice which is
sufficiently described as being adultery arranged
for, under certain conditions, by a wife or hus-
band, the one for the other. One would fain
charitably hope, if possible, that our modern
apologists for Oriental idolatries are unaccount-
ably ignorant of what all history should have
taiiffht them as to the inseparable connection be-
tween idolatry and licentiousness. Both Egypt
and Canaan, in the olden time, — as this chap-
* See, for example, in the Hebrew text, i Kings xiv. 24;
Gen. xxxviii. 21 ; Hosea iv. 14, et passim.
Leviticus xix. 1-37. J
LAW OF HOLINESS.
335
ter with all contemporaneous history teaches, —
and also India in modern times, read us a very
awful lesson on this subject. Not only have
these idolatries led too often to gross licentious-
ness of life, but in their full development they
have, again and again, in audacious and blas-
phemous profanation of the most holy God, and
defiance even of the natural conscience, given to
the most horrible excesses of unbridled lust the
supreme sanction of .declaring them to be reli-
gious obligations. Assuredly, in God's sight, it
cannot be a trifling thing for any man, even
through ignorance, to extol, or even apologise
for, religions with which such enormities are
both logically and historically connected. And
«o, in these stern prohibitions, and their heavy
penal sanctions, we may find a profitable lesson
for even the cultivated intellect of the nineteenth
century!
The chapter closes with reiterated charges
against indulgence in any of these abominations.
Israel is told (vv. 25, 28) that it was because the
Canaanites practised these enormities that God
was about to scourge them out of their land; — a
judicial reason which, one would think, should
have some weight with those whose sympathies
are so drawn out with commiseration for the
Canaanites, that they find it impossible to believe
that it can be true, as we are told in the Penta-
teuch, that God ordered their extermination.
Rather, in the light of the facts, would we raise
the opposite question: whether, if God indeed be
a holy and righteous Governor among the na-
tions, He could do anything else either in justice
toward the Canaanites, or in mercy toward those
whom their horrible example would certainly in
like manner corrupt, than, in one way or an-
other, effect the extermination of such a people?
Israel is then solemnly warned (ver. 28) that
if they, notwithstanding, shall practise these
crimes, God will not spare them any more than
He spared the Canaanites. No covenant of His
with them shall hinder the land from spueing
ihem out in like manner. And though the na-
tion, as a whole, give not itself to these things,
each individual is warned (ver. 29), " Whoso-
ever shall commit any of these abominations,
even the souls that do them shall be cut off from
among their people;" that is, shall be outlawed
and shut out from all participation in covenant
mercies. And therewith this part of the law of
holiness closes, with those pregnant words, re-
peated now in this chapter for the fifth time:
" I am the Lord (Heb. Jehovah) your God! "
*
CHAPTER XKl
THE LAW OF HOLINESS [CONCLUDED).
Leviticus xix. 1-37.
We have in this chapter r. series of precepts
and prohibitions which ffjrn internal evidence
appear to have been select'^d by an inspired
redactor of the canon from various original docu-
ments, with the purpose, rot of presenting a
complete enumeration of all moral and ceremon-
ial duties, but of illustratir g the application in
the everyday life of the Isr?elite of the injunction
which stands at the beginning of the chapter
(ver. 2): " Ye shall be ho'y: for I the Lord your
God am holy."
Truly strange it is, in ihe full ]ip;ht of Hebrew
history, to find any on'', like Kalisch. represent-
ing this conception of holiness, so fundamental
to this law, as the " ripest fruit of Hebrew cul-
ture"! For it is insisted by such competent
critics, as Dillmann, that we have not in this
chapter a late development of Hebrew thought,
but "ancient," "the most ancient" material;*
— we shall venture to say, dating even from the
days of Moses, as is declared in ver. i. And we
may say more. For if such be the antiquity of
this law, it should be easy even for the most
superficial reader of the history to see how im-
measurably far was that horde of almost wholly
uncultured fugitives from Egyptian bondage
from having attained through any culture this
Mosaic conception of holiness. For " He-
brew culture," even in its latest maturity,
has, at the best, only tended to develop
more and more the idea, not of holiness,
but of legality — a very different thing! The
ideal expressed in this command, " Ye shall be
holy," must have come, not from Israel, not even
from Moses, as if originated by him, but from
the Holy God Himself, even as the chapter in
its first verse testifies.
The position of this command at the head of
the long list of precepts which follows, is most
significant and instructive. It sets before us
the object of the whole ceremonial and moral
law, and, we may add, the supreme object of
the Gospel also, namely, to produce a certain
type of moral and spiritual character, a holy
manhood; it, moreover, precisely interprets this
term, so universally misunderstood and misap-
plied among all nations, as essentially consist-
ing in a spiritual likeness to God: " Ye shall be
holy: for I the Lord your God am holy." These
words evidently at once define holiness and de-
clare the supreme motive to the attainment and
maintenance of a holy character. This then is
brought before us as the central thought in which
all the diverse precepts and prohibitions which
follow find their unity; and, accordingly, we find
this keynote of the whole law echoing, as it
were, all through this chapter, in the constant
refrain, repeated herein no less than fourteen —
twice seven — times: " I am the Lord (Heb. Je-
hovah) ! " " I am the Lord your God! "
The first division of the law of holiness which
follows (vv. 3-8) deals with two duties of funda-
mental importance in the social and the religious
life: the one, honour to parents; the other, rev-
erence to God.
If we are surprised, at first, to see this place
of honour in the law of holiness given to the
fifth commandment (ver. 3), our surprise will
lessen when we remember how, taking the indi-
vidual in the development of his personal life,
he learns to fear God, first of all, through fearing
and honouring his parents. In the earliest be-
ginnings of life, the parent — to speak with rev-
erence— stands to his child, in a very peculiar
sense, for and in the place of God. We gain the
conception of the Father in heaven first from our
experience of fatherhood on earth; and so it
may be said of this commandment, in a sense
in which it cannot be said of any other, that it
is the foundation of all religion. Alas for the
child who contemns the instruction of his father
and the command of his mother! for by so doing
he puts himself out of the possibility of coming
into the knowledge and experience of the
Fatherhood of God.
The principle of reverence toward God is in-
culcated, not here by dir<^'-t orccept. but by three
* " Die Biicher Exodus urd Leviticus," 2 .^ufl., p. 550.
336
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
injunctions, obedience to which presupposes the
fear of God in the heart. These are, first (ver.
3), the keeping of the sabbaths; the possessive,
" My sabbaths," reminding us tersely of God's
claim upon the seventh part of all our time as
His time. Then is commanded the avoidance
of idolatry (ver. 4); and, lastly (vv. 5-8), a
charge as to the observance of the law of the
peace-offering.
One reason seems to have determined the
selection of each of these three injunctions,
namely, that Israel would be more liable to fail
in obedience to these than perhaps any other
duties of the law. As for the sabbath, this, like
the law of the peace-offering, was a positive, not
a moral law; that is, it depended for its authority
primarily on the explicit ordinance of God, in-
stead of the intuition of the natural conscience.
Hence it was certain that it would only be kept
in so far as man retained a vivid consciousness
of the Divine personality and moral authority.
Moreover, as all history has shown, the law of
the sabbath rest from labour constantly comes
into conflict with man's love of gain and eager
haste to make money. It is a life-picture, true
for men of every generation, when Arnos (viii.
5) brings before us the Israelites of his day as
saying, in their insatiate worldly greed, " When
will the sabbath be gone, that we may set forth
wheat?" As regards the selection of the second
commandment, one can easily see that Israel's
loyalty, surrounded as they were on every side
with idolaters, was to be tested with peculiar
severity on this point, whether they would in-
deed worship the living God alone and without
the intervention of luols.
The circumstances, as regards the peace-ofTer-
ing, were different; but the same principle of
choice can be discovered in this also. For
among all the various ordinances of sacrificial
worship there was none in which the requisitions
of the law were more likely to be neglected;
partly because these were the most frequent of all
offerings, and also because the Israelite would
often be tempted, through a short-sighted econ-
omy and worldly thriftiness, to use the meat
of the peace-offering for food, if any remained
until the third day, instead of burning it, in such
case, as the Lord commanded. Hence the re-
minder of the law on this subject, teaching that
he who will be holy must not seek to save at
the expense of obedience to the holy God.
The second section of this chapter (vv. 9-18)
consists of five groups, each of five precepts, all
relating to duties which the law of holiness re-
quires from man to man, and each of them clos-
ing with the characteristic and impressive re-
frain, " I am the Lord."
The first of these pentads (vv. 9, 10) requires
habitual care for the poor: we read, " Thou shaft
not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither
shaft thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest.
And thou shaft not glean thy vineyard, neither
shalt thou gather the fallen fruit of thy vine-
yard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and for
the stranger."
The law covers the three chief products of their
agriculture: the grain, the product of the vine,
and the fruit of the trees, — largely olive-trees,
which were often planted in the vineyard. So
often as God blessed them with the harvest, they
were to remember the poor, and also " the
stranger," yvho according to the law could have
a legal claim to no land in Israel. Apart from
the benefit to the poor, one can readily see what
an admirable discipline against man's natural
selfishness, and in loyalty to God, this regulation,
faithfully observed, must have been. Behind
these commands lies the principle, elsewhere ex-
plicitly expressed (xxv. 23), that the land which
the Israelite tilled was not his own, but the
Lord's; and it is as the Owner of the land that
He thus charges them that as His tenants they
shall not regard themselves as entitled to every-
thing that the land produces, but bear in mind
that He intends a portion of every acre of each
Israelite to be reserved for the poor. And so
the labourer in the harvest-field was continually
reminded that in his husbandry he was merely
God's steward, bound to apply the product of the
land, the use of which was given him, in such a
way as should please the Lord.
If the law is not in force as to the letter, let
us not forget that it is of full validity as to its
spirit. God is still the God of the poor and
needy; and we are still every one, as truly as the
Hebrew in those days, the stewards of God.
And the poor we have with us always; perhaps
never more than in these days, in which so great
masses of helpless humanity are crowded to-
gether in our immense cities, did the cry of the
poor and needy so ascend to heaven. And that
the Apostles, acting under Divine direction, and
abolishing the letter of the theocratic law, yet
steadily maintained the spirit and intention of
that law in care for the poor, is testified with
abundant fulness in the New Testament. One
of the firstfruits of Pentecost in the lives of be-
lievers was just this, that " all that believed . . .
had all things common " (Acts ii. 44, 45), so
that, going even beyond the letter of the old law,
" they sold their possessions and goods, and
parted them to all, according as any man had
need." And the one only charge which the
Apostles at Jerusalem gave unto Paul is re-
ported by him in these words (Gal. ii. 10):
" Only they would that we should remember the
poor; which very thing I was also zealous to do."
Let the believer then remember this who has
plenty: the corners of his fields are to be kept for
the poor, and the <jleanings of his vineyards; and
let the believer also take the peculiar comfort
from this law, if he is poor, that God, his
heavenly Father, has a kindly care, not merely
for his spiritual wants, but also for his temporal
necessities.
The second pentad (vv. 11, 12) in the letter
refers to three of the ten commandments, but is
really concerned, priitiarily, with stealing and de-
frauding; for the lying and false swearing is here
regarded only as commonly connected with theft
and fraud, because often necessary to secure the
result of a man's plunder. The pentad is in this
form: "Ye shall not steal; neither shall ye deal
falsely, nor lie one to another. And ye shall not
swear by My name falsely, so that thou profane
the name of thy God: I am the Lord! "
Close upon stinginess and the careless greed
which neglects the poor, with eager grasping
after the last grape on the vine, follows the
active effort to get, not only the uttermost that
might by any stretch of charity be regarded
as our own, but also to get something more that
belongs to our neighbour. There is thus a very
close connection in thought, as well as in posi-
tion, in these two groups of precepts. And the
sequence of thought in this group suggests what
is, indeed, markedly true of stealing, but also of
Leviticus xix. 1-37.]
LAW OF HOLINESS (CONCLUDED).
337
other sins. Sin rarely goes alone; one sin, by
almost a necessity, leads straight on to another
sin. He who steals, or deals falsely in regard to
anything committed to his trust, will most natur-
ally be led on at once to lie about it; and when
his lie is challenged, as it is likely to be, he is im-
pelled by a fatal pressure to go yet further, and
fortify his lie, and consummate his sin, by ap-
pealing by an oath to the Holy God, as witness
to the truth of his lie. Thus, the sin which in
the beginning is directed only toward a fellow-
man, too often causes one to sin immediately
against God, in profanation of the narne of the
God of truth, by calling on Him as witness to
a lie! Of this tendency of sin, stealing is a single
illustration; but let us ever remember that it is
a law of all sin that sin ever begets more sin.
This second group has dealt with injury to
the neighbour in the way of guile and fraud; the
third pentad (vv. 13, 14), progressing further,
speaks of wrong committed in ways of oppres-
sion and violence. " Thou shalt not oppress thy
neighbour, nor rob him: the wages of a hired
servant shall not abide with thee all night until
the morning. Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor
put a stumbling-block before the blind, but thou
shalt fear thy God: I am the Lord! " In these
commands, again it is still the helpless and de-
fenceless in whose behalf the Lord is speaking.
The words regard a man as having it in his
power to press hard upon his neighbour; as when
an employer, seeing that a man must needs have
work at any price, takes advantage of his need
to employ him at less than fair wages; or as
when he who holds a mortgage against his
neighbour, seeing an opportunity to possess him-
self of a field or an estate for a trifle, by pressing
his technical legal rights, strips his poor debtor
needlessly. No end of illustrations, evidently,
could be given out of our modern life. Man's
nature is the same now as in the days of Moses.
But all dealings of this kind, whether then or
now, the law of holiness sternly prohibits.
So also with the injunction concerning the re-
tention of wages after it is due. I have not
fulfilled the law of love toward the man or wo-
man whom I employ merely by paying fair
wages; I must also pay promptly. The Deutero-
nomic law repeats the command, and, with a
peculiar touch of sympathetic tenderness, adds
the reason (xxiv. 15) : " for he is poor, and
setteth his heart upon it." I must therefore give
the labourer his wages " in his day." A sin this
is, of the rich especially, and, most of all, of rich
corporations, with which the sense of personal
responsibility to God is too often reduced to a
minimum. Yet it is often, no doubt, committed
through sheer thoughtlessness. Men who are
themselves blessed with such abundance that they
are not seriously incommoded by a delay in re-
ceiving some small sum, too often forget how a
great part of the poor live, as the saying is,
" from hand to mouth," so that the failure to get
what is due to them at the exact time appointed
is frequently a sore trial; and, moreover, by
forcing them to buy on credit instead of for cash,
of necessity increases the expense of their living,
and so really robs them of that which is their
own.
The thought is still of care for the helpless, in
the words concerning the deaf and the blind,
which, of course, are of perpetual force, and, in
the principle involved, reach indefinitely beyond
these single illustrations. We are not to take
advantage of any man's helplessness, and, espe-
cially, of such disabilities as he cannot help, tp
wrong him. Even the common conscience of
men recognises this as both wicked and mean;
and this verdict of conscience is here emphasised
by the reminder " I am the Lord," — suggesting
that the labourer who reaps the fields, yea, the
blind also and the deaf, are His creatures; and
that He, the merciful and just One, will not dis-
own the relation, but will plead their cause.
Each of these groups of precepts has kept the
poor and the needy in a special way, though not
exclusively, before the conscience. And yet no
man is to imagine that therefore God will be
partial toward the poor, and that hence, although
one may not wrong the poor, one may wrong the
rich with impunity. Many of our modern social
reformers, in their zeal for the betterment of the
poor, seem to imagine that because a poor man
has rights which are too frequently ignored by
the rich, and thus often suffers grievous wrongs,
therefore a rich man has no rights which the
poor man is bound to respect. The next pentad
of precepts therefore guards against any such
false inference from God's special concern for
the poor, and reminds us that the absolute
righteousness of the Holy One requires that the
rights of the rich be observed no less than the
rights of the poor, those of the employer no less
than those of the employed. It deals especially
with this matter as it comes up in questions re-
quiring legal adjudication. We read (vv. 15, 16),
" Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment:
thou shalt not respect the person of the poor,
nor honour the person of the mighty: but in
righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.
Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer
among thy people: neither shalt thou stand
against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the
Lord!"
A plain warning lies here for an increasingclass
of reformers in our day, who loudly express their
special concern for the poor, but who in their
zeal for social reform and the diminishing of
poverty are forgetful of righteousness and equity.
It applies, for instance, to all who would affirm
and teach with Marx that "capital is robbery;"
or who, not yet quite ready for so plain and
candid words, yet would, in any way, in order to
right the wrongs of the poor, advocate legislation
involving practical confiscation of the estates of
the rich.
In close connection with the foregoing, the
next precept forbids, not precisely " tale-bear-
ing," but " slander," as the word is elsewhere
rendered, even in the Revised Version. In the
court of judgment, slander is not to be uttered
nor listened to. The clause which follows is
obscure; but means either, "Thou shalt not. by
such slanderous testimony, seek in the court of
judgment thy neighbour's life," which best suits
the parallelism; or, perhaps, as the Talmud and
most modern Jewish versions interpret, " Thou
shalt not stand silent by, when thy neighbour's
life is in danger in the court of judgment, and
thy testimony might save him." And then again
comes in the customary refrain, reminding the
Israelite that in every court, noting every act of
judgment, and listening to every witness, is a
judge unseen, omniscient, absolutely righteous,
under whose final review, for confirmation or
reversal, shall come all earthly decisions: "I,"
who thus speak, " am the Lord! "
The fifth and last pentad (vv. 17, 18) fitly
338
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
closes the series, by its five precepts, of which,
three, reaching behind all such outward acts as
are required or forbidden in the foregoing, deal
with the state of the heart toward our neighbour
which the law of holiness requires, as the soul
and the root of all righteousness. It closes with
the familiar words, so simple that all can under-
stand them, so comprehensive that in obedience
to them is comprehended all morality and right-
eousness toward man: "Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself." The verses read, " Thou
shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou
shalt surely rebuke thy neighbour, and not bear
sin because of him. Thou shalt not take ven-
geance, nor bear any grudge against the children
or thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself: I am the Lord! "
Most instructive it is to find it suggested by
this order, as the best evidence of the absence of
hate, and the truest expression of love to our
neighbour, that when we see him doing wrong
we shall rebuke him. The Apostle Paul has en-
joined upon Christians the same duty, indicating
also the spirit in which it is to be performed
(Gal. vi. i): " Brethren, even if a man be over-
taken in any trespass, ye which are spiritual, re-
store such a one in a spirit of meekness; looking
to thyself, lest thou also be tempted." Thus, if
we will be holy, it is not to be a matter of no
concern to us that our neighbour does wrong,
even though that wrong do not directly affect
our personal well-being. Instead of this, we are
to remember that if we rebuke him not, we our-
selves " bear sin, because of him;" that is, we
ourselves, in a degree, become guilty with him,
because of that wrong-doing of his which we
sought not in any way to hinder. But although,
on the one hand, I am to rebuke the wrong-
doer, even when his wrong does not touch me
personally, yet, the law adds, I am not to take
into my own hands the avenging of wrongs,
even when myself injured; neither am I to be
envious and grudge any neighbour the good he
may have; no, not though he be an ill-doer and
deserve it not; but be he friend or foe, well-doer
or ill-doer, I must love him as myself.
What an admirable epitome of the whole law
of righteousness! a Mosaic anticipation of the
very spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Evi-
dently, the same mind speaks in both alike; the
law the same, the object and aim of the law the
same, both in Leviticus and in the Gospel. In
this law we hear: "Ye shall be holy: for I the
Lord your God am holy;" in the Sermon on the
Mount: " Ye shall be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect."
The third division of this chapter (vv. 19-32)
opens with a general charge to obedience: " Ye
shall keep My statutes;" very possibly, because
several of the commands which immediately
follow might seem in themselves of little conse-
quence, and so be lightly disobeyed. The law
of ver. 19 prohibits raising hybrid animals, as,
for example, mules; the next command appar-
ently refers to the chance, through sowing a
field with mingled seed, of giving rise to hybrid
forms in the vegetable kingdom. The last com-
mand in this verse is obscure both in meaning
and intention. It reads (R.V.), " Neither shall
there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of
stuff mingled together." Most probably the ref-
erence is to different materials, interwoven in
the yarn of which the dress was made; but a diffi-
culty still remains in the fact that such admixture
was ordered in the garments of the priests. Per-
haps the best explanation is that of Josephus,
that the law here was only intended for the
laity; which, as no question of intrinsic morality
was involved, might easily have been. But when
we inquire as to the reason of these prohibitions,
and especially of this last one, it must be con-
fessed that it is hard for us now to speak with
confidence. Most probable it appears that they
were intended for an educational purpose, to
cultivate in the mind of the people the sentiment
of reverence for the order established in nature
by God. For what the world calls the order of
nature is really an order appointed by God, as
the infinitely wise and perfect One; hence, as
nature is thus a manifestation of God, the He-
brew was forbidden to seek to bring about that
which is not according to nature, unnatural com-
mixtures; and from this point of view, the last
of the three precepts appears to be a symbolic
reminder of the same duty, namely, reverence
for the order of nature, as being an order de-
termined by God.
The law which is laid down in vv. 20-22, re-
garding the sin of connection with a bond-
woman betrothed to a husband, apparently refers
to such a case as is mentioned in Exod. xxi. 7,
8, where the bond-maid is betrothed to her
master, while yet, because of her condition of
bondage, the marriage has not been consum-
mated. For the same sin in the case of a free
woman, where both were proved guilty, for each
of them the punishment was death (Deut. xxii.
23, 24). In this case, because the woman's posi-
tion, inasmuch as she was not tree, was rather
that of a concubine than of a full wife, the lighter
penalty of scourging is ordered for both of the
guilty persons. Also, since this was a case of
trespass as well, in which the rights of the master
to whom she was espoused were involved, a
guilt-offering was in addition required, as the
condition of pardon.
It will be said, and truly, that by this law
slavery and concubinage are to a certain extent
recognised by the law; and upon this fact has
been raised an objection bearing on the holiness
of the law-giver, and, by consequence, on the
Divine origin and inspiration of the law. Is it
conceivable that the holy God should have given
a law for the regulation of two so evil institu-
tions? The answer has been furnished us, in
principle, by our Lord (Matt. xix. 8), in that
which He said concerning the analogous case ot
the law of Moses touching divorce; which law.
He tells us, although not according to the perfect
ideal of right, was yet given " because of the
hardness of men's hearts." That is, although it
was not the best law ideally, it was the best prac-
tically, in view of the low moral tone of the peo-
ple to whom it was given. Precisely so it was in
this case. Abstractly, one might say that the
case was in nothing different from the case of
a free woman, mentioned Deut. xxii. 23, 24, for
which death was the appointed punishment; but
practically, in a community where slavery and
concubinage were long-settled institutions, and
the moral standard was still low, the cases were
not parallel. A law which would carry with it
the moral support of the people in the one case,
and which it would thus be possible to carry into
effect, would not be in like manner supported
and carried into effect in the other; so that the
result of greater strictness in theory would, in
actual practice, be the removal thereby of all re-
Leviticus xix. 1-37.] LAW OF HOLINESS (CONCLUDED).
339
striction on license. On the other hand, by thus
appointing herein a penalty for both the guilty
parties such as the public conscience would ap-
prove, God taught the Hebrews the fundamental
lesson that a slave-girl is not regarded by God
as a mere chattel; and that if, because of the
hardness of their hearts, concubinage was toler-
ated for a time, still the slave-girl must not be
treated as a thing, but as a person, and indis-
criminate license could not be permitted. And
thus, it is of greatest moment to observe, a prin-
ciple was introduced into the legislation, which
in its ultimate logical application would require
and efTect — as in due time it has — the total aboli-
tion of the institution of slavery wherever the
authority of the living God is truly recognised.
The principle of the Divine government which
is here illustrated is one of exceeding practical
importance as a model for us. We live in an age
when, everywhere in Christendom, the cry is
" Reform;" and there are many who think that
if once it be proved that a thing is wrong, it
follows by necessary consequence that the im-
mediate and unqualified legal prohibition of that
wrong, under such penalty as the wrong may
deserve, is the only thing that any Christian man
has a right to think of. And yet, according to
the principle illustrated in this legislation, this
conclusion in such cases can by no means be
taken for granted. That is not always the best
law practically which is the best law abstractly.
That law is the best which shall be most efifective
in diminishing a given evil, under the existing
moral condition of the community; and it is often
a matter of such exceeding difficulty to determine
what legislation against admitted sins and evils
may be the most productive of good in a com-
munity whose moral sense is dull concerning
them, that it is not strange that the best of men
are often found to dififer. Remembering this,
we may well commend the duty of a more charit-
able judgment, in such cases, than one often
hears from such radical reformers, who seem to
imagine that in order to remove an evil all that
is necessary is to pass a law at once and for ever
prohibiting it; and who therefore hold up to
obloquy all who doubt as to the wisdom and
duty of so doing, as the enemies of truth and of
righteousness. Moses, acting under direct in-
struction from the God of supreme wisdom and
of perfect holiness, was far wiser than such well-
meaning but sadly mistaken social reformers,
who would fain be wiser than God.
Next follows a law (vv. 23-25) directing that
when any fruit tree is planted, the Israelite shall
not eat of its fruit for the first three years; that
the fruit of the fourth year shall be wholly con-
secrated to the Lord, " for giving praise unto
Jehovah;" and that only after that, in the fifth
year of its bearing, shall the husbandman himself
first eat of its fruit.
The explanation of this peculiar regulation is
to be found in a special application of the princi-
ple which rules throughout the law; that the first-
fruit, whether the first-born of man or beast, or
the first-fruits of the field, shall always be con-
secrated unto God. But in this case the applica-
tion of the principle is modified by the familiar
fact that the fruit of a young tree, for the first
few years of its bearing, is apt to be imperfect;
it is not yet sufficiently grown to yield its best
possible product. Because of this, in those years
it could not be given to the Lord, for He must
never be served with any but the best of every-
thing; and thus until the fruit should reach its
best, so as to be worthy of presentation to the
Lord, the Israelite was meanwhile debarred from
using it. During these three years the trees are
said to be "as uncircumcised;" i. e., they were
to be regarded as in a condition analogous to
that of the child who has not yet been conse-
crated, by the act of circumcision, to the Lord.
In the fourth year, however, the trees were re-
garded as having now so grown as to yield fruit
in perfection; hence, the principle of the conse-
cration of the first-fruit now applies, and all the
fourth year's product is given to the Lord, as
an offering of thankful praise to Him whose
power in nature is the secret of all growth, fruit-
fulness, and increase. The last words of this
law, " that it may yield unto you its increase,"
evidently refer to all that precedes. Israel is to
obey this law, using nothing till first consecrated
to the Lord, in order to a blessing in these very
gifts of God.
The moral teaching of this law, when it is thus
read in the light of the general principle of the
consecration of the first-fruits, is very plain. It
teaches, as in all analogous cases, that God is
always to be served before ourselves; and that
not grudgingly, as if an irksome tax were to be
paid to the Majesty of heaven, but in the spirit
of thanksgiving and praise to Him, as the Giver
of " every good and perfect gift." It further
instructs us in this particular instance, that the
people of God are to recognise this as Deing true
even of all those good things which come to us
under the forms of products of nature.
The lesson is not an easy one for faith; for the
constant tendency, never stronger than in our
own time, is to substitute " Nature " for the God
of nature, as if nature were a power in itself and
apart from God, immanent in all nature, the
present and efficient energy in all her manifold
operations. Very fittingly, thus, do we find here
again (ver. 25) the sanction affixed to this law,
" I am the Lord your God! " Jehovah, your God
who redeemed you, who therefore am worthy of
all thanksgiving and praise! Jehovah, your God
in covenant, who gives the fruitful seasons! filling
your hearts with joy and gladness! Jehovah,
your God, who as the Lord of Nature, and the
Power in nature, am abundantly able to fulfil the
promise affixed to this command!
The next six commands are evidently grouped
together as referring to various distinctively
heathenish customs, from which Israel, as a peo-
ple holy to the Lord, was to abstain. The pro-
hibition of blood (ver. 26) is repeated again, not,
as has been said, in a stronger form than before,
but, probably, because the eating of blood was
connected with certain heathenish ceremonies,
both among the Shemitic tribes and others. The
next two precepts (ver. 26) prohibit every kind
of divination and augury; practices notoriously
common with the heathen everywhere, in an-
cient and in modern times. The two precepts
which follow, forbidding certain fashions of trim-
ming the hair and beard, may appear trivial to
many, but they will not seem so to any one who
will remember how common among heathen
peoples has been the custom, as in those days
among the Arabs, and in our time among the
Hindoos, to trim the hair or beard in a particular
way, in order thus visibly to mark a person as
of a certain religion, or as a worshipper of a
certain god. The command means that the Is-
raelite was not only to worship God alone, but
34°
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
he was not to adopt a fashion in dress which,
because commonly associated with idolatry,
might thus misrepresent his real position as a
worshipper of the only living and true God.
" Cutting the flesh for the dead " (ver. 28) has
been very widely practised by heathen peoples
in all ages. Such immoderate and unseemly ex-
pressions of grief were prohibited to the Israelite,
as unworthy of a people who were in a blessed
covenant relation with the God of life and of
death. Rather, recognising that death is of
God's ordination, he was to accept in patience
and humility the stroke of God's hand; not, in-
deed, without sorrow, but yet in meekness and
quietness of spirit, trusting in the God of life.
The thought is only a less clear expression of the
New Testament word (i Thess. iv. 13) that the
believer " sorrow not, even as the rest, which
have no hope." Also, probably, in this prohibi-
tion, as certainly in the next (ver. 28), it is sug-
gested that as the Israelite was to be distin-
guished from the heathen by full consecration,
not only of the soul, but also of the body, to the
Lord, he was by that fact inhibited from marring
or defacing in any way the integrity of his body.
In general, we may say, then, that the central
thought which binds this group of precepts to-
gether, is the obligation, not merely to abstain
from everything directly idolatrous, but also
from all such customs as are, in fact, rooted in
or closely associated with idolatry. On the same
principle, the Christian is to beware of all fash-
ions and practices, even though they may be in
themselves indifferent, which yet, as a matter
of fact, are specially characteristic of the worldly
and ungodly element in society. The principle
assumed in these prohibitions thus imposes upon
all who would be holy to the Lord, in all ages,
a firm restriction. The thoughtless desire of
many, at any risk, to be " in the fashion," must
be unwaveringly denied. The reason which is so
often given by professing Christians for indul-
gence in such cases, that " all the world does so,"
may often be the strongest possible reason for
declining to follow the fashion. No servant of
God should ever be seen in any part of the livery
of Satan's servants. That God does not think
these " little things " always of trifling conse-
quence, we are reminded by the repetition here,
for the tenth time in this chapter, of the words,
"I am the Lord!"
Next (ver. 29) follows the prohibition of the
horrible custom, still practised among heathen
peoples, of the prostitution of a daughter by a
parent. It is here enforced by the consideration
of the public weal: " lest the land fall to whore-
dom, and the land become full of wickedness."
Assuredly, that a land in which such harlotry as
this, in which all the most sacred relations of
life are trampled in the mire, would be nothing
less than a land full of wickedness, is so evident
as to require no comment.
Herewith now begins the fourth and last di-
vision of this chapter (vv. 30-37), with a repeti-
tion of the injunction to keep the Sabbaths of the
Lord, and reverence His sanctuary. The em-
phasis on this command, shown by its repetition
in this chapter, and the very prominent place
which it occupies both in the law and the proph-
ets, certainly suggest that in the mind of God,
reverence for the Sabbath and for the place
where God is worshipped, has much to do with
the promotion of holiness of life, and the main-
tenance of a high degree of domestic and social
morality. Nor is it difficult to see why this
should be so. For however the day of holy rest
may be kept, and the place of Divine worship
be regarded with only an outward reverence by
many, yet the fact cannot be disputed, that the
observance of a weekly sabbatic rest from ordi-
nary secular occupations, and the maintenance
of a spirit of reverence for sacred places or for
sacred times, has, and must have, a certain and
most happy tendency to keep the God of the
Sabbath and the God of the sanctuary before the
mind of men, and thus imposes an effective check
upon unrestrained godlessness and reckless ex-
cesses of iniquity. The diverse condition of
things in various parts of modern Christendom,
as related to the more or less careful observance
of the weekly religious rest, is full of both in-
struction and warning to any candid mind upon
this subject. There is no restraint on immorality
like the frequent remembrance of God and the
spirit of reverence for Him.
Verse 31 prohibits all inquiring of them that
" have familiar spirits," and of " wizards," who
pretend to make revelations through the help of
supernatural powers. According to i Sam.
xxviii. 7-1 1, and Isa. viii. 19, the " familiar
spirit " is a supposed spirit of a dead man, from
whom one professes to be able to give communi-
cations to the living. This pretended commerce
with the spirits of the dead nas been common
enough in heathenism always, and it is not
strange to find it mentioned here, when Israel
was to be in so intimate relations with heathen
peoples. But it is truly most extraordinary that
in Christian lands, as especially in the United
States of America, and that in the full light, re-
ligious and intellectual, of the last half of the
nineteenth century, such a prohibition should
be fully as pertinent as in Israel-! For no words
could more precisely describe the pretensions
of the so-called modern spiritualism, which
within the last half century has led away hun-
dreds of thousands of deluded souls, and those,
in many cases, not from the ignorant and de-
graded, but from circles which boast of more
than average culture and intellectual enlighten-
ment. And inasmuch as experience sadly shows
that even those who profess to be disciples of
Christ are in danger of being led away by our
modern wizards and traffickers with familiar
spirits, it is by no means unnecessary to observe
that there is not the slightest reason to believe
that this which was rigidly forbidden by God in
the fifteenth century b. c, can now be well-
pleasing to Him in the ninet>-enth century A. D.
And those who have most carefully watched the
moral developments of this latter-day delusion,
will most appreciate the added phrase which
speaks of this as " defiling " a man.
Verse 32 enjoins reverence for the aged, and
closely connects it with the fear of God. " Thou
shaft rise up before the hoary head, and honour
the face of the old man, and thou shalt fear thy
God: I am the Lord."
A virtue this is which — it must be with shame
confessed — although often displayed in an illus-
trious manner among the heathen, in many parts
of Christendom has sadly decayed. In many
lands one only needs to travel in any crowded
conveyance to observe how far it is from the
thoughts of many of the young " to rise up be-
fore the hoary head, and honour the face of the
old man." So manifest are the facts that one
hears from competent and thoughtful observers
Leviticus xix. 1-37.]
LAW OF HOLINESS (CONCLUDED).
341
of the tendencies of our times no lamentation
more frequently than just this, for the concurrent
decay of reverence for the aged and reverence
for God. No more beautiful remarks on these
words have we found than the words quoted by
Dr. H. Bonar, commenting on this verse: " Lo!
the shadow of eternity! for one cometh who is
almost in eternity already. His head and his
beard, white as snow, indicate his speedy appear-
ance before the Ancient of Days, the hair of
whose head is as pure wool."
In this last command is also, no doubt, con-
tained the thought of the comparative weakness
and physical infirmity of the aged, which is thus
commended in a special way to our tender re-
gard. And thus this sentiment of kindly sym-
pathy for all who are subject to any kind of dis-
ability naturally prepares the way for the injunc-
tion (vv. 33, 34) to regard " the stranger " in the
midst of Israel, who was debarred from holding
land, and from many privileges, with special feel-
ings of good-will. " If a stranger sojourn with
thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong.
The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be
unto you as the homeborn among you, and thou
shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers
in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."
The Israelite was not to misinterpret, then, the
restrictions which the theocratic law imposed
upon such. These might be no doubt necessary
for a moral reason; but, nevertheless, no man
was to argue that the law justified him in dealing
hardly with aliens. So far from this, the Israelite
was to regard the stranger with the same kindly
feelings as if he were one of his own people.
And it is most instructive to observe that this
particular case is made the occasion of repeating
that most perfect and comprehensive law of uni-
versal love, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself;" and this the more they were to do
that they too had been " strangers in the land of
Egypt."
Last of all the injunctions in this chapter (vv.
35. 36) comes the command to absolute right-
eousness in the administration of justice, and in
all matters of buying and selling; followed (ver.
37) by a concluding charge to obedience, thus:
" Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in
meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Just bal-
ances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin,
shall ye have: I am the Lord your God, which
brought you out of the land of Egypt. And ye
shall observe all My statutes, and all My judg-
ments, and do them: I am the Lord."
The ephah is named here, of course, as a
standard of dry measure, and the hin as a stand-
ard of liquid measure. These commandments
are illustrated in a praphic way by the parallel
passage in Deut. xxv. 13, 14, which reads:
" Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights,
a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in
thine house divers measures, a great and a
small;" i. e., one set for use in buying, and an-
other set for use in selling. This charge is
there enforced by the same promise to honesty
in trade which is annexed to the fifth com-
mandment, namely, length of days; and, further-
more, by the declaration that all who thus cheat
in trade " are an abomination unto the Lord."
How much Israel needed this law all their
history has shown. In the days of Amos it was
a part of his charge against the ten tribes (viii.
5), for which the Lord declares that He will
" make the land to tremble, and every one in it
to mourn," that they "" make the ephah small,
and the shekel great," and " deal falsely with
balances of deceit." So also Micah, a little later,
represents the Lord as calling Judah to account
for supposing that God, the Holy One, can be
satisfied with burnt-offerings and guilt-offerings;
indignantly asking (vi. 10, 11), "Are there yet
the treasures of wickedness in the house of the
wicked, and the scant measure that is abomin-
able?"
But it is not Israel alone which has needed, and
still needs, to hear iterated this command, for
the sin is found in every people, even in every
city, one might say in every town, in Christen-
dom; and — we have to say it — often with men
who make a certain profession of regard for re-
ligion. All such, however religious in certain
ways, have special need to remember that " with-
out holiness no man shall see the Lord;" and
that holiness is now exactly what it was when the
Levitical law was given out. As, on the one
side, it is inspired by reverence and fear toward
God, so, on the other hand, it requires love to
the neighbour as to one's self, and such conduct
as that will secure. It is of no account, there-
fore, to keep the Sabbath — in a way — and rever-
ence— outwardly— the sanctuary, and then on
the week-day water milk, adulterate medicines,
sugars, and other foods, slip the yard-stick in
measuring, tip the balance in weighing, and buy
with one weight or measure and sell with an-
other, " water " stocks and gamble in " margins,"
as the manner of many is. God hates, and even
honest atheists despise, religion of this kmd.
Strange notions, truly, of religion have men who
have not yet discovered that it has to do with
just such commonplace, every-day matters as
these, and have never yet understood how certain
it is that a religion which is only used on Sun-
days has no holiness in it; and therefore, when
the day comes, as it is coming, that shall try
every man's work as by fire, it will, in the fierce
heat of Jehovah's judgment, be shrivelled into
ashes as a spider's web in a flame, and the man
and his work shall perish together.
And herewith this chapter closes. Such is
the law of holiness! Obligatory, let us not for-
get, in the spirit of all its requirements, to-day,
unchanged and unchangeable, because the Holy
God, whose law it is, is Himself unchangeable.
Man may be sinful, and because of sin be weak;
but there is not a hint of compromise with sin, on
this account, by any abatement of its claims. At
every step of life this law confronts us. Whether
we be in the House of God, in acts of worship,
it challenges us there: or in the field, at our
work, it commands us there; in social intercourse
with our fellow-men, in our business in bank or
shop, with our friends or with strangers and
aliens, at home or abroad, we are never out of the
reach of its requirements. We can no more es-
cape from under its authority than from under
the overarching heaven! What sobering
thoughts are these for sinners! What self-
humiliation should this law cause us, when we
think what we are! what intensity of aspiration,
when we think of what the Holy One would
have us be. holy like Himself!
The closing words above given (ver. 37) assert
the authority of the Law-giver, and. by their re-
minder of the great deliverance from Egypt,
appeal, as a motive to faithful and holy obedi-
ence, to the purest sentiment of grateful love for
undeserved and distinguishing mercy. And this
342
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
is only the Old Testament form of a New Testa-
ment argument. For we read, concerning our
deliverance from a worse than Egyptian bondage
(i Peter i. 15-19;: "Like as He which called
you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all
manner of living; because it is written, Ye shall
be holy; for I am holy. And if ye call on Him
as Father, who without respect of persons
judgeth according to each man's work, pass the
time of your sojourning in fear: knowing that ye
were redeemed, not with corruptible things, as
silver or gold, . . . but with precious blood, as
of a lamb without blemish and without spot,
even the blood of Christ."
CHAPTER XXII.
PENAL SANCTIONS.
Leviticus xx. 1-27.
In no age or community has it been found
sufificient, to secure obedience, that one should
appeal to the conscience of men, or depend,
as a sufficient motive, upon the natural pain-
ful consequences of violated law. Wherever
there is civil and criminal law, there, in all cases,
human government, whether in its lowest or in
its most highly developed forms, has found it
necessary to declare penalties for various crimes.
It is the peculiar interest of this chapter that it
gives us certain important sections of the penal
code of a people whose government was theo-
cratic, whose only King was the Most Holy and
Righteous God. In view of the manifold diffi-
culties which are inseparable from the enactment
and enforcement of a just and equitable penal
code, it must be to every man who believes that
Israel, in that period of its history, was, in the
most literal sense, a theocracy, a matter of the
highest civil and governmental interest to ob-
serve what penalties for crime were ordained by
infinite wisdom, goodness, and righteousness as
the law of that nation.
This penal code (vv. 1-21) is given in two sec-
tions. Of these, the first (vv. 1-6) relates to
those who give of their seed to Molech, or who
are accessory to such crime by their concealment
of the fact; and also to those who consult wiz-
ards or familiar spirits. Under this last head
also comes ver. 27, which appears to have be-
come misplaced, as it follows the formal conclu-
sion of the chapter, and by its subject — the
penalty for the wizard, or him who claims to
have a familiar spirit — evidently belongs im-
mediately after ver. 6.
The second section (vv. 9-21) enumerates, first
(vv. 9-16), other cases for which capital punish-
ment was ordered: and then (vv. 17-21) certain
offences for which a lesser penalty is prescribed.
These two sections are separated (vv. 7, 8) by a
command, in view of these penalties, to sanctifi-
cation of life, and obedience to the Lord, as the
God who has redeemed and consecrated Israel
to be a nation to Himself.
These penal sections are followed (vv. 22-26)
by a general conclusion to the whole law of holi-
ness, as contained in these three chapters, as also
to the law concerning clean and unclean meats
(xi.); which would thus appear to have been
originally connected more closely than now with
these chapters. This closing part of the section
consists of an exhortation and argument against
disobedience, in walking after the wicked cus-
toms of the Canaanif-.ish nations; enforced by
the declaration that their impending expulsion
was brought about by God in punishment for
their practice of these crimes; and, also, by the
reminder that God in His special grace had sepa-
rated them to be a holy nation to Himself, and
that He was about to give them the good land
of Canaan as their possession.
It is perhaps hardly necessary to observe that
the law of this chapter does not profess to give
the penal code of Israel with completeness.
Murder, for example, is not mentionea here,
though death is expressly denounced against it
elsewhere (Numb. xxxv. 31). So, again, in the
Book of Exodus (xxi. 15) death is declared as
the penalty for smiting father or mother. In-
deed, the chapter itself contains evidence that it
is essentially a selection of certain parts of a
more extended code, which has been nowhere
preserved in its entirety.
In this chapter death is ordained as the penalty
for the following crimes: viz., giving of one's
seed to Molech (vv. 2-5) ; professing to be a wiz-
ard, or to have dealings with the spirits of the
dead (ver. 27) ; adultery, incest with a mother or
step-mother, a daughter-in-law or mother-in-
law (vv. 10-12. 14); and sodomy and bestiality
(ver. 13). In a single case — that of incest with
a wife's mother — it is added (ver. 14) that both
the guilty parties shall be burnt with fire; i. e.,
after the usual infliction of death by stoning. Of
him who becomes accessory by concealment to
the crime of sacrifice to Molech, it is said (ver. 5)
that God Himself will set His face against that
man, and will cut off both the man himself and his
family. The same phraseology is used (ver. 6)
of those who consult familiar spirits: and the cut-
ting off is also threatened, ver. 18. The law
concerning incest with a full- or half-sister re-
quires (ver. 17) that this excision shall be " in
the sight of the children of their people;" i. e.,
that the sentence shall be executed in the most
public way, thus to affix the more certainly to
the crime the stigma of an indelible ignominy
and disgrace. A lesser grade of penalty is at-
tached to an alliance with the wife of an uncle
or of a brother; in-the latter case (ver. 21) that
they shall be childless, in the former (ver. 20),
that they shall die childless; that is, though they
have children, they shall all be prematurely cut
off; none shall outlive their parents. To incest
with an aunt by blood no specific penalty is
affixed; it is only said that " they shall bear their
iniquity," i. c, God will hold them guilty.
The chapter, directly or indirectly, casts no
little light on some most fundamental and prac-
tical questions regarding the administration of
justice in dealing with criminals.
We may learn here what, in the mind of the
King of kings, is the primary object of the
punishment of criminals against society. Cer-
tainlv there is no hint in this code of law that
these penalties were specially intended for the
reformation of the ofifender. Were this so, we
should not find the death-penalty applied with
such unsparing severity. This does not indeed
mean that the reformation of the criminal was a
matter of no concern to the Lord; we know to
the contrary. But one cannot resist the convic-
tion in reading this chapter, as also other similar
portions of the law, that in a governmental point
of view this was not the chief object of punish-
ment. Even where the penalty was not death.
Leviticus xx. 1-27. j
PENAL SANCTIONS.
343
the reformation of the guilty persons is in no
way brought before us as an object of the penal
sentence. In the governmental aspect of the
case, this is, at least, so far in the background
that it does not once come into view.
In our day, however, an increasing number
maintain that the death-penalty ought never to
be inflicted, because, in the nature of the case,
it precludes the possibility of the criminal being
reclaimed and made a useful member of society;
and so, out of regard to this and other like
humanitarian considerations, in not a few in-
stances, the death penalty, even for wilful mur-
der, has been abrogated. It is thus, to a Chris-
tian citizen, of very practical concern to observe
that in this theocratic penal code there is not
so much as an allusion to the reformation of the
criminal, as one object which by means of pun-
ishment it was intended to secure. Penalty was
to be inflicted, according to this code, without
any apparent reference to its bearing on this
matter. The wisdom of the Omniscient King of
Israel, therefore, must certainly have contem-
plated in the punishment of crime some object
or objects of more weighty moment than this.
What those objects were, it does not seem hard
to discern. First and supreme in the intention of
this law is the satisfaction of outraged justice and
of the regal majesty of the supreme and holy
God, defiled; the vindication of the holiness of
the Most High against that wickedness of men
which would set at nought the Holy One and
•overturn that moral order which He has estab-
lished. Again and again the crime itself is given
as the reason for the penalty, inasmuch as by
such iniquity in the midst of Israel the holy
sanctuary of God among them was profaned.
We read, for example, " I will cut him off . . .
because he hath defiled My sanctuary, and hath
profaned My holy name;" " thej'^ have wrought
confusion," j. e., in the moral and physical order
of the family; " their blood shall be upon them;"
"they have committed abomination; they shall
surely be put to death;" " it is a shameful thing;
they shall be cut ofif." Such are the expressions
which again and again ring through this chapter;
and they teach with unmistakable clearness that
the prime object of the Divine King of Israel in
the punishment was, not the reformation of the
individual sinner, but the satisfaction of justice
and the vindication of the majesty of broken
law. And if we have no more explicit statement
of the matter here, we yet have it elsewhere; as
in Numb. xxxv. t^Z' where we are expressly told
that the death-penalty to be visited with unre-
lenting severity on the murderer is of the nature
of an expiation. Verv clear and solemn are the
words, " Blood, it polluteth the land: and no
expiation can be made for the land for the blood
that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that
shed it."
But if this is set forth as the fundamental rea-
son for the infliction of the punishment, it is not
represented as the only object. If, as regards
the criminal himself, the punishment is a satisfac-
tion and expiation to justice for his crime, on
the other hand, as regards the people, the punish-
ment is intended for their moral good and puri-
fication. This is expressly stated, as in ver. 14:
*' They shall be burnt with fire, that there be no
wickedness among you." Both of these princi-
ples are of such a nature that they must be of
perpetual validity. The government or legisla-
tive power that loses sight of either of them is
certain to go wrong, and the people will be sure,
sooner or later, to suffer in morals by the error.
In the light we have now, it is easy to see what
are the principles according to which, in various
cases, the punishments were measured out.
Evidently, in the first place, the penalty was de-
termined, even as equity demands, by the in-
trinsic heinousness of the crime. With the pos-
sible exception of a single case, it is easy to see
this. No one will question the horrible iniquity
of the sacrifice of innocent children to Molech;
or of incest with a mother, or of sodomy, or
bestiality. A second consideration which evi-
dently had place, was the danger involved in each
crime to the moral and spiritual well-being of the
community; and, we may add, in the third place,
also the degree to which the people were likely
to be exposed to the contagion of certain crimes
prevalent in the nations immediately about them.
But although these principles are manifestly
so equitable and benevolent as to be valid for all
ages, Christendom seems to be forgetting the
fact. The modern penal codes vary as widely
from the Mosaic in respect of their great len-
iency, as those of a few centuries ago in respect
of their undiscriminating severity. In particular,
the past few generations have seen a great change
with regard to the infliction of capital punish-
ment. Formerly, in England, for example, death
was inflicted, with intolerable injustice, for a
large number of comparatively trivial offences;
the death-penalty is now restricted to high
treason and killing with malice aforethought;
while in some parts of Christendom it is already
wholly abolished. In the Mosaic law, according
to this chapter and other parts of the law, it was
much more extensively inflicted, though, it may
be noted in passing, always without torture. In
this chapter it is made the penalty for actual or
constructive idolatry, for sorcery, etc., for curs-
ing father or mother, for adultery, for the grosser
degrees of incest, and for sodomy and bestiality.
To this list of capital ofifences the law elsewhere
adds, not only murder, but blasphemy, sabbath-
breaking, unchastity in a betrothed woman when
discovered after marriage, rape, rebellion against
a priest or judge, and man-stealing.
As regards the crimes specified in this particu-
lar chapter, the criminal law of modern Christen-
dom does not inflict the penalty of death in a
single possible case here mentioned; and, to the
mind of many, the contrasted severity of the
Mosaic code presents a grave difficulty. And
yet, if one believes, on the authority of the teach-
ing of Christ, that the theocratic government of
Israel is not a fable, but a historic fact, although
he may still have much difficulty in recognising
the righteousness of this code, he will be slow on
this account either to renounce his faith in the
Divine authority of this chapter, or to impugn
the justice of the holy King of Israel in charg-
ing Him ^ith undue severity; and will rather pa-
tiently await some other solution of the problem,
than the denial of the essential equity of these
laws. But there are several considerations
which, for many, will greatly lessen, if they do
not wholly remove, the difficulty which the case
presents.
In the first place, as regards the punishment of
idolatry with death, we have to remember that,
from a theocratic point of view, idolatry was es-
sentially high treason, the most formal repudia-
tion possible of the supreme authority of Israel's
King. If even in our modern states, the gravity
344
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
of the issues involved in high treason has led
men to believe that death is not too severe a
penalty for an ofifence aimed directly at the sub-
version of governmental order, how much more
must this be admitted when the government is
not of fallible man, but of the most holy and in-
fallible God? And when, besides this, we recall
the atrocious cruelties and revolting impurities
which were inseparably associated with that
idolatry, we shall have still less difficulty in
seeing that it was just that the worshipper of
Molech should die. And as decreeing the pen-
alty of death for sorcery and similar practices, it
is probable that the reason for this is to be
found in the close connection of these with the
prevailing idolatry.
But it is in regard to crimes against the in-
tegrity and purity of the family that we find the
most impressive contrast between this penal
code and those of modern times. Although, un-
happily, adultery and, less commonly, incest, and
even, rarely, the unnatural crimes mentioned in
this chapter, are not unknown in modern Chris-
tendom, yet, while the law of Moses punished all
these with death, modern law treats them with
comparative leniency, or even refuses to regard
some forms of these offences as crimes. What
then? Shall we hasten to the conclusion that we
have advanced on Moses? that this law was cer-
tainly unjust in its severity? or is it possible that
modern law is at fault, in that it has fallen below
those standards of righteousness which rule in
the kingdom of God?
One would think that by any man who believes
in the Divine origin of the theocracy only one
answer could be given. Assuredly, one can-
not suppose that God judged of a crime with
undue severity; and if not, is not then Christen-
dom, as it were, summoned by this penal code of
the theocracy — after making all due allowance
for different conditions of society — to revise its
estimate of the moral gravity of these and other
offences? In these days of continually progres-
sive relaxation of the laws regulating the rela-
tions of'the sexes, this seems indeed to be one of
the chief lessons from this chapter of Leviticus;
namely, that in God's sight sins against the
seventh commandment are not the comparative
trifles which much over-charitable and easy-
going morality imagines, but crimes of the first
order of heinousness. We do well to heed this
fact, that not merely unnatural crimes, such as
sodomy, bestiality, and the grosser forms of
incest, but adultery, is by God ranked in the
same category as murder. Is it strange? For
what are crimes of this kind but assaults on the
very being of the family? Where there is incest
or adultery, we may truly say the family is
murdered; what murder is to the individual, that,
precisely, are crimes of this class to the family..
In the theocratic code these were, therefore,
made punishable with death; and, we venture to
believe, with abundant reason. Is it likely that
God was too severe? or must we not rather fear
that man, ever lenient to prevailing sins, in our
day has become falsely and unmercifully merci-
ful, kind with a most perilous and unholy kind-
ness?
Still harder will it be for most of us to under-
stand why the death-penalty should have been
also affixed to cursing or smiting a father or a
mother, an extreme form of rebellion against
parental authority. We must, no doubt, bear in
mind, as in all these cases, that a rough people
like those just emancipated slaves, required a
severity of dealing which with finer natures
would not be needed; and, also, that the fact of
Israel's call to be a priestly nation bearing sal-
vation to mankind, made every disobedience
among them the graver crime, as tending to so
disastrous issues, not for Israel alone, but for the
whole race of man which Israel was appointed
to bless. On an analogous principle we justify
military authority in shooting the sentry found
asleep at his post. Still, while allowing for all
this, one can hardly escape the inference that,
in the sight of God, rebellion against parents
must be a more serious offence than many in
our time have been wont to imagine. And the
more that we consider how truly basal to
the order of government and of society is
both sexual purity and the maintenance of
a spirit of reverence and subordination to
parents, the easier we shall find it to rec-
ognise the fact that if in this penal code there is
doubtless great severity, it is yet the severity of
governmental wisdom and true paternal kindness
on the part of the high King of Israel: who
governed that nation with intent, above all, that
they might become in the highest sense " a holy
nation " in the midst of an ungodly worW, and
so become the vehicle of blessing to others.
And God thus judged that it was better that sin-
ning individuals should die without mercy, than
that family government and family purity should
perish, and Israel, instead of being a blessing to
the nations, should sink with them into the mi."e
of universal moral corruption.
And it is well to observe that this law, if severe,,
was most equitable and impartial in its applica-
tion. We have here, in no instance, torture; the
scourging which in one case is enjoined, is
limited elsewhere to the forty stripes save one.
Neither have we discrimination against any class,
or either sex; nothing like that detestable in-
justice of modern society which turns the fallen
woman into the street with pious scorn, while
it often receives the betrayer and even tlie adul-
terer— in most cases the more guilty of the two—
into " the best society." Nothing have we here,
again, which could justify by example the insist-
ence of many, through a perverted humanity,
when a murderess is sentenced for her crime to
the scaffold, her sex should purchase a partial
immunity from the penalty of crime. The Le-
vitical law is as impartial as its Author; even if
death be the penalty, the guilty one must die,
whether man or woman.
Quite apart, then, trom any question of detail,
as to how far this penal code ought to be ap-
plied under the different conditions of modern
society, this chapter of Leviticus assuredly stands
as a most impressive testimony from God against
the humanitarianism of our age. It is more and
more the fashion, in some parts of Christendom,
to pet criminals; to lionize murderers and adul-
terers, especially if m high social station. We
have even heard of bouquets and such-like senti-
mental attentions bestowed by ladies on blood-
red criminals in their cells awaiting the halter; and
a maudlin pity quite too often usurps among us
the place of moral horror at crime and intense
sympathy with the holy justice and righteousness
of God. But this Divine government of old did
not deal in flowers and perfumes: it never in-
dulged criminals, but punished them with an
inexorable righteousness. And yet this was not
because Israel's King was hard and cruel. For
Leviticus xxi. i-xxii. 33.] LAW OF PRIESTLY HOLINESS.
345
it was this same law which with equal kindness
and equity kept a constant eye of fatherly care
upon the poor and the stranger, and commanded
the Israelite that he love even the stranger as
himself. But, none the less, the Lord God who
declared Himself as merciful and gracious and
of great kindness, also herein revealed Himself,
according to his word, as one who would " by no
means clear the guilty." This fact is luminously
witnessed by this penal code; and, let us note, it
is witnessed by that penal law of God which
is revealed in nature also. For this too punisnes
without mercy the drunkard, for example, or the
licentious man, and never diminishes one stroke
because by the full execution of penalty the sin-
ner must suffer often so terribly. Which is just
what we should expect to find, if indeed the God
of nature is the One who spake in Leviticus.
Finally, as already suggested, this chapter gives
a most weighty testimony against the modern
tendency to a relaxation of the laws which regu-
late the relations of the sexes. That such a
tendency is a fact is admitted by all; by some
with gratulation, by others with regret and grave
concern. French law, for instance, has explicitly
legalized various alliances which* in this law
God explicitly forbids, under heavy penal
sanctions, as incestuous; German legislation
has moved about as far in the same direc-
tion; and the same tendency is to be ob-
served, more or less, in all the English-
speaking world. In some of the United States,
especially, the utmost laxity has been reached,
in laws which, under the name of divorce, legal-
ise gross adultery, — laws which had been a dis-
grace to pagan Rome. So it goes. Where God
denounced the death-penalty, man first apolo-
gises for the crime, then lightens the penalty,
then abolishes it, and at last formally legalises
the crime. This modern drift bodes no good;
in the end it can only bring disaster alike to the
well-being of the family and of the State. The
maintenance of the family in its integrity and
purity is nothing less than essential to the con-
servation of society and the stability of good
government.
To meet this growing evil, the Church needs
to come back to the full recognition of the
principles which underlie this Levitical code; es-
peciallv of the fact that marriage and the family
are not merely civil arrangements, but Divine
institutions; so that God has not left it to the
caprice of a majority to settle what shall be
lawful in these matters. Where God has de-
clared certain alliances and connections to be
criminal, we shall permit or condone them at
our peril. God rules, whether modern majorities
will it or not; and we must adopt the moral
standards of the kingdom of God in our legisla-
tion, or we shall suffer. God has declared that
not merely the material well-being of man, but
holiness, is the moral end of government and of
life; and He will find ways to enforce His will
in this respect. " The nation that will not serve
Flim shall perish." All this is not theology,
merely, or ethics, but history. All history wit-
nesses that moral corruption and relaxed legis-
lation, especially in matters affecting the rela-
tions of the sexes, bring in their train sure retri-
bution, not in Hades, but here on earth. Let us
not miss of taking the lesson by imagining that
this law was for Israel, but not for other oeoples.
The contrary is affirmed in this very chapter
(vv. 23, 24), where we are reminded that God
visited His heavy judgments upon the Canaan-
itish nations precisely for this very thing, tneir
doing of these things which are in this law of
holiness forbidden. Hence " the land spued
them out." Our modern democracies, English,
American, French, Uerman, or whatever they
be, would do well to pause in their progressive
repudiation of the law of God in many social
questions, and heed this solemn warning. For,
despite the unbelief ot multitudes, the Holy One
still governs the world, and it is certain that He
will never abdicate his throne of righteousness
to submit any of his laws to the sanction of a
popular vote.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE LAW OF PRIESTLY HOLINESS.
Leviticus xxi. i-xxii. 33.
The conception of Israel as a kingdom of
priests, a holy nation, was concretely represented
in a threefold division of the people, — the con-
gregation, the priesthood, and the high priest.
This corresponaed to the threefold division of
the tabernacle into the outer court, the holy
place, and the holy of holies, each in succession
more sacred than the place preceding. So while
all Israel was called to be a priestly nation, holy
to Jehovah in life and service, this sanctity was
to be represented in degrees successively higher
in each of these three divisions of the people,
culminating in the person of the high priest,
who, in token of this fact, wore upon his forehead
the inscription, " Holiness to Jehovah."
Up to this point the law of holiness has dealt
only with such obligations as bore upon all the
priestly nation alike; in these two chapters we
now have the special requirements of this law
in its yet higher demands upon, first, the priests,
and, secondly, the high priest.
Abolished as to the letter, this part of the law
still holds good as to the principle which it ex-
presses, namely that special spiritual privilege
and honour places him to whom it is given under
special obligations to holiness of life. As con-
trasted with the world without, it is not then
enough that Christians should be equally correct
and moral in life with the best men of the world;
though too many seem to be living under that
impression. They must be more than this; they
must be holy: God will wink at things in others
which He will not deal lightly with in them.
And, so, again, within the Church, those who
occupy various positions of dignity as teachers
and rulers of God's fiock are just in that degree
laid under the more stringent obligation to holi-
ness of life and walk. This most momentous
lesson confronts us at the very opening of this
new section of the law, addressed specifically to
" the priests, the sons of Aaron." How much
it is needed is sufficiently and most sadly evident
from the condition of baptized Christendom to-
day. Who is there that will heed it?
Priestly holiness was to be manifested, first
(vv. 1-15), in regard to earthly relations of kin-
dred and friendship. This is illustrated under
three particulars, namely, in mourning for the
dead (vv. 1-6), in marriage (vv. 7, 8), and (ver.
q"* in the maintenance of purity in the priest's
family. With regard to the first point, it is or-
dered that there shall be no defilement for the
346
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
dead, except in the case of the priest's own
family, — father, mother, brother, unmarried
sister, son, or daughter.* That is, with the ex-
ception of these cases, the priest, though he may
mourn in his heart, is to take no part in any of
those last offices which others render to the dead.
This were " to profane himself." And while the
above exceptions are allowed in the case of mem-
bers of his immediate household, even in these
cases he is specially charged (ver. 5) to remem-
ber, what was indeed elsewhere forbidden to
every Israelite, that such excessive demonstra-
tions of grief as shaving the head, cutting the
fiesh, etc., were most unseemly in a priest.
These restrictions are expressly based upon the
fact that he is " a chief man among his people,"
that he is holy unto God, appointed to of¥er
" the bread of God, the offerings made by fire."
And inasmuch as the high priest, in the highest
degree of all, represents the priestly idea, and
is thus admitted into a peculiar and exclusive
intimacy of relation with God, having on him
" the crown of the anointing oil of his God," and
having been consecrated to put on the " gar-
ments for glory and for beauty," worn by none
other in Israel, with him the prohibition of all
public acts of mourning is made absolute (vv.
10-12). He may not defile himself, for instance,
by even entering the house where lies the dead
body of a father or a mother!
These regulations, at first thought, to many
will seem hard and unnatural. Yet this law of
holiness elsewhere magnifies and guards with
most jealous care the family relation, and com-
mands that even the neighbour we shall love as
ourselves. Hence it is certain that these regula-
tions cannot have been intended to condemn
the natural feelings of grief at the loss of friends,
but only to place them under certain restrictions.
They were given, not to depreciate the earthly
relationships of friendship and kindred, but only
to magnify the more the dignity and significance
of the priestly relation to God, as far transcending
even the most sacred relations of earth. As
priest, the son of Aaron was the servant of the
Eternal God, of God the Holy and the Living
One, appointed to mediate from Him the grace
of pardon and life to those condemned to die.
Hence he must never forget this himself, nor al-
low others to forget it. Hence he must maintain
a special, visible separation from death, as every-
where the sign of the presence and operation of
sin and unholiness: and while he is not forbidden
to mourn, he must mourn with a visible modera-
tion; the more so that if his priesthood had any
significance, it meant that death for the believing
and obedient Israelite was death in hope. And
then, besides all this, God had declared that He
Himself would be the portion and inheritance of
the priests. For the priest therefore to mourn,
as if in losing even those nearest and dearest on
earth he had lost all, were in outward appearance
lo fail in witness to the faithfulness of God to
His promises, and His all-sufficiency as his por-
tion.
Standing here, will we but listen, we can now
hear the echo of this same law of priestly holi-
ness from the New Testament, in such words as
these, addressed to the whole priesthood of be-
lievers: " He that loveth father or mother more
*The wife is not mentioned, but that she would also be
included in tlie exception, in view of lier beincralwavs re-
garded in the law as yet nearer to her husband than father
or mother, may be safely taken for granted.
than Me is not worthy of Me;" " Let those that
have wives be as though they had none, and
those that weep as though they wept not;"
■■ Concerning them that fall asleep . . . sorrow
not, even as the rest, which have no hope." As
Christians we are not forbidden to mourn; but
because a royal priesthood to the God of life,
who raised up the Lord Jesus, and ourselves
looking also for the resurrection, ever with
moderation and self-restraint. Extravagant
demonstrations of sorrow, whether in dress
or in prolonged separation from the sanctuary
and active service of God, as the manner of many
is, are all as contrary to the New Testament law
of holiness as to that of the Old. When be-
reaved, we are to call to mind the blessed fact of
our priestly relation to God, and in this we shall
find a restraint and a rem.edy for excessive and
despairing grief. We are to remember that the
law for the High Priest is the law for all His
priestly house; like Him, they must all be per-
fected for the priestliood by sufferings; so that,
in that they themselves suffer, being tried, they
may be able the better to succour others that are
tried in like manner (2 Cor. i. 4; Heb. ii. 18).
We are also t6 remember that as priests to God,
this God of eternal life and love is Himself our
satisfying portion, and with holy care take heed
that by no immoderate display of grief we even
seem before men to traduce His faithfulness and
belie to unbelievers His glorious all-sufficiency.
The holiness of the priesthood was also to be
represented visibly in the marriage relation. A
priest must marry no woman to whose fair fame
attaches the slightest possibility of suspicion, — no
harlot, or fallen woman,* or a woman divorced
(ver. 7) ; such an alliance were manifestly most
unseemly in one " holy to his God." As in
the former instance, the high priest is still fur-
ther restricted; he may not marry a widow,
but only " a virgin of his own people " (ver. 14);
for virginity is always in Holy Scripture the
peculiar type of holiness. As a reason it is added
that this were to " profane his seed among his
people;" that is, it would be inevitable that by
neglect of this care the people would come to
regard his seed with a diminished reverence as
the separated priests of the holy God. From
observing the practice of many who profess to be
Christians, one would naturally infer that they
can never have suspected that there was anything
in this part of the law which concerns the New
Testament priesthood of believers. How often
we see a young man or a young woman profess-
ing to be a disciple of Christ, a mem.ber of
Christ's royal priesthood, entering into marriage
alliance with a confessed unbeliever in Him I
And yet the law is laid down as explicitly in the
New Testament as in the Old (i Cor. vii. 39),
that marriage shall be only "in the Lord;" so
that one principle rules in both dispensations.
The priestly line must, as far as possible, be kept
pure; the holy man must have a holy wife.
Many, indeed, feel this deeply and marry ac-
cordingly; but the apparent thoughtlessness on
the matter of many more is truly astonishing,
and almost incomprehensible.
And the household of the priest were to re-
member the holy standing of their father. The
sin of the child of a priest was to be punished
more severely than that of the children of others;
a single illustration is given (ver. 9): "The
daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by
*Sce n.argin CR. V.).
Leviticus xxi. i-xxii. 33] LAW OF PRIESTLY HOLlNESb.
347
playing the harlot, . . . shall be burnt with
fire."* And the severity of the penalty is justi-
fied by this, that by her sin " she proianetn her
father." From which it appears that, as a prin-
ciple of the Divine judgment, if the children of
believers sin, their guilt will be judged more
heavy than that of others: and that justly, be-
cause to their sin this is added, over like sin of
others, that they thereby cast dishonour on their
believing parents, and m them soil and defame
the honour of God. How little is this remem-
Dered by many in these days of increasing insub-
ordination even in Christian families!
The priestly holiness was to be manifested, in
the second place, in phj'sical, bodily perfection.
It is written (ver. 17): " Speak unto Aaron, say-
ing, Whosoever he be of thy seed throughout
their generations that hath a blemish, let him not
approach to ofifer the bread of his God."
And then follows (vv. 18-20) a list of various
cases in illustration of this law, with the proviso
(vv. 21-23) that vvhile sucli a person might not
perform any priestly function, he should not be
debarred from the use of the priestly portion,
whether of things " holy " or " most holy," as his
daily food. The material and bodily is ever the
type and symbol of the spiritual; hence, in this
case, the spiritual purity and perfection required
of him who would draw near to God in the
priests' office must be visibly signified by his
physical perfection; else the sanctity of the taber-
nacle were profaned. Moreover, the reverence
due from the people toward Jehovah's sanctuary
could not well be maintained where a awarf, for
instance, or a humpback, were ministering at the
altar. And yet the Lord has for such a heart of
kindness; in kindly compassion He will not ex-
clude them from His table. Like Mephibosheth
at the table of David, the deformed priest may
still ea-t at the table of God.
There is a thought here which bears on the ad-
ministration of the affairs of God's house even
now. We are reminded that there are those
who, while undoubtedly members of the uni-
versal Christian priesthood, and thus lawfully en-
titled to come to the table of the Lord, may yet
be properly regarded as disabled and debarred
by various circumstances, for which, in many
cases, they may not be responsible, from any
eminent position in the Church.
In the almost unrestrained insistence of many
in this day for "equality," there are indications
not a few of a contempt for the holy offices or-
dained by Christ for His Church, which would
admit an equal right on the part of almost any
who may desire it, to be allow^ed to minister in
the Church in holy things. But as there were
dwarfed and blinded sons of Aaron, so are there
not a few Christians who — evidently, at least to
all but themselves — are spiritually dwarfs or de-
formed ; subject to ineradicable and obtrusive
constitutional infirmities, such as utterly dis-
qualify, and should preclude them from holding
any office in the holy Church of Christ. The
presence of such in her ministry can only now,
as of old, profane the sanctuaries of the Lord.
The next section of the law of holiness for
the priests (xxii. 1-16) requires that the priests,
as holy unto Jehovah, treat with most careful
reverence all those holy things which are their
lawful portion. If, in any way, any priest have
incurred ceremonial defilement, — as, for instance,
by an issue, or by the dead, — he is not to eat
♦ That is, not burnt alive, but after execution.
until he is clean (w. 2-7). On no account must
he defile himself by eating of that w'hich is un-
clean, such as that which has died of itself, or
has been torn by beasts (ver. 8), which indeed
was forbidden even to the ordinary Israelite.
Furthermore, the priests are charged that they
preserve the sanctity of God's house by carefully
excluding all from participation in the priests'
portion who are not of the priestly order. The
stranger or sojourner in the priest's house, or a
hired servant, must not be fed from this "bread
of God " ; not even a daughter, when, having
married, she has left the father's home to form a
family of her own, can be allowed to partake of
it (ver. 12). If, however (ver 13), she be parted
from her husband by death or divorce, and have
no child, and return to her father's house, she
then becomes again a member of the priestly
family, and resumes the privileges of her virgin-
ity-
All this may seem, at first, remote from any
present use ; and yet it takes little thought to see
that, in principle, the New Testament law of holi-
ness requires, under a changed form, even the
same reverent use of God's gifts, and especially
of the holy Supper of the Lord, from every
member of the Christian priesthood. It is true
that in some parts of the Church a superstitious
dread is felt with regard to approach to the
Lord's Table, as if only the conscious attainment
of a very high degree of holiness could warrant
one in coming. But, however such a feeling is
to be deprecated, it is certain that it is a less
serious wrong, and argues not so ill as to the
spiritual condition of a man as the easy careless-
ness with which multitudes partake of the Lord's
Supper, nothing disturbed, apparently, by the
recollection that they are living in the habitual
practice of known sin, unconfessed, unforsaken,
and therefore unforgiven. As it was forbidden
to the priest to eat of those holy things which
were his rightful portion, with his defilement or
uncleanness on him, till he should first be
cleansed, no less is it now a violation of the law
of holiness for the Christian to come to the
Holy Supper having on his conscience uncon-
fessed and unforgiven sin. No less truly than the
violation of this ancient law is this a profanation,
and who so desecrates the holy food must b^ar
his sin.
And as the sons of Aaron were charged by
this law of holiness that they guard the holy
things from the participation of any who were
not of the priestly house, so also is the obligation
on every member of the New Testament Church,
and especially on those who are in official charge
of her holy sacraments, that they be careful to
debar from such participation the unholy and
profane. It is true that it is possible to go to
an extreme in this matter which is unwarranted
by the Word of God. Although participation in
the Holy Supper is of right only for the regener-
ate, it does not follow, as in some sections of the
Church has been imagined, that the Church is
therefore required to satisfy herself as to the
undoubted regeneration of those who may appK
for membership and fellowship in this privilege
So to read the heart as to be able to decide au-
thoritatively on the regeneration of every ap-
plicant for Church membership is beyond the
power of any but the Omniscient Lord, and is not
required in the Word. The Apostles received
and baptised men upon their credible profession
of faith and repentance, and entered into no
34^
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
inquisitorial cross-examination as to the details
of the religious experience of the candidate.
None the less, however, the law of holiness re-
quires that the Church, under this limitation,
shall to the uttermost of her power be careful
that no one unconverted and profane shall sit
at the Holy Table of the Lord. She may admit
upon profession of faith and repentance, but she
certainly is bound to see to it that such profes-
sion shall be credible; that is, such as may be
reasonably believed to be sincere and genuine.
She is bound, therefore, to satisfy herself in such
cases, so far as possible to man, that the life of
the applicant, at least externally, witnesses to
the genuineness of the profession. If we are to
beware of imposing false tests of Christian char-
acter, as some have done, for instance, in the
use or disuse of things indifferent, we are, on the
other hand, to see to it that we do apply such
tests as the Word warrants, and firmly exclude
all such as insist upon practices which are
demonstrably, in themselves always wrong, ac-
cording to the law of God.
No man who has any just apprehension of
Scriptural truth can well doubt that we have
here a lesson which is of the highest present-day
importance. When one goes out into the world
and observes the practices in which many whom
we meet at the Lord's Table habitually indulge,
whether in business or in society, — the crooked-
ness in commercial dealings and sharp dealing in
trade, the utter dissipation in amusement, of
many Church members, — a spiritual man cannot
but ask, Where is the discipline of the Lord's
house? Surely, this law of holiness applies to a
multitude of such cases; and it must be said that
when such eat of the holy things, they " profane
them;" and those who, in responsible charge of
the Lord's Table, are careless in this matter,
" cause them to bear the iniquity that bringeth
guilt, when they eat their holy things" (ver.
i6). That word of the Lord Jesus certainly ap-
plies in this case (Matt, xviii. 7) : " It must needs
be that occasions of stumbling come; but woe to
that man through whom the occasion cometh! "
The last section of the law concerning priestly
holiness (xxii. 17-33) requires the maintenance
of jealous care in the enforcement of the law of
offerings. Inasmuch as, in the nature of the
case, while it rested with the sons of Aaron to
enforce this law, the obligation concerned every
offerer, this section (w. 17-25) is addressed also
(ver. 18) "unto all the children of Israel." The
first requirement concerned the perfection of the
offering; it must be (vv. 19, -20) "without blem-
ish." Only one qualification is allowed to this
law, namely, in the case of the free-will offering
(ver. 23), in which a victim was allowed which,
otherwise perfect, had something "superfluous
or lacking m his parts." Even this relaxation of
the law was not allowed in the case of an offering
brought in payment of a vow; hence Malachi
(i. 14), in allusion to this law, sharply denounces
the man who " voweth, and sacrificeth unto the
Lord a blemished thing" Verse 25 provides
that this law shall be enforced in the case of the
foreigner, who may wish to present an offening
to Jehovah, no less than with the Israelite.
A third requirement (ver. 27) sets a minimum
limit to the age of a sacrificial victim; it must not
be less than eight days old. The reason of this
law, apart from any mystic or symbolic meaning,
is probably ErrounHed in rnnside.ations of hu-
manity, requiring the avoidance of giving un-
necessary suffering to the dam. A similar
intention is probably to be recognised in the
additional law (ver. 28) that the cow, or ewe,
and its young should not both be killed in one
day; though it must be confessed that the matter
is somewhat obscure. Finally, the law closes
(vv. 29, 30) with the repetition of the command
(vii. 15) requiring that the flesh of the sacrifice
of thanksgiving be eaten on the same day in
which it is offered. The slightest possibility of
beginning corruption is to be precluded in such
cases with peculiar strictness.
This closing section of the law of holiness,
which so insists that the regulations of God's law
in regard to sacrifice shall be scrupulously ob-
served, in its inner principle forbids all depart-
ures in matter of worship from any express Di-
vine appointment or command. We fully
recognise the fact that, as compared with the
old dispensation, the New Testament allows in
the conduct and order of worship a far larger
liberty than then. But, in our age, the tendency,
alike in politics and in religion, is to the con-
founding of liberty and license. Yet they are
not the same, but are most sharply contrasted.
Liberty is freedom of action within the bounds
of Divine law; license recognises no limitation
to human action, apart from enforced necessity,
— no law save man's own will and pleasure. It
is therefore essential lawlessness,* and there-
fore is sin in its most perfect and consummate
expression. But there is law in the New Testa-
ment as well as in the Old. Because the New
Testament lays down but few laws concerning
the order of Divine worship, it does not follow
that these few are of no consequence, and that
men may worship in all respects just as they
choose, and equally please God.
To illustrate this matter. It does not follow,
because the New Testament allows large liberty
as regards the details of worship, that therefore
we may look upon the use of images or pi<:tures
in connection with worship as a matter of in-
difference. If told that these are merely used
as an aid to devotion, — the very argument which
in all ages has been used by all idolaters, — we
reply that, be that as it may, it is an aid which is
expressly prohibited under the heaviest penal
sanctions in both Testaments. We may take
another present-day illustration, which, espe-
cially in the American Church, is of special perti-
nence. One would say that it should be self-
evident that no ordinance of the Church should
be more jealously guarded from human altera-
tion or modification than the most sacred institu-
tion of the sacramental Supper. Surely it
should be allowed that the Lord alone should
have the right to designate the symbols of His
own death in this most holy ordinance. That
He chose and appointed for this purpose bread
and wine, even the fermented juice of the grape,
has been afhrmed by the practically unanimous
consensus of Christendom for almost nineteen
hundred years; and it is not too much to say that
this understanding of the Scripture record is
sustained by the no less unanimous judgment
of truly authoritative scholarship even to-day.
Neither can it be denied that Christ ordained
this use of wine in the Holy Supper with the
most perfect knowledge of the terrible evils con-
nected with its abuse in all ages. All this being
* See I John iii. 4 and 2 Thess. ii. 3, 4, 7, 8, — passages
•which, in view of this most manifest and characteristic
tendency of our times, are pregnant with very solemn
warning.
l<eviticus xxiii. 1-44.]
SET FEASTS OF THE LORD.
349
so, how can it but contravene this principle of
the law of holiness, which insists upon the exact
observance of the appointments which the Lord
has made for His own worship, when men, in the
imagined interest of " moral reform," presume to
attempt improvements in this holy ordinance of
the Lord, and substitute for the wine which He
chose to make the symbol of His precious blood,
something else, of different properties, for the
use of which the whole New Testament affords
no warrant? We speak with full knowledge of
the various plausibhe arguments which are
pressed as reasons why the Church should au-
thorise this nineteenth-century innovation. No
doubt, in many cases, the change is urged
through a misapprehension as to the historical
facts, which, however astonishing to scholars, is
at least real and sincere. But whenever any,
admitting the facts as to the origmal appoint-
ment, yet seriously propose, as so often of late
years, to improve on the Lord's arrangements
for His own Table, we are bold to insist that the
principle which underlies this part of the priestly
law of holiness applies in full force in this case,
and cannot therefore be rightly set aside.
Strange, indeed, it is that men should unthink-
ingly hope to advance morality by ignoring the
primal principle of all holiness, that Christ, the
Son of God, is absolute and supreme Lord over
all His people, and especially in all that pertains
to the ordering of His own house!
We have in these days great need to beseech
the Lord that He may deliver us, in all things,
from that malign epidemic of religious lawless-
ness which is one of the plagues of our age; and
raise up a generation who shall so understand
their priestly calling as Christians, that, no less
in all that pertains to the offices of public wor-
ship, than in their lives as individuals they shall
take heed, above all things, to walk according to
the principles of this law of priestly holiness.
For, repealed although it be as to the outward
form of the letter, yet in the nature of the case,
as to its spirit and intention, it abides, and must
abide, in force unto the end. And the great
argument also, with which, after the constant
manner of this law, this section closes, is also,
as to its spirit, valid still, and even of greater
lorce in its New Testament form than of old.
For we may now justly read it in this wise: " Ye
•hall not profane My holy name, but I will be
hallowed among My people: I am the Lord that
hallow you, that have redeemed you by the cross,
to be your God."
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SET FEASTS OF THE LORD.
Leviticus xxiii. 1-44.
It is ever an instinct of natural religion to ob-
serve certain set times for special public and
•united worship. As we should therefore antici-
pate, such observances are in this chapter en-
3 )ined as a part of the requirement of the law of
holiness for Israel.
It is of consequence to observe that the Re-
-< isers have corrected the error of the Authorised
Version, which renders two perfectly distinct
words alike as " feasts;" and have distinguished
the one by the translation, " sot feasts," the other
ty the one word, " feasts." The precise sense of
the former word is given in the margin " ap-
pointed seasons." and it is naturally applied to all
23— Vol. I.
the set times of special religious solemnity which
are ordained in this chapter. But the other word
translated " feast," — derived from a root mean-
ing " to dance," whence " feast " or " festival," —
is applied to only three of the former six " ap-
pointed seasons," namely, the feasts of Unleav-
ened Bread, of Pentecost, and of Tabernacles;
as intended to be, in a special degree, seasons of
gladness and festivity.
The indication of this distinction is of impor-
tance, as completely meeting the allegation that
there is in this chapter evidence of a later devel-
opment than in the account of the feasts given
in Exod. xxxiv., where the number of the
" feasts," besides the weekly Sabbath, is given as
three, while here, as it is asserted, their number
has been increased to six. In reality, however,
there is nothing here which suggests a later
period. For the object of the former law in
Exodus was only to name the " feasts " (haggitn) ;
while that of the chapter before us is to indicate
not only these, — which here, as there, are three,
— but, in addition to these, all " appointed sea-
sons " for " holy convocations," which, although
all mo'adim, were not all haggitn.
The observance of public religious festivals has
been common to all the chief religions of the
world, both ancient and modern. Very often,
though not in all cases, these have been deter-
mined by the phases of the moon; or by the ap-
parent motion of the sun in the heavens, as in
many instances of religious celebrations con-
nected with the period of the spring and au-
tumnal equinoxes; and thus, very naturally, also
with the times of harvest and ingathering. It is
at once evident that of these appointed seasons
of holy convocation, the three feasts (haggtm) of
the Hebrews also fell at certain points in the har-
vest season; and with each of these, ceremonies
were observed connected with harvest and in-
gathering; while two, the feast of weeks and that
of tabernacles, take alternate names, directly re-
ferring to this their connection with the harvest;
namely, the feast of firstfruits and that of in-
gathering. Thus we have, first, the feast of un-
leavened bread, following passover, which was
distinguished by the presentation of a sheaf of the
firstfruits of the barley harvest, in the latter part
of March, or early in April; then, the feast of
weeks, or firstfruits, seven weeks later, marking
the completion of the grain harvest with the in-
gathering of the wheat; and, finally, the feast of
tabernacles or ingathering, in the seventh month,
marking the harvesting of the fruits, especially
the oil and the wine, and therewith the completed
ingathering of the whole product of the year.
From these facts it is argued that in these He-
brew feasts we have simply a natural develop-
ment, with modifications, of the ancient and
widespread system of harvest feasts among the
heathen; to which the historical element which
appears in some of them was only added as an
afterthought, in a later period of history. From
this point of view, the idea that these feasts were
a matter of supernatural revelation disappears;
what religious character they have belongs
originally to the universal religion of nature.
But it is to be remarked, first, that even if we
admit that in their original character these were
simply and only harvest feasts, it would not fol-
low that therefore their observance, with certain
prescribed ceremonies, could not have been
matter of Divine revelation. There is a religion
of nature; God has not left Himself without a
35°
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
witness, in that He has given men " rains and
fruitful seasons," filling their hearts with food
and gladness. And, as already remarked in re-
gard to sacrifice, it is no part of the method of
God in revelation to ignore or reject what in this
religion of nature may be true and right; but
rather to use it, and build on this foundation.
But, again, the mere fact that the feast of un-
leavened bread fell at the beginning of barley
harvest, and that one — though only one — cere-
mony appointed for that festive week had ex-
plicit reference to the then beginning harvest, is
not sufficient to disprove the uniform declaration
of Scripture that, as observed in Israel, its origi-
nal ground was not natural, but historical;
namely, in the circumstances attending the birth
of the nation in their exodus from Egypt.
But we may say more than this. If the con-
trary were true, and the introduction of the his-
torical element was an afterthought, as insisted
by some, then we should expect to find that in
accounts belonging to successive periods, the
reference to the harvest would certainly be more
prominent in the earlier, and the reference of thj
feast to a historical origin more prominent in
the later, accounts of the feasts. Most singular
it is then, upon this hypothesis, to find that even
accepting the analysis, e. g., of Wellhausen, the
facts are the exact reverse. For the only brief
reference to the harvest in connection with this
feast of unleavened bread is found in this chap.
xxiii. of Leviticus, composed, it is alleged, about
the time of Ezekiel; while, on the other hand,
the narrative in Exod. xii., regarded by all the
critics of this school as the earliest account of the
origin of the feast of unleavened bread, refers
only to the historical event of the exodus, as the
occasion of its institution. If we grant the
asserted difference in age of these two parts of
the Pentateuch, one would thus more naturally
conclude that the historical events were the origi-
nal occasion of the institution of the festival, and
that the reference to the harvest, in the presenta-
tion of the sheaf of firstfruits, was the later intro-
duction into the ceremonies of the week.
But the truth is that this naturalistic identifica-
tion of these Hebrew feasts with the harvest
feasts of other nations is a mistake. In order to
make it out, it is necessary to ignore or pervert
most patent facts. These so-called harvest feasts
in fact form part of an elaborate system of sacred
times, — a system which is based upon the Sab-
bath, and into which the sacred number seven,
the number of the covenant, enters throughout
as a formative element. The weekly Sabbath,
first of all, was the seventh day; the length of
the great festivals of unleavened bread and of
tabernacles was also, in each case, seven days.
Not only so, but the entire series of sacred times
mentioned in this chapter and in chap. xxv. con-
stitutes an ascending series of sacred septenaries,
in which the ruling thought is this: that the
seventh is holy unto the Lord, as the number
symbolic of rest and redemption; and that the
eighth, as the first of a new week, is symbolic of
the new creation. Thus we have the seventh
day, the weekly Sabbath, constantly recurring,
the type of each of the series; then, counting
from the feast of unleavened bread, — the first of
the sacred year. — the fiftieth day, at the end of
the seventh week, is signalised as sacred by the
feast of firstfruits or of "weeks;" the seventh
month, again, is the sabbatic month, of special
sanctity, containing as it does three of the annual
seasons of holy convocation, — the feast of trum-
pets on its first day, the great day of atonement
on the tenth, and the last of the three great
annual feasts, that of tabernacles or ingathering,
for seven days from the fifteenth day of the
month. Beyond this series of sacred festivals re-
curring annually, in chap, xxv., the seventh year
is appointed to be a sabbatic year of rest to the
land, and the series at last culminates at the ex-
piration of seven sevens of years, in the fiftieth
year, — the eighth following the seventh seven, —
the great year of jubilee, the supreme year of
rest, restoration, and release. All these sacred
times, differing in the details of their observance,
are alike distinguished by their connection with,
the sacred number seven, by the informing pres-
ence of the idea of the Sabbath, and therewith
alwaj's a new and fuller revelation of God as irr
covenant with Israel for their redemption.
Now, like to this series of sacred times, in
heathenism there is absolutely nothing. It evi-
dently belongs to another realm of thought,
ethics, and religion. And so, while it is quite
true that in the three great feasts there was a
reference to the harvest, and so to fruitful nature,
yet the fundamental, unifying idea of the system
of sacred times was not the recognition of the
fruitful life of nature, as in the heathen festivals,
but of Jehovah, as the Author and Sustainer of
the life of His covenant people Israel, as also of
every individual in the nation. This, we repeat,
is the one central thought in all these sacred sea-
sons; not the life of nature, but the life of the
holy nation, as created and sustained by a cove-
nant God. The annual processes of nature have
indeed a place and a necessary recognition in the
system, simply because the personal God is
active in all nature; but the place of these is not
primary, but secondary and subordinate. They
have a recognition because, in the first place, it
is through the bounty of God in nature that the
life of man is sustained; and, secondly, also be-
cause nature in her order is a type and shadow of
things spiritual. For in the spiritual world,
whether we think of it as made up of nations or
individuals, even as in the natural, there is a
seedtime and a harvest, a time of firstfruits and a
time of the joy and rest of the full ingathering of
fruit, and oil, and wine. Hence it was most fit-
ting that this inspired rubric, as primarily in-
tended for the celebration of spiritual things,,
should be so arranged and timed, in all its parts,
as that in each returning sacred season, visible
nature should present itself to Israel as a mani-
fest parable and eloquent suggestion of those
spiritual verities; the more so that thus the
Israelite would be reminded that the God of the
Exodus and the God of Sinai was also the su-
preme Lord of nature, the God of the seed-time
and harvest, the Creator and Sustainer of the
heavens and the earth, and of all that in them is.
The Weekly Sabbath.
Leviticus xxiii. 1-3.
" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying. Speak unto
the children of Israel, and say unto them, The set feasts-
of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convoca-
tions, even these are My set feasts. Six days shall work
be done : but on the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn
rest, an holy convocation ; ve shall do no manner of work :
it is a sabbath unto the Lord in all your dwellings."
The first verse of this chapter announces the
purpose of the section as not to give a complete
Leviticus xxiii. 1-44]
SET I'KASrS OF IHE LORD.
351
calendar of sacred times or of seasons of wor-
ship,— for the new moons and the sabbatic year
and the jubilee are not mentioned, — but to
enumerate such sacred times as are to be kept as
" holy convocations." The reference in this
phrase cannot be to an assembling of the people
at the central sanctuary which is elsewhere
ordered (Exod. xxxiv. 23) only for the three
feasts of passover, weeks, and atonement; but
rather, doubtless, to local gatherings for pur-
poses of worship, such as, at a later day, took
form in the institution of the synagogues.
The enumeration of these " set times " begins
with the Sabbath (ver. 3), as was natural; for, as
we have seen, the whole series of sacred times
was sabbatic in character. The sanctity of the
day is emphasised in the strongest terms, as a
shabbath shabbatlwn, a " sabbath of sabbatism," —
a " sabbath of solemn rest," as it is rendered by
the Revisers. While on some other sacred sea-
sons the usual occupations of the household were
permitted, on the Sabbath " no manner of work "
was to be done; not even was it lawful to gather
wood or to light a fire.
For this sanctity of the Sabbath two reasons
are elsewhere given. The first of these, which is
assigned in the fourth commandment, makes it
a memorial of the rest of God, when having
created man in Eden, He saw His work which
He had finished, that it was very good, and
rested from all His work. As created, man was
participant in this rest of God. He was indeed
to work in tilling the garden in which he had
been placed; but from such labour as involves
unremunerative toil and exhaustion he was
exempt. But this sabbatic rest of the creation
was interrupted by sin; God's work, which He
had declared " good," was marred; man fell into
a condition of wearying toil and unrest of body
and soul, and with him the whole creation also
was " subjected to vanity " (Gen. iii. 17, 18;
Rom. viii. 20). But in this state of things the
God of love could not rest; it thus involved for
Him a work of new creation, which should have
for its object the complete restoration, both as
regards man and nature, of that sabbatic state of
things on earth which had been broken up by
sin. And thus it came to pass that the weekly
Sabbath looked not only backward, but forward;
and spoke not only of the rest that was, but of
the great sabbatism of the future, to be brought
in through a promised redemption. Hence, as a
second reason for the observance of the Sabbath,
it is said (Exod. xxxi. 13) to be a sign between
God and Israel through all their generations,
that they might know that He was Jehovah
which sanctified them, i. e., who had set them
apart for deliverance from the curse, that through
them the world might be saved.
These are thus the two sabbatic ideas; rest and
redemption. They everywhere appear, in one
form or another, in all this sabbatic series of
sacred times. Some of them emphasise one
phase of the rest and redemption, and some an-
other; the weekly Sabbath, as the unit of the
series, presents both. For in Deuteronomy (v.
15) Israel was commanded to keep the Sabbath
in commemoration of the exodus, as the time
when God undertook to bring them into His
rest; a rest of which the beginning and the
pledge was their deliverance from Egyptian
bondage; a rest brought in through a redemp-
tion.*
* See the inspired comment in Heb. iv.
The Feast of Passover and Unleavened
Bread.
Leviticus xxiii. 4-14.
" These are the set feasts of the Lord, even holy convo-
cations, which ye shall proclaim in their appointed season.
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at
even, is the Lord's passover. And on the fifteenth day of
the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the
Lord : seven days ye shall eat unleavened bread. In the
first day ye shall have an holy convocation : yc shall do
no servile work. But ye shall offer an offering made by
fire unto the Lord seven days : in the seventh day is an
holy convocation ; ye shall do no servile work. And the
Lord spake unto Moses, saying. Speak unto the children
of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the
land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest
thereof, then ye shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of
your harvest unto the priest : and he .shall wave the sheaf
before the Lord, to be accepted for you : on the morrow
after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. And in the day
when ye wave the sheaf, ye shall offer a he-lamb without
blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the
Lord. And the meal offering thereof shall be two tenth
parts of an ephah of fine flour mingled with oil. an oft'ering
made by fire unto the Lord for a sweet savour : and the
drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of
an hin. And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched
corn, nor fresh ears, until this selfsame day, until
ye have brought the oblation of your (jod : it is a stat-
ute for ever throughout your generations in all your
dwellings."
Verses 5-8 give the law for the first of the an-
nual feasts, the passover and unleavened bread.
The passover lamb was to be slain and eaten on
the evening of the fourteenth day; and thereafter,
for seven days, they were all to eat unleavened
bread. The first and seventh days of unleavened
bread were to be kept as an " holy convocation;"
in both of which " servile work," i. e., the usual
occupations in the field or in one's handicraft,
were forbidden. Further than this the restric-
tion did not extend.
The utter impossibility of making this feast of
passover also to have been at first merely a har-
vest festival is best shown by the signal failure of
the many attempts to explain on this theory the
name " passover " as applied to the sacrificial
victim, and the exclusion of leaven for the whole
period. Admit the statements of the Pentateuch
on this subject, and all is simple. The feast was
a most suitable commemoration by Israel of the
solemn circumstances under which they began
their national life; their exemption from the
plague of the death of the first-born, through the
blood of a slain victim; and their exodus there-
after in such haste that they stopped not to
leaven their bread.
And there was a deeper spiritual meaning than
this. Whereas, secured by the sprinkling of
blood, they then fed in safety on the flesh of the
victim, by which they received strength for their
flight from Egypt, the same two thoughts were
thereby naturally suggested which we have seen
represented in the peace-offering; namely, friend-
ship and fellowship with God secured through
sacrifice, and life sustained by His bounty. And
the unleavened bread, also, had more than a his-
toric reference; else it had sufificed to eat it only
on the anniversary night, and it had not been
commanded also to put away the leaven from
their houses. For leaven is the established sym-
bol of moral corruption; and in that, the pass-
over lamb having been slain, Israel must abstain
for a full septenary period of a week from every
use of leaven, it was signified in symbol that the
redeemed nation must not live by means of what
is evil, but be a holy people, according to their
352
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
calling. And the inseparable connection of this
with full consecration of person and service, and
with the expiation of sin, was daily sym-
bolised (ver. 8) by the " ofiferings made by
fire," burnt-ofTerings, meal-offerings, and sin-
offerings, " offerings made by fire unto the
Lord."
On " the morrow after the Sabbath " (ver. 15)
of this sacred week, it was ordered (ver. 10) that
" the sheaf of the firstfruits of the (barley) har-
vest " should be brought "unto the priest;" and
(ver. 11) that he should consecrate it unto the
Lord, by the ceremony of waving it before Him.
This wave-offering of the sheaf of firstfruits was
to be accompanied (vv. 12, 13) by a burnt-offer-
ing, a meal-offering, and a drink-offering of
wine. Until all this was done (ver. 14) they
were to " eat neither bread, nor parched corn,
nor fresh ears " of the new harvest. By the con-
secration of the firstfruits is ever signified the
consecration of the whole, of which it is the first
part, unto the Lord. By this act, Israel, at the
very beginning of their harvest, solemnly conse-
crated the whole harvest to the Lord; and are
only permitted to use it, when they receive it
thus as a gift from Him. This ethical reference
to the harvest is here expressly taught; but still
more was thereby taught in symbol.
For Israel was declared (Exod. iv. 22) to be
God's first-born; that is, in the great redemptive
plan of God, which looks forward to the final
salvation of all nations, Israel ever comes his-
torically first. " The Jew first, and also the
Greek," is the New Testament formula of this
fundamental dispensational truth. The offering
unto God, therefore, of the sheaf of firstfruits, at
the very beginning of the harvest, — in fullest har-
mony with the historic reference of this feast,
which commemorated Israel's deliverance from
bondage and separation from the nations, as a
firstfruits of redemption, — symbolically signified
the consecration of Israel unto God as the first-
born unto Him from the nations, the beginning
of the world's great harvest.
But this is not all. For in these various cere-
monies of this first of the feasts, all who ac-
knowledge the authority of the New Testament
will recognise a yet more profound, and pro-
phetic, spiritual meaning. Passover and. un-
leavened bread not only looked backward, but
forward. For the Apostle Paul writes, address-
ing all believers (i Cor. 7, 8): " Purge out the
old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as
ye are unleavened. For our passover also hath
been sacrificed, even Christ: wherefore let us
keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with
the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with
the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth;" —
an exposition so plain that comment is scarcely
needed. And as following upon the passover,
on the morrow after the Sabbath, the first day
of the week, the sheaf of firstfruits was presented
before Jehovah, so in type is brought before us
that of which the same Apostle tells us (i Cor.
XV. 20), that Christ, in that He rose from the dead
on the first day after the Sabbath, became " the
firstfruits of them that are asleep;" thus, for the
first time, finally and exhaustively fulfilling this
type, in full accord also with His own repre-
sentation of Himself (John xii. 24) as " a
grain of wheat," which should " fall into the
earth and die," and then, living again, " bear
much fruit."
The Feast of Pentecost.
Leviticus xxiii. 15-21.
" And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after
the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the
wave offering ; seven sabbaths shall there be complete :
even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye
number fifty days ; and ye shall offer a new meal offering
unto the Lord. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two
wave loaves of two tenth parts of an ephah : they shall be
of fine flour, they shall be baken with leaven, for first-
fruits unto the Lord. And ye shall present with the bread
seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one
young bullock, and two rams: they shall be a burnt offer-
ing unto the Lord, with their meal offering, and their
drink offerings, even an offering made by fire, of a sweet
savour unto the Lord. And ye shall offer one he-goat for
a sin offering, and two he-lambs of the first year for a sac-
rifice of peace offerings. And the priest shall wave them
with the bread of the firstfruits for a wave offering before
the Lord, with the two lambs : they shall be holy to the
Lord for the priest. And ye shall make proclamation on
the selfsame day ; there shall be an holy convocation unto
you : ye shall do no servile work : it is a statute for ever
in all your dwellings throughout your generations."
Next in order came the feast of firstfruits, or
the feast of weeks, which, because celebrated on
the fiftieth day after the presentation of the
wave-sheaf in passover week, has come to be
known as Pentecost, from the Greek numeral
signifying fifty. It was ordered that the fiftieth
day after this presentation of the first sheaf of
the harvest should be kept as a day of " holy con-
vocation," with abstinence from all " servile
work." The former festival had marked the ab-
solute beginning of the harvest with the first
sheaf of barley; this marked the completion of
the grain harvest with the reaping of the wheat.
In the former, the sheaf was presented as it came
from the field; in this case, the offering was of
the grain as prepared for food. It was ordered
(ver. 16) that on this day " a new meal offering "
should be offered. It should be brought out of
their habitations and be baken with leaven. In
both particulars, it was unlike the ordinary meal-
offerings, because the offering was to represent
the ordinary food of the people. Accompanied
with a sevenfold burnt-offering, and a sin-
offering, and two lambs of peace-offerings, these
were to be waved before the Lord for their ac-
ceptance, after the manner of the wave-sheaf
(vv. 18-20). On the altar they could not come,
because they were baken with leaven.
This festival, as one of the sabbatic series,
celebrated the rest after the labours of the grain
harvest, a symbol of the great sabbatism to fol-
low that harvest which is " the end of the age "
(Matt. xiii. 39). As a consecration, it dedicated
unto God the daily food of the nation for the
coming year. As passover reminded them that
God was the Creator of Israel, so herein, receiv-
ing their daily bread from Him, they were re-
minded that He was also the Sustainer of Israel;
while the full accompaniment of burnt-offerings
and peace-offerings expressed their full conse-
cration and happy state of friendship with Je-
hovah, secured through the expiation of the sin-
offering.
Was this feast also, like passover, prophetic?
The New Testament is scarcely less clear than in
the former case. For after that Christ, first hav-
ing been slain as " our Passover," had then risen
from the dead as the " Firstfruits," fulfilling the
type of the wave-sheaf on the morning of the
Sabbath, fifty days passed; "and when the day
of Pentecost was fully come," came that great
outpouring of the Holy Ghost, the conversion of
Leviticus xxiii. 1-44. J
SET FEASTS OF THE LORD.
353
three thousand out of many lands (Acts ii.), and
therewith the formation of that Church of the
New Testament whose members the Apostle
James declares (i. 18) to be " a kind of first-
fruits of God's creatures." Thus, as the sheaf
had typified Christ as " the First-born from the
dead," the presentation on the day of Pentecost
of the two wave loaves, the product of the sheaf
of grain, no less evidently typified the presenta-
tion unto God of the Church of the first-born,
the firstfruits of Christ's death and resurrection,
as constituted on that sacred day. This then
was the complete fulfilment of the feast of weeks
regarded as a redemptive type, showing how,
not only rest, but also redemption was compre-
hended in the significance of the sabbatic idea.
And yet, that complete redemption was not
therewith attained by that Church of the first-
born on Pentecost was presignified in that the
two wave-loaves were to be baken with leaven.
The feast of unleavened bread had exhibited the
ideal of the Christian life; that of firstfruits, the
imperfection of the earthly attainment. On
earth the leaven of sin still abides.
The Feast of Trumpets.
Leviticus xxiii. 23-25.
"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying. Speak unto
the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the
first day of the month, shall be a solemn rest unto you, a
memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation.
Ye shall do no servile work : and ye shall offer an offering
made by fire unto the Lord."
By a very natural association of thought, in
ver. 22 the direction to leave the gleaning of the
harvest for the poor and the stranger is repeated
verbally from chap. xix. 9, 10. Thereupon we
pass from the feast of the seventh week to the
solemnities of the seventh month, in which the
series of annual sabbatic seasons ended. It was
thus, by eminence, the sabbatic season of the year.
Of the " set times " of this chapter, three fell in
this month, and of these, two — the day of atone-
ment and tabernacles — were of supreme signifi-
cance: the former being distinguished by the
most august religious solemnity of the year, the
entrance of the high priest into the Holy of
Holies to make atonement for the sins of the
nation; the latter marking the completion of the
ingathering of the products of the year, with the
fruit, the oil, and the wine. Of this sabbatic
month, it is directed (vv. 23-25) that the first day
be kept as a shabbathon, " a solemn rest," marked
by abstinence from all the ordinary business of
life, and a holy convocation. The special cere-
mony of the day, which gave it its name, is de-
scribed as a " memorial of blowing of trumpets."
This " blowing of trumpets " was a reminder,
not from Israel to God, as some have fancied,
but from God to Israel. It was an announce-
ment from the King of Israel to His people that
the glad sabbatic month had begun, and that the
great day of atonement, and the supreme fes-
tivity of the feast of tabernacles, was now at
hand.
That the first day of this sabbatic month should
be thus sanctified was but according to the Mo-
saic principle that the consecration of anything
signifies the consecration unto God of the whole.
"If the firstfruit is holy, so also the lump;" in
like manner, if the first day, so is the month.
Trumpets — though not the same probably as
used on this occasion — were also blown on other
occasions, and, in particular, at the time of each
new moon; but, according to tradition, these
only by the priests and at the central sanctuary;
while in this feast of trumpets every one blew
who would, and throughout the whole land.
The Day of Atonement.
Leviticus xxiii. 26-32.
"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Howbeit on
the tenth day of this seventh month is the day of atone-
ment : it shall be an holy convocation unto you, and ye
shall afflict your souls : and ye shall offer an offering
made by fire unto the Lord. And ye shall do no manner
of work in that same day : for it is a day of atonement, to
make atonement for you before the Lord your God. For
whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that sarne
day, he shall be cut off from his people. And whatsoever
soul it be that doeth any manner of work in that same
day, that soul will I destroy from among his people. Ye
shall do no manner of work : it is a statute for ever
throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It
shall be unto you a sabbath of solemn rest, and ye shall
afflict your souls : in the ninth day of the month at even,
from even unto even, shall ye keep your sabbath."
After this festival of annunciation, followed, on
the tenth day of the month, the great annual day
of atonement. This has already come before us
(chap, xiii.) in its relation to the sacrificial sys-
tem, of which the sin-ofifering of this day was
the culmination. But this chapter brings it be-
fore us in another aspect, namely, in its relation
to the annual septenary series of sacred seasons,
the final festival of which it preceded and intro-
duced.
Its significance, as thus coming in this final
seventh and sabbatic month of the ecclesiastical
year, lay not merely in the strictness of the rest
which was commanded (vv. 28-30) from every
manner of work, but, still more, in that it ex-
pressed in a far higher degree than any other
festival the other sabbatic idea of complete resto-
ration brought in through expiation for sin. This
was indeed the central thought of the whole cere-
monial of the day, — the complete removal of all
those sins of the nation which stood between
them and God, and hindered complete restora-
tion to God's favour. And while this restoration
was symbolised by the sacrifice of the sin-ofifer-
ing, and its presentation and acceptance before
Jehovah in the Holy of Holies; yet, that none
might hence argue from the fact of atonement to
license to sin, it was ordained (ver. 27) that the
people should " afiflict their souls," namely, by
fasting,* in token of their penitence for the sins
for which atonement was made; and the absolute
necessity of this condition of repentance in order
to any benefit from the high-priestly sacrifice and
intercession was further emphasised by the
solemn threat (ver. 29) : " Whatsoever soul it be
that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he
shall be cut off from his people."
These then were the lessons — lessons of trans-
cendent moment for all people and all ages —
which were set forth in the great atonement of
the sabbatic month, — the complete removal of
sin by an expiatory oflFering, conditioned on the
part of the worshipper by the obedience of faith
and sincere repentance for the sin, and issuing in
rest and full establishment in God's loving
favour.
* Compare Isa. Iviii. 3-7. Zech. vii. 5, where the neces-
sity of the inward sorrow for sin and turning unto God,
in connection with this fast of the seventh month, is
solemnly urged upon Israel.
354
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
The Feast of Tabernacles.
Leviticus xxiii. 33-43.
" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying-. Speak unto
the children of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of this
seventh month is the feast of tabernacles for seven days
unto the Lord. On the first day shall be an holy convoca-
tion : ye shall do no servile work. Seven days ye shall
offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord : on the
eighth day shall. be an holy convocation unto you ; and ye
shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord : it is a
solemn assembly ; ye shall do no servile work. These are
the set feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be
holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto
theLord, a burnt offering, and a meal offering, a sacrifice,
and drink offerings, each on its own day : beside the sab-
baths of the Lord, and beside your gifts, and beside all
your vows, and beside all your freewill offerings, which
ye give unto the Lord. Howbeit on the fifteenth day of
the seventh month, when ye have gathered in the fruits of
the land, ye shall keep the feast of the Lord seven days :
on the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth
day shall be a solemn rest. And \'e shall take you on the
first day the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees,
and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook ; and
ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.
And ye shall keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in
the year : it is a statute for ever in your generations : ye
shall keep it in the seventh month. Ye shall dwell in
booths seven days ; all that are homeborn in Israel shall
dwell in booths : that your generations may know that I
made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I
brought them out of the land of Egypt : I am the Lord
your'God."
The sin of Israel having been thus removed,
the last and the greatest of all the feasts fol-
lowed— the feast of tabernacles or ingathering.
It occupied a full week (ver. 34), from the fif-
teenth to the twenty-second of the month, the
first day being signalised by a holy convocation
and abstinence from all servile work (ver. 35).
Two reasons are indicated, here and elsewhere,
for the observance: the one, natural (ver. 39),
the completed ingathering of the products of the
year; the other, historical (vv. 42, 43), — it was
to be a memorial of the days when Israel dwelt
in booths in the wilderness. Both ideas were
represented in the direction (ver. 40) that they
should take on the first day " the fruit of goodly
trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of
thick trees, and willows of the brook," fitly sym-
bolising the product of the vine and the fruit-
trees which were harvested in this month; and.
making booths of these, all were to dwell in
these tabernacles, and " rejoice before the Lord
their God seven days." And to this the his-
torical reason is added, " that your generations
may know that I made the children of Israel to
dwell in booths, when I brought them out of
the land of Egypt."
No one need feel anj' difficulty in seeing in
this a connection with similar harvest and vin-
tage customs among other peoples of that time.
That other nations had festivities of this kind at
that time, was surely no reason why God should
not order these to be taken up into the Mosaic
law, elevated in their significance, and sanctified
to higher ends. Nothing could be more fitting
than that the completion of the ingathering of
the products of the year should be celebrated as
a time of rejoicing and a thanksgiving day before
Jehovah. Indeed, so natural is such a festivity
to religious minds, that — as is well known — in
the first instance. New England, and then, after-
ward, the whole United States, and also the Do-
minion of Canada, have established the observ-
ance of an annual " Thanksgiving Day " in the
latter part of the autumn, which is observed by
public religious services, by suspension of public
business, and as a glad day of reunion of kin-
dred and friends. It is interesting to observe
how this last feature of the day is also mentioned
in the case of this Hebrew feast, in the later form
of the law (Deut. xvi. 13-15): "After that thou
hast gathered in from thy threshing-floor and
from thy winepress . . . thou shaft rejoice in thy
feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and
thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the
Levite, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and
the widow, that are within thy gates, . . . and
thou shalt be altogether joyful."
The chief sentiment of the feast was thus joy
and thanksgiving to God as the Giver of all
good. Yet the joy was not to be merely natural
and earthly, but spiritual; they were to rejoice
(ver. 40) " before the Lord." And the thanks-
giving was not to be expressed merely in words,
but in deeds. The week, we are elsewhere told,
was signalised by the largest burnt-offerings of
any of the feasts, consisting of a total of seventy
bullocks, beginning with thirteen on the first day,
and diminishing by one each day; while these
again were accompanied daily by burnt-oflferings
of fourteen lambs and two rams, the double of
what was enjoined even for the week of unleav-
ened bread, with meal-offerings and drink-offer-
ings in proportion. Nor was this outward ritual
expression of thanksgiving enough; for their
gratitude was to be further attested by taking
into their glad festivities the Levite who had no
portion, the fatherless and the widow, and even
the stranger.
It is not hard to see the connection of all this
with the historical reference to the days of their
wilderness journeyings. Lest they might forget
God in nature, they were to recall to mind, by
their dwelling in booths, the days when they had
no houses, and no fields nor crops, when, not-
withstanding, none the less easily the Almighty
God of Israel fed them with manna which they
knew not, that He might make them to " know
that man doth not live by bread only, but by
every thing that proceedeth out of the mouth of
the Lord" (Deut. viii. 3). There is, indeed, no
better illustration of the intention of this part of
the feast than those words with their context as
they occur in Deuteronomy.
The ceremonies of the feast of tabernacles hav-
ing been completed with the appointed seven
days, there followed an eighth day, — an holy
convocation, a festival of solemn rest (vv. 36,
39). This last day of holy solemnity and joy, to
which a special name is given, is properly to be
regarded, not as a part of the feast of tabernacles
merely, but as celebrating the termination of the
whole series of sabbatic times from the first to
the seventh month. No ceremonial is here en-
joined except the holy convocation, and the
offering of " an offering made by fire unto the
Lord," with abstinence from all servile work.
Typical Meaning of the Feasts of the
Seventh Month.
We have already seen that the earlier feasts of
the year were also prophetic; that Passover and
Unleavened Bread pointed forward to Christ, our
Passover, slain for us; Pentecost, to the spiritual
ingathering of the firstfruits of the world's har-
vest, fifty days after the presentation of our Lord
in resurrection, as the wave-sheaf of the first-
fruits. We may therefore safely infer that these
remaining feasts of the seventh month must be
Leviticus xxiii. 1-44.]
SET FEASTS OF THE LORD.
355
typical also. But, if so, typical of what? Two
things may be safely said in this matter. The
significance of the three festivals of this seventh
month must be interpreted in harmony with
what has already passed into fulfilment; and, in
the second place, inasmuch as the feast of trum-
pets, the day of atonement, and the feast of
tabernacles all belong to the seventh and last
month of the ecclesiastical year, they must find
their fulfilment in connection with what Scrip-
ture calls " the last times."
Keeping the first point in view, we may then
safely say that if Pentecost typified the first-
fruits of the world's harvest in the ingathering of
an election from all nations, the feast of taber-
nacles must then typify the completion of that
harvest in a spiritual ingathering, final and uni-
versal. Not only so, but, inasmuch as in the
antitypical fulfilment of the wave-sheaf in the
resurrection of our Lord, we were reminded that
the consummation of the new creation is in
resurrection from the dead, and that in regenera-
tion is therefore involved resurrection, hence
the feast of tabernacles, as celebrating the abso-
lute completion of the year's harvest, must typify
also the resurrection season, when all that are
Christ's shall rise from the dead at His coming.
And, finally, whereas this means for the now
burdened earth permanent deliverance from the
curse, and the beginning of a new age thus sig-
nalised by glorious life in resurrection, in which
are enjoyed the blessed fruits of life's labours
and pains for Christ, this was shadowed forth by
the ordinance that immediately upon the seven
days of tabernacles should follow a feast of the
eighth day, the first day of a new week, in cele-
bration of the beginning season of rest from all
the labours of the field.
Most beautifully, thus regarded, does all else
connected with the feast of tabernacles corre-
spond, as type to antitype, to the revelation of
the last things, and therein reveal its truest and
deepest spiritual significance: the joy, the re-
union, the rejoicing with son and with daughter,
the fulness of gladness also for the widow
and the fatherless; and this, not only for those
in Israel, but also for the stranger, not of Israel,
— for Gentile as well as Israelite was to have
part in the festivity of that day; and. again, the
full attainment of the most complete consecra-
tion, signified in the tenfold burnt-ofifering —
all finds its place here. And so now we can
see why it was that our Saviour declared
(Matt. xiii. 39) that the end of this present age
should be the time of harvest; and how Paul,
looking at the future spiritual ingathering, places
the ingathering of the Gentiles (Rom. xi. 25) as
one of the last things. In full accord with this
interpretation of the typical significance of this
feast it is that in Zech. xiv. we find it written
that in the predicted day of the Lord, when (ver.
5) the Lord " shall come, and all the holy ones "
with Him. and (ver. 9) " the Lord shall be King
over all the earth; . . . the Lord . . . one, and
His name one," then (ver. 16) " every one that
is left of all the nations . . . shall go up from
year to year to worship the King, the Lord of
hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles;" and.
moreover, that so completely shall consecration
be realised in that day that (ver. 20) even upon
the bells of the horses shall the words be in-
scribed. " Holy unto the Lord! "
But before the joyful feast of tabernacles could
be celebrated, the great, sorrowful day of atone-
ment must be kept, — a season marked, on the
one hand, by afiliction of soul throughout all
Israel; on the other, by the complete putting
away of the sin of the nation for the whole year,
through the presentation of the blood of the sin-
ofTering by the high priest, within the veil be-
fore the mercy-seat. Now, if the feast of taber-
nacles has been correctly interpreted, as presig-
nifyjng in symbol the completion of the great
world harvest in the end of the age, does the
prophetic word reveal anything in connection
with the last things as preceding that great har-
vest, and, in some sense, preparing for and
ushering in that day, which should be the anti-
type of the great day of atonement?
One can hardly miss of the answer. F'or pre-
cisely that which the prophets and apostles both
represent as the event which shall usher in that
great day of final ingathering and of blessed
resurrection rest and joy in consummated re-
demption, is the national repentance of Israel,
and the final cleansing of their age-long sin. In
the type, two things are conspicuous: the great
sorrowing of the nation and the great atonement
putting away all Israel's sin. And two things,
in like manner, are conspicuous in the prophetic
pictures of the antitype, namely, Israel's heart-
broken repentance, and the removal thereupon
of Israel's sin; their cleansing in the " fountain
opened for sin and for uncleanness." As Zecha-
riah puts it (xii. 10, xiii. i), " I will pour upon
the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplica-
tion; and they shall look unto me whom they
have pierced: and they shall mourn for him, as
one mourneth for his only son;" and "in that
day there shall be a fountain opened to the house
of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for
sin and for uncleanness." And the relation of
this cleansing of Israel to the days of blessing
which follow is most explicitly set forth by the
Apostle Paul, in these words concerning Israel
(Rom. xi. 12, 15), "If their fall is the riches of
the world, and their loss the riches of the Gen-
tiles; how much more their fulness? If the cast-
ing away of them is the reconciling of the world,
what shall the receiving of them be, but life from
the dead?"
So far, then, all seems clear. But the feast of
trumpets yet remains to be exolained. Has
Holy Scripture predicted anything falling in
the period between Pentecost and the repent-
ance of Israel, but specially belonging to the
last things, which might with reason be re-
garded as the antitype of this joyful feast of
trumpets? Here, again, it is not easy to go far
astray. For the essential idea of the trumpet
call is announcement, proclamation. From
time to time all through the year the trumpet-
call was he^rd in Israel; but on this occasion
it became the feature of the day, and was
universal throughout their land. And as we
have seen, its special significance for that time
was to announce that the day of atonement and
the feast of ingathering, which typified the full
consummation of the kingdom of God, were now
at hand. One can thus hardly fail to think at
once of that other event which, according to our
Lord's express word (Matt. xxiv. 14), is imme-
diately to precede " the end." namely, the uni-
versal proclamation of the Gosp'el: "This gos-
pel of the kingdom shall be preached in the
whole world for a testimony unto all the nations;
and then shall the end come." As throughout
35^
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
the year, from time to time, the trumpet call was
heard in Israel, but only in connection with the
central sanctuary; but now in all the land, as the
chief thing in the celebration of the day which
ushered in the final sabbatic month, precisely so
in the antitype. All through the ages has the
Gospel been sounded forth, but in a partial and
limited way; but at "the time of the end" the
proclamation shall become universal. And ♦•hus
and then shall the feast of trumpets also, like
Passover and Pentecost, pass into complete ful-
filment, and be swiftly followed by Israel's re-
pentance and restoration, and the consequent re-
appearing, as Peter predicts (Acts iii. 19-21
R. v.), of Israel's High Priest from within the
veil, and thereupon the harvest of the world, the
resurrection of the just, and the consummation
upon earth of the glorified kingdom of God.
Of many thoughts of a practical kind which
this chapter suggests, we may perhaps well dwell
especially on one. The ideal of religious life,
which these set times of the Lord kept before
Israel, was a religion of joy. Again and again
is this spoken of in the accounts of these feasts.
This is true even of Passover, with which we
oftener, though mistakenly, connect thoughts of
sadness and gloom. Yet Passover was a feast of
joy; it celebrated the birthday of the nation, and
a deliverance unparalleled in history. The only
exception to this joyful character in all these
sacred times is found in the day of atonement;
but it is itself instructive on the same point,
teaching most clearly that in the Divine order,
as in the necessity of the case, the joy in the
Lord, of which the feast of ingathering was the
supreme expression, must be preceded by and
grounded in an accepted expiation and true peni-
tence for sin.
So it is still with the religion of the Bible: it
is a religion of joy. God does not wish us to be
gloomy and sad. He desires that we should ever
be joyful before Him, and thus find by blessed
experience that " the joy of the Lord is our
strength." Also, in particular, we do well to
observe further that, inasmuch as all these set
times were sabbatic seasons, joyfulness is in-
separably connected with the Biblical conception
of the Sabbath. This has been too often for-
gotten; and the weekly day of sabbatic rest has
sometimes been made a day of stern repression
and forbidding gloom. How utterly astray are
such conceptions from the Divine ideal, we shall
perhaps the more clearly see when we call to
mind the thought which appears more or less
distinctly in all these sabbatic seasons, that every
Sabbath points forward to the eternal joy of the
consummated kingdom, the sabbath rest which
remaineth for the people of God (Heb. iv. 9).
CHAPTER XXV.
THE HOLY LIGHT AND THE SHEIV-
BREAD: THE BLASPHEMER'S END.
Leviticus xxiv. 1-23.
It is not easy to determine with confidence
the association of thought which occasioned the
interposition of this chapter, with its somewhat
disconnected contents, between chap, xxiii., on
the set times of holy convocation, and chap, xxv.,
on the sabbatic and jubilee years, which latter
would seem most naturally to have followed the
former immediately, as relating to the same sub
ject of sacred times. Perhaps the best explana
tion of the connection with the previous chapter
is that which finds it in the reference to the olive
oil for the lamps and the meal for the shew-
bread. The feast of tabernacles, directions for
which had just been given, celebrated the com-
pleted ingathering of the harvest of the year,
both of grain and of fruit; and here Israel is told
what is to be don-^ with a certain portion of each.
The Ordering of the Light in the Holy
Place.
Leviticus xxiv. 1-4.
" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Command the
children of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure olive oil
beaten for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually.
Without the veil of the testimony, in the tent of meetinj?,
' shall Aaron order it from evening to morning before the
Lord continually : it shall be a statute for ever through-
out your generations. He shall order the lamps upon the
pure candlestick before the Lord continually.
First (vv. 1-4) is given the direction for ths
ordering of the daily light, which was to burn
from evening until morning in the holy place
continually. The people themselves are to fur-
nish the oil for the seven-branched candlestick
out of the product of their olive yards. The oil
is to be " pure," carefully cleansed from leaves
and all impurities; and "beaten," that is, not
extracted by heat and pressure, as are inferior
grades, but simply by beating and macerating
the olives with water, — a process which gives the
very best. The point in these specifications is
evidently this, that for this, as always, they are
to give to God's service the very best, — an eternal
principle which rules in all acceptable service to
God. The oil is to come from the people in
general, so that the illuminating of the Holy
Place, although specially tended by the high
priest, is yet constituted a service in which all
the children of Israel have some- part. The oil
was to be used to supply the seven lamps upon
the golden candlestick which was placed on the
south side of the Holy Place, without the veil of
the testimony, in the tent of meeting. This
Aaron was to " order from evening to morning
before the Lord continually." According to
Exod. xxv. 31-40, this candlestick — or, more
properly, lampstand — was made of a single shaft,
with three branches on either side, each with a
cup at the end like an almond blossom; so that,
with that on the top of the central shaft, it was a
stand of seven lamps, in a conventional imitation
of an almond tree.
The significance of the symbol is brought
clearly before us in Zech. iv. 1-14, where the
seven-branched candlestick symbolises Israel as
the congregation of God, the giver of the light
of life to the world. And yet a lamp can burn
only as it is supplied with oil and trimmed and
cared for. And so in the symbol of Zechariah
the prophet sees the golden candlestick supplied
with oil conveyed through two golden pipes into
which flowed the golden oil, mysteriously self-
distilled from two olive trees on either side the
candlestick. And the explanation given is this:
" Not by might, nor by power, but by My
Spirit," saith the Lord. Thus we learn that the
golden seven-branched lampstand denotes Israel,
more precious than gold in God's sight, ap-
Leviticus xxiv. 1-23.]
THE HOLY LIGHT.
357
pointed of Him to be the giver of light to the
world. And yet by this requisition of oil for the
golden candlestick the nation was reminded that
their power to give light was dependent upon the
supply of the heavenlv grace of God's Spirit, and
the continual ministrations of the priest in the
Holy Place. And how this ordering of the light
might be a symbolic act of worship, we can at
once see, when we recall the word of Jesus
(Matt. V. 14, 16): " Ye are the light of the world.
. . . Let your light shine before men, that they
may see your good works, and glorify your
Father which is in heaven."
How pertinent for instruction still in all its
deepest teaching is this ordinance of the lamp
continually burning in the presence of the Lord,
is vividly brought before us in the Apocalypse (i.
12, 13), where we read that seven candlesticks
appeared in vision to the Apostle John; and
Christ, in His glory, robed in high-priestly
vesture, was seen walking up and down, after the
manner of Aaron, in the midst of the seven
candlesticks, in care and watch of the manner of
their burning. And as to the significance of
this vision, the Apostle was expressly told
(ver. 20) that the seven candlesticks were the
seven Churches of Asia, — types of the collective
Church in all the centuries. Thus, as in the lan-
guage of this Levitical symbol, we are taught
that in the highest sense it is the ofifice of
the Church to give light in darkness; but that
she can only do this as the heavenly oil is sup-
plied, and each lamp is cared for, by the high-
priestly ministrations of her risen Lord.
The " Bread of the Presence."
Leviticus xxiv. 5-9.
"And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes
thereof : two tenth parts of an ephah shall be in one cake.
And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, upon
the pure table before the Lord. And thou shalt put pure
frankincense upon each row, that it may be to the bread
for a memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the
Lord. Every sabbath day he shall set it in order before
the Lord continually ; it is on the behalf of the children of
Israel, an everlasting- covenant. And it shall be for Aaron
and his sons ; and they shall eat it in a holy place : for it
is most holy unto him of the offerings of the Lord made
by fire by a perpetual statute."
Next follows the ordinance for the preparation
and presentation of the " shew-bread," lit.,
" bread of the Face," or " Presence," sc. of God.
This was to consist of twelve cakes, each to be
made of two tenth parts of an ephah of fine flour,
which was to be placed in two rows or piles,
" upon the pure table " of gold that stood before
the Lord, in the Holy Place, opposite to the
golden candlestick. On each pile was to be
placed (ver. 7) " pure frankincense," — doubtless,
as tradition says, placed in the golden spoons, or
little cups (Exod. xxxvii. 16). Every sabbath
(vv. 8, 9) fresh bread was to be so placed, when
the old became the food of Aaron and his sons
only, as belonging to the order of things " most
holy;" the frankincense which had been its
" memorial " having been first burned, " an
offering made by fire unto the Lord" (ver. 7).
Tradition adds that the bread was always un-
leavened; a few have called this in question, but
this has been only on theoretic grounds, and
without evidence; and when we remember how
stringen was the prohibition of leaven even in
any ofTerings made by fire upon the altar of the
outer court, much less is it likely that it could
have been tolerated here in the Holy Place im-
mediately before the veil.
This bread of the Presence must be regarded
as in its essential nature a perpetual meal-offer-
ing,— the meal-ofifering of the Holy Place, as the
others were of the outer court.* The material
was the same, cakes of fine flour; to this frankin-
cense must be added as a " memorial," as in the
meal-offerings of the outer court. Such part of
the offering as was not burned, as in the case of
the others, was to be eaten by the priests only,
as a thing " most holy." It differed from those
in that there were always the twelve cakes, one
for each tribe; and in that while they were re-
peatedly offered, this lay before the Lord con-
tinually. The altar of burnt-offering might
sometimes be empty of the meal-offering, but
the table of shew-bread, " the table of the Pres-
ence," never.
In general, therefore, the meaning of the
offering of the shew-bread must be the same as
that of the meal-offerings; like them it symbol-
ised the consecration unto the Lord of the
product of the labour of the hands, and especially
of the daily food as prepared for use. But in
this, by the twelve cakes for the twelve tribes it
was emphasised that God requires, not only
such consecration of service and acknowledg-
ment of Him from individuals, as in the law of
chap, ii., but from the nation in its collective and
organised capacity: and that not merely on such
occasions as pious impulse might direct, but con-
tinuously.
In these days, when the tendency among us is
to an extreme individualism, and therewith to an
ignoring or denial of any claim of God upon
nations and communities as such, it is of great
need to insist upon this thought thus symbolised.
It was not enough in God's sight that individual
Israelites should now and then offer their meal-
offerings; the Lord required a meal-offering " on
behalf of the children of Israel " as a zvhole, and
of each particular tribe of the twelve, each in its
corporate capacity. There is no reason to think
that in the Divine government the principle
which took this symbolic expression is obsolete.
It is not enough that individuals among us con-
secrate the fruit of their labours to the Lord.
The Lord requires such consecration of every
nation collectively; and of each of the subdi-
visions in that nation, such as cities, towns,
states, provinces, and so on. Yet where in the
wide world can we see one such consecrated
nation? Can we find one such consecrated prov-
ince or state, or even such a city or town?
Where then, from this biblical and spiritual point
of view, is the ground for the religious boasting
of the Christian progress of our day which one
sometimes hears? Must we not say, " It is
excluded " ?
Typically, the shew-bread, like the other meal-
offerings with their frankincense, must fore-
shadow the work of the Messiah in holy conse-
cration; and, in particular, as the One in whom
the ideal of Israel was perfectly realised, and
who thus represented in His person the whole
Israel of God. But the bread of the Presence
represents His holy obedience in self-consecra-
tion, not merely, as in the other meal-offerings,
presented in the outer court, in the sight of men,
as in His earthly life; but here, rather, as con-
♦See Kurtz, "Der Alttestamentliche Opfercultus," p.
271.
6y
JHE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
tinuailv presented before the " Face of God," in
the Holy Place, where Christ appears in the
presence of God for us. And in this symbolism,
which has been already justified, we may recog-
nise the element of truth that there is in the view
held by Bahr,* apparently, as by others, that the
shew-bread typified Christ Himself regarded as
the bread of life to His people. Not indeed, pre-
cisely, that Christ Himself is brought before us
here, but rather His holy obedience, continually
offered unto God in the heavenly places, in be-
half of the true Israel, and as sealing and con-
firming the everlasting covenant; — this is what
this symbol brings before us. And it is as we
by faith appropriate Him, as thus ever presenting
His holy life to God for us, that He becomes for
us the Bread of Life.
The Penalty of Blasphemy.
Leviticus xxiv. 10-23.
" And the son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was
an Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel : and
the son of the Israelitish woman and a man of Israel strove
together in the camp ; and the son of the Israelitish woman
blasphemed the Name, and cursed : and they brought him
unto Moses. And his mother's name was Shelomith, the
daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan. And they put him
in ward, that it might be declared unto them at the mouth
of the Lord. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying.
Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp ; and
let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and
let all the congregation .stone him. And thou shalt speak
unto the children of Israel, saying. Whosoever curseth his
God shall bear his sin. And he that blasphemeth the name
of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death ; all the con-
gregation sliall certainly stone him : as well the stranger,
as the homeborn, when he blasphemeth the name of the
Lord, shall be put to death. And he that smiteth any man
mortally shall surely be put to death ; and he that smiteth
a beast mortally shall make it good : life for life. And if
a man cause a blemish in his neighbour ; as he hath done,
so shall it be done to him ; breach for breach, eye for eye,
tooth for tooth : as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so
shall it be rendered unto him. And he that killeth a beast
shall make it good : and he that killeth a man shall be put
to death. Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for
the stranger, as for the homeborn : for I am the Lord
your God. And Moses spake to the children of Israel, and
they brought forth him that had cursed out of the camp,
and stoned him with stones. And the children of Israel
did as the Lord commanded Moses."
The connection of this section with the pre-
ceding context is now impossible to determine.
Very possibly its insertion here may be due to
the occurrence here described having taken place
at the time of the delivery of the preceding laws
concerning the oil for the golden lampstand and
the shew-bread. However, the purport and in-
tention of the narrative is very plain, namely, to
record the law delivered by the Lord for the
punishment of blasphemy; and therewith also
His command that the penalty of broken law.
both in this case and in others specified, should
be exacted both from native Israelites and from
foreigners alike.
The incident which was the occasion of the
promulgation of these laws was as follows. The
son of an Israelitish woman by an Egyptian hus-
band fell into a quarrel in the camp. As often
happens in such cases, the one sin led on to an-
other and yet graver sin; the half-caste man
"blasphemed the Name, and cursed;" where-
upon he was arrested and put into confinement
until the will of the Lord might be ascertained
in his case. " The Name " is of course the name
of God; the meaning is that he used the holy
* " Sj'mbolik des Mosaischen Cultus," erster Band, pp.
423-.«32.
name profanely in cursing. The passage, to-
gether with ver. 16, is of special and curious
interest, as upon these two the Jews have based
their well-known belief that it is unlawful to
utter the Name which we comm.only vocalise as
Jehovah; whence it has followed that wherever in
the Hebrew text the Name occurs it is written
with the vowels of Adonay " Lord," to indicate
to the reader that this word was to be substituted
for the proper name, — a usage which is repre-
sented in the Septuagint by the appearance of the
Greek word Kurios, " Lord," in all places where
the Hebrew has Jehovah (or Yahveh) ; and
which, in both the authorised and revised ver-
sions, is still maintained in the retention of
" Lord " in all such cases, — a relic of Jewish
superstition which one could greatly wish that
the Revisers had banished from the English ver-
sion, especially as in many passages it totally
obscures to the English reader the exact sense
of the text, wherever it turns upon the choice of
this name. It is indeed true that the word ren-
dered " blaspheme " has the meaning " to pro-
nounce," as the Targumists and other Hebrew
writers render it; but that it also means simpl>
to " revile," and in many places cannot possibl>
be rendered " to pronounce," is perforce ad-
mitted even by Jewish scholars.* To give it the
other meaning here were so plainly foreign tc
the spirit of the Old Testament, debasing rever-
ence to superstition, that no argument against it
will be required with any but a Jew.
And this young man, in the heat of his passion,
" reviled the Name." The words " of the Lord "
are not in the Hebrew; the name "Jehovah" is
thus brought before us expressively as The
Name, par excellence, of God, as revealing Him-
self in covenant for man's redemption.! Horri-
fied at the man's wickedness, " they brought
him unto Moses;" and "they put him in ward"
(ver. 12), " that it might be declared unto them
at the mouth of the Lord " what should be done
unto him. This was necessary because the case
involved two points upon which no revelation
had been made: first, as to what should be the
punishment of blasphemy; and secondly, whether
the law in such cases applied to a foreigner as
well as to the native Israelite. The answer of
God decided these points. As to the first (ver.
15), " Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his
sin," ;'. e., he shall be held subject to punishment;
and (ver. 16), " He that blasphemeth the name
of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death; all
the congregation shall certainly stone him."
And as to the second point, it is added. " as well
the stranger, as the homeborn. when he blas-
phemeth the Name, shall be put to death,"
Then follows (vv. 17-21) a declaration of
penalties for murder, for killing a neighbour's
beast, and for inflicting a bodily injury on one's
neighbour. These were to be settled on the
principle of the lex taVwnis, life for life, " breach
for breach, eye for eye. tooth for tooth;" in the
case of the beast killed, its value was to be made
good to the owner. All these laws had been pre-
viously given ( Exod. xxi. 12, 2.3-36); but are re-
peated here plainly for the purpose of expressly
ordering that these laws, like that now declared
*See, ^.^., Rabbi Dr. J. Levy, " Chaldaisches Wrirter-
buch," zweiter Band, pp. 301, '302 ; and compare Numb,
xxiii. 8, Prov. xi, 26, xxiv. 24, where the same Hebrew
word is used.
+ Cf. the expression used with reference to Jesus
Christ, Phil. ii. 9 (R.V.), "the name which is a ove every
name."
Leviticus XXV. 1-55.] SABBATIC YEAR AND JUBILEE.
359
for blasphemy, were to be applied alike to the
home-born and the stranger (ver. 22).
Much cavil have these laws occasioned, the
more so that Christ Himself is cited as having
condemned them in the Sermon on the Mount
(Matt. v. 38-42). But how little difiFiculty really
exists here will appear from the following con-
siderations. The Jews from of old have main-
tained that the law of " an eye for eye," as here
given, was not intended to authorise private and
irresponsible retaliation in kind, but only after
due trial and by legal process. Moreover, even
in such cases, they have justly remarked that the
law here given was not meant to be applied al-
ways with the most exact literality; but that it
was evidently intended to permit the commuta-
tion of the penalty by such a fine as the judges
might determine. They justly argue from the
explicit prohibition of the acceptance of any
such satisfaction in commutation in the case of
a murderer (Numb. xxxv. 31. 32) that this im-
))lies the permission of it in the instances here
mentioned; — a conclusion the more necessary
when it is observed that the literal application of
the law in all cases would often result in defeat-
ing the very ends of exact justice which it was
evidently intended to secure. For instance, the
'oss by a one-eyed man of his only eye, under
such an interpretation, would be much more than
an equivalent for the loss of an eye which he had
inflicted upon a neighbour who had both eyes.
Hence, Jewish history contains no record of the
literal application of the law in such cases; the
principle is applied as often among ourselves, in
the exaction from an offender of a pecuniary
satisfaction propc rtioned to the degree of the
disability he has inflicted upon his neighbour.
Finally, as regards the words of our Saviour,
that He did not intend His words to be taken
in their utmost stretch of literality in all cases,
is plain from His own conduct when smitten by
the order of the high priest (John xviii. 23), and
from the statement that the magistrate is en-
dowed with the sword, as a servant of God, to
be a terror to evil-doers (Rom. xiii. 4); from
which it is plain that Christ did not mean to pro-
hibit the resort to judicial process under all cir-
cumstances, but rather the spirit of letaliation
and litigation which sought to justify itself by
a perverse appeal to this law of " an eye for eye;"
— a law which, in point of fact, was given, as
Augustine has truly observed, not " as an incite-
ment to, but for the mitigation of wrath."
The narrative then ends with the statement
(ver. 23) that Moses delivered this law to the
children of Israel, who then, according to the
commandment of the Lord, took the blasphemer
out of the camp, when all that heard him blas-
pheme laid their hands upon his head, in token
that they thus devolved on him the responsibility
for his own death; and then the congregation
stoned the criminal with stones that he died
(ver. 23).
The chief lesson to be learned from this inci-
dent and from the law here given is very plain.
It is the high criminality in God's sight of all
irreverent use of His holy name. To a great
extent in earlier days this was recognised by
Christian governments; and in the Middle Ages
the penalty of blasphemy in many states of
Christendom, as in the Mosaic code and in many
others, although not death, was yet exceedingly
severe. The present century, however, has seen
a great relaxation of law, and still more of pub-
lic sentiment, in regard to this crime, — a change
which, from a Christian point of view, is a
matter for anything but gratulation. Reverence
for God lies at the very foundation of even com-
rnon morality. Our modern atheism and agnos-
ticism may indeed deny this, and yet, from the
days of the French Revolution to the present,
modern history has been presenting, in one
land and another, illustrations of the fact which
are pregnant with most solemn warning. And
while no one could wish that the crime of blas-
phemy should be punished with torture and
cruelty, as in some instances in the Middle Ages,
yet the more deeply one thinks on this subject
in the light of the Scripture and of history, the
more, if we mistake not, will it appear that it
might be far better for us, and might argue a far
more hopeful and wholesome condition of the
public sentiment than that which now exists, if
still, as in Mosaic days and sometimes in the
Middle Ages, death were made the punishment
for this crime; — a crime which not only argues
the extreme of depravity in the criminal, but
which, if overlooked by the State, or expiated
with any light penalty, cannot but operate most
fatally by breaking down in the public con-
science that profound reverence toward God
which is the most essential condition of the
maintenance of all private and public morality.
In this point of view, not to speak of other
considerations, it is not surprising that the theo-
cratic law here provides that blasphemy shall be
punished with death in the case of the foreigner
as well as the native Israelite. This sin, like
those of murder and violence with which it is
here conjoined, is of such a kind that to every
conscience which is not hopelessly hardened, its
wickedness must be manifest even from the very
light of nature. Nature itself is sufficient to
teach any one that abuse and calumny of the Su-
preme God, the Maker and Ruler of the world, —
a Being who, if He exist at all, must be infinitely
good, — must be a sin involving quite peculiar
and exceptional guilt. Hence, absolute equity,
no less than governmental wisdom, demanded
that the law regarding blasphemy, as that with
respect to the other crimes here mentioned,
should be impartially enforced upon both the
native Israelite and the foreigner.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE SABBATIC YEAR AND THE JUBILEE.
Leviticus xxv. 1-55.
The system of annually recurring sabbatic
times, as given in chap, xxiii., culminated in the
sabbatic seventh month. But this remarkable
.system of sabbatisms extended still further, and
besides the sacred seventh day, the seventh
week, and seventh month, included also a sab-
batic seventh year; and beyond that, as the
ultimate expression of the sabbatic idea, follow-
ing the seventh se\'en of years, came the hal-
lowed fiftieth year, known as the jubilee. And
the law concerning these two last-named periods
is recorded in this twenty-fifth chapter of
Leviticus.
First (vv. 1-.=;). is given the ordinance of the
sabbatic seventh year, in the following words:
" When ye come into the land which I give you,
then shall the land keep a sabbath unto thf
360
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and
six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and
gather in the fruits thereof; but in the seventh
year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the
land, a sabbath unto the Lord: thou shalt neither
sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That
which groweth of itself of thy harvest thou shalt
not reap, and the grapes of thy undressed vine
thou shalt not gather: it shall be a year of solemn
rest for the land."
This sacred year is thus here described as a
sabbath for the land unto the Lord, — a shabbath
shabbathon; that is, a sabbath in a special and
eminent sense. No public religious gatherings
were ordered, however, neither was labour of
every kind prohibited. It was strictly a year of
rest for the land, and for the people in so far as
this was involved in that fact. There was to be
no sowing or reaping, even of what might grow
of itself; no pruning of vineyard or fruit trees,
nor gathering of their fruit. These regulations
thus involved the total suspension of agricultural
labour for this entire period.
It was further ordered (vv. 6, 7) that during
this year the spontaneous produce of the land
should be equally free to all, both man and beast:
" The sabbath of the land shall be for food for
you; for thee, and for thy servant and for thy
maid, and for thy hired servant and for thy
stranger that sojourn with thee; and for thy
cattle, and for the beasts that are in thy land,
shall all the increase thereof be for food."
That this cannot be regarded as merely a regu-
lation of a communistic character, designed
simply to affirm the absolute equality of all men
in right to the product of the soil, is evident from
the fact that the beasts also are included in the
terms of the law. The object was quite different,
as we shall shortly see.
That it should be regarded as possible for a
whole people thus to live ofif the spontaneous
produce of self-sowed grain may seem incredible
to us who dwell in less propitious lands; and yet
travellers tell us that in the Palestine of to-day,
with its rich soil and kindly climate, the various
food grains continuously propagate themselves
without cultivation; and that in Albania, also,
two and three successive harvests are sometimes
reaped as the result of one sowing. So, even
apart from the special blessing from the Lord
promised to them if they would obey this com-
mand, the supply of at least the necessities of life
was possible from the spontaneous product of
the sabbath of the land. Though less than usual,
it might easily be sufficient. In Deut. xv. i-ii
it is ordered also that the seventh year should be
" a year of release " to the debtor; not indeed as
regards all debts, but loans only; nor, apparently,
that even these should be released absolutely,
but that throughout the seventh year the claim
of the creditor was to be in abeyance. The regu-
lation may naturally be regarded as consequent
upon this fundamental law regarding the sab-
bath of the land. The income of the year being
much less than usual, the debtor, presumably,
might often find it difficult to pay; whence this
restriction on collection of debt during this
period.
The central thought of this ordinance then is
this, that man's right in the soil and its product,
originally granted from God, during this sabbatic
year reverted to the Giver; who, again, by order-
ing that all exclusive rights of individuals in the
produce of their estates should be suspended for
this year, placed, for so long, the rich and the
poor on an absolute equality as regards means o£
sustenance.
The Jubilee.
Leviticus xxv. 8-12.
"And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto
thee, seven times seven years; and there shall be unto
thee the days of seven sabbaths of years, even forty and
nine years. Then shalt thou send abroad the loud
trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month ; in the
day of atonement shall ye send abroad the trumpet
throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth
year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof : it shall be a jubilee unto you ; and
ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye
shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall
that fiftieth year be unto you : ye shall not sow, neither
reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the
grapes in it of the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee ; it
shall be holy unto you : ye shall eat the increase thereof
out of the field."
The remainder of this chapter, vv. 8-55, is oc-
cupied with this ordinance of the jubilee year;
an observance absolutely without a parallel in
any nation, and which has to do with the solu-
tion of some of the most difficult social problems,
not only of that time, but also of our own.
Seven weeks of years, each terminating with the
sabbatic year of solemn rest for the land, were
to be numbered, i. e., forty-nine full years, of
which the last was a sabbatic year, beginning, as
always, with the feast of atonement in the tenth
day of the seventh month. And then when, at
its expiration, the day of atonement came round
again, at the beginning of the fiftieth year of this
reckoning, at the close, as would appear, of the
solemn expiatory ritual of the day, throughout
all the land of Israel the loud trumpet was to be
sounded, proclaiming " liberty throughout the
land unto all the inhabitants thereof." The ordi-
nance is given in vv. 8-12 above.
It appears that the liberty thus proclaimed was
threefold: (i) liberty to the man who, through
the reverses of life, had become dispossessed
from his family inheritance in the land, to re-
turn to it again; (2) liberty to every Hebrew
slave, so that in the jubilee he became a free man
again; (3) the liberty of release from toil in the
cultivation of the land, — a feature, in this case,
even more remarkable than in the sabbatic year,
because already one such sabbatic year had but
just closed when the jubilee year immediately
succeeded.
Why this year should be called a jubilee (Heb.
yobel) IS a vexed question, on which scholars are
far from unanimous; but as it is of no practical
importance, there is no need to enter on the dis-
cussion here. To suppose that these enactments
should have originated, as the radical critics
claim, in post-exilian days, when, under the
existing social and political conditions, their ob-
servance was impossible, is utterly absurd.* Not
only so, but in view of the admitted neglect even
of the sabbatic year, — an ordinance certainly less
difficult to carry out in practice, — during four
♦Thus Dillmann writes: "That the law (of the jubilee^
in its principal features was already issued by Moses does
not admit of demonstration to him who wills not to be-
lieve it ; but that it cannot have been in the first instance
the invention of a post-exilian scribe is certain. Only in
the simpler communal relations of the more ancient time
could a law of such an ideal character have seemed prac-
ticable ; after the exile, all the presuppositions involved
in Its promulgation are wanting "(" Die Bflcher Exodus
und Leviticus," 2 Aufl., p. 608).
L-eviticus xxv. 1-55.]
SABBATIC YEAR AND JUBILEE.
361
hundred and ninety years of Israel's history, the
supposition that the law of the jubilee should
have been first promulgated at any earlier post-
Mosaic period is scarcely less incredible.
The Jubilee and the Land.
Leviticus xxv. 13-28.
"In this year of jubilee ye shall return every man unto
his possession. And if thou sell aught unto thy neighbour,
or buy of thy neighbour's hand, ye shall not wrong one
another : according to the number of years after the jubi-
lee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according unto
the number of years of the crops he shall sell unto thee.
According to the multitude of the years thou shalt increase
the price thereof, and according to the fewness of the
years thou shalt diminish the price of it ; for the number
of the crops doth he sell unto thee. And ye shall not
wrong one another ; but thou shalt fear thy God : for I am
the Lord your God. Wherefore ye shall do My statutes,
and keep My judgments and do them ; and ye shall dwell
in the land in safety. And the land shall yield her fruit,
and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety. And
if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year ? be-
hold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase : then I
will command My blessing upon you in the sixth year,
and it shall bring forth fruit for the three years. And ye
shall sow the eighth year, and eat of the fruits, the old
store ; until the ninth year, until her fruits come in, ye
shall eat the old store. And the land shall not be sold in
perpetuity ; for the land is Mine : for ye are strangers and
sojourners with Me. And in all the land of your posses-
sion ye shall grant a redemption for the land. If thy
brother be waxen poor, and sell some of his possession,
then shall his kinsman that is next unto him come, and
shall redeem that which his brother hath sold. And if a
man have no one to redeem it, and he be waxen rich and
find sufficient to redeem it ; then let him count the years of
the sale thereof, and restore the overplus unto the man to
whom he sold it ; and he shall return unto his possession.
But if he be not able to get it back for himself, then that
which he hath sold shall remain in the hand of him that
hath bought it until the year of jubilee : and in the jubilee
it shall go out, and he shall return unto his possession."
The remainder of the chapter (vv. 13-55) deals
with the practical application of this law of the
jubilee to various cases. In vv. 13-28 we have
the application of the law to the case of property
in land; in vv. 29-34, to sales of dwelling houses;
and the remaining verses (35-55) deal with the
application of this law to the institution of
slavery.
As regards the first matter, the transfers of
right in land, these in all cases were to be gov-
erned by the fundamental principle enounced in
ver. 23: "The land shall not be sold in per-
petuity; for the land is Mine: for ye are strangers
and sojourners with Me."
Thus in the theocracy there was no such thing
as either private or communal ownership in land.
Just as in some lands to-day the only owner of
the land is the king, so it was in Israel; but in
this case the King was Jehovah. From this it
follows evidently, that properly speaking, ac-
cording to this law, there could be no such thing
in Israel as a sale or purchase of land-. All that
any man could buy or sell was the right to its
products, and that, again, only for a limited time;
for every fiftieth year the land was to revert to
the family to whom its use had been originally
assigned. Hence the regulations (vv. 14-19) re-
garding such transfers of the right to Hie use of
the land. They are all governed by the sfmple
and equitable principle that the price paid for
the usufruct of the land was to be exactly pro-
portioned to the number of years which were to
elapse between the date of the sale and the rever-
sion of the land, which would take place in the
jubilee. Thus, the price for such transfer of
right in the first year of the jubilee period would
be at its maximum, because the sale covered the
right to the produce of the land for forty-nine
years; while, on the other hand, in the case of a
transfer made in the forty-eighth year, the price
would have fallen to a very small amount, as
only the product of one year's cultivation re-
mained to be sold, and after the ensuing sabbatic
year the land would revert in the jubilee to the
original holder. The command to keep in mind
this principle, and not wrong one another, is en-
forced (vv. 17-19) by the injunction to do this
because of the fear of God; and by the promise
that if Israel will obey this law, they shall dwell
in safety, and have abundance.
In vv. 24-28, after the declaration of the funda-
mental law that the land belongs only to the
Lord, and that they are to regard themselves as
simply His tenants, " sojourners with Him," a
second application of the law is made. First, it
is ordered that in every case, and without refer-
ence to the year of jubilee, every landholder who
through stress of poverty may be obliged to sell
the usufruct of his land shall retain the right to
redeem it. Three cases are assumed. First
(ver. 25), it is ordered that if the poor man have
lost his land, and have a kinsman who is able to
redeem it, he shall do so. Secondly (ver. 26),
if he have no such kinsman, but himself become
able to redeem it, it shall be his privilege to do
so. In both cases alike, " the overplus," i. e.,
the value of the land for the years still remaining
till the jubilee, for which the purchaser had paid,
is to be restored to him, and then the land re-
verts at once, without waiting for the jubilee, to
the original proprietor. The third case (ver. 28)
is that of the poor man who has no kinsman to
buy back his landholding, and never becomes
able to do so himself. ^In such a case, the pur-
chaser was to hold it until the jubilee year, when
the land reverted without compensation to the
family of the poor man who had transferred it.
That this was strictly equitable is self-evident,
when we remember that, according to the law
previously laid down, the purchaser had only
paid for the value of the product of the land
until the jubilee year; and when he had received
its produce for that time, naturally and in strict
equity his right in the land terminated.
The Jubilee and Dwelling Houses.
Leviticus xxv. 29-34.
"And if a man sell a dwelling house in a walled city,
then he may redeem it within a whole year after it is sold ;
for a full year shall he have the right of redemption. And
if it be not redeemed within the space of a full year, then
the house that is in the walled city shall be made sure in
perpetuity to him that bought it, throughout his genera-
tions : it shall not go out in the jubilee. But the houses of
the villages which have no wall round about them shall
be reckoned with the fields of the country : they may be
redeemed, and thev shall go out in the Jubilee. Never-
theless the cities of the Levites, the houses of the cities of
their possession, may the Levites redeem at any time.
And if one of the Levites redeem [not], then the house that
was sold, and the city of his possession, shall go out in tlie
jubilee : for the houses of the cities of the Levites are their
possession among the children of Israel. But the field of
the suburbs of their cities may not be sold ; for it is their
perpetual possession."
Tn vv. 29-34 is considered the application of the
jubilee ordinance to the sale of dwelling houses:
first (vv. 29-31), to such sale in case of the people
generally: s/~ccndly (vv. 32-34), to sales of houses
362
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
by the Levites. Under the former head we have
first the law as regards sales of dwelling houses
in "walled cities;" to which it is ordered that
the law of reversion in the jubilee shall not apply,
and for which the right of redemption was only
to hold valid for one year. The obvious reason
for exempting houses in cities from the law of
reversion is that the law has to do only with
land such as may be used in a pastoral or agri-
cultural way for man's support. And this ex-
plains why, on the other hand, it is next
ordered (ver. 31) that in the case of houses in
unwalled villages the law of redemption and re-
version in the jubilee shall apply as well as to
the land. For the inhabitants of the villages
were the herdsmen and cultivators of the soil;
and the house was regarded rightly as a neces-
sary attachment to the land, without which its
use would not be possible. But inasmuch as
God had assigned no landholding to the Levites
in the original distribution of the land, — and
apart from their houses they had no possession
(ver. 33), — in order to secure them in the privi-
lege of a permanent holding, such as others en-
joyed in their lands, it was ordered that in their
case their houses, as being their only possession
in real estate, should be treated as were the land-
holdings of members of the other tribes.*
The relation of the jubilee law to personal
rights in the land having been thus determined
and expounded, in the next place (vv. 35-55) is
considered the application of the law to slavery.
Quite naturally, this section begins (vv. 35-37)
with a general injunction to assist and deal
mercifully with any brother who has become
poor. " If thy brother be waxen poor, and his
hand fail with thee; then thou shaft uphold him:
as a stranger and a sojourner shall he live with
thee. Take thou no usury of him or increase;
but fear thy God: that thy brother may live
with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money
upon usury, nor give him thy victuals for in-
crease."
The evident object of this law is to prevent, as
far as possible, that extreme of poverty which
might compel a man to sell himself in order to
live. Debt is a burden in any case, to a poor
man especially; but debt is the heavier burden
when to the original debt is added the constant
payment of interest. Hence, not merely " usury "
in the modern sense of excessive interest, but it
is forbidden to claim or take any interest what-
ever from any Hebrew debtor. On the same
principle, it is forbidden to take increase for
food which may be lent to a poor brother; as
when one lets a man have twenty bushels of
wheat on condition that in due time he shall re-
turn for it twenty-two. This command is en-
forced (ver. 38) by reminding them from whom
they have received what they have, and on what
easy terms, as a gift; from their covenant God,
who is Himself their security that by so doing
they shall not lose: "I am the Lord your God,
which brought you forth out of the land of
Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be
your God." They need not therefore have re-
course to the exaction of interest and increase
* The interpretation of ver. 33 presents a difficulty which,
if the rendering retained in the text bj' the Revisers be
accepted, is hard to resolve. But if we assume that a
negative has fallen out of the first clause in the received
text, and read with the Vulgate, as given in the margin of
the Revised Version, " if one of the Levites redeem >io/,"
all becomes clear. In the exposition we have ventured to
assume in this instance the correctness of the Vulgate.
from their poor brethren in order to make a
living, but are to be merciful, even as Jehovah
their God is merciful.
The Jubilee and Slavery.
Leviticus xxv. 39-55.
" And if thy brother ' 2 waxen poor with thee, and sell
himself unto thee ; thou shalt not make him to serve as a.
bondservant : as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he
shall be with thee ; he shall serve with thee unto the year
of jubilee: then shall he go out from thee, he and his
children with him, and shall return unto his own familj-,
and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For
they are My servants, which I brought forth out of the
land of Egypt : they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou
shalt not rule over him with rigour ; but shalt fear thy
(iod. And as for thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which
thou shalt have ; of the nations that are roundabout you,
of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. More-
over of the children of the strangers that do sojourn
among you, of them shall ye bu)-, and of their families
that are with you, which they have begotten in your land :
and they shall be your possession. And ye shall make
them an inheritance for your children after you, to hold
for a possession ; of them shall ye take your bondmen for
ever : but over your brethren the children of Israel ye
shall not rule, one over another, with rigour. And if a
stranger or sojourner with thee be waxen rich, and thy
brother be waxen poor beside him, and sell himself unto
the stranger or sojourner with thee, or to the stock of the
stranger's family : after that he is sold he may be re-
deemed ; one of his brethren may redeem him : or his
uncle, or his uncle's son, may redeem him, or any that is
nigh of kin unto him of his family may redeem him ; or if
he be waxen rich, he may redeem himself. And he shall
reckon with him that bought him from the year that he
sold himself to him unto the year of jubilee : and the price
of his sale shall be according unto the number of j-ears ;
according to the time of an hired servant shall he be with
him. If there be yet many years, according unto them he
shall give back the price of his redemption out of the
money that he was bought for. And if there remain but
few years unto the year of jubilee, then he shall reckon
with him ; according unto his years shall he give back the
price of his redemption. As a servant hired year by year
shall he be with him: he shall not rule with rigour over
him in thj' sight. And if he be not redeemed by these
means, then he shall go out in the 3'ear of jubilee, he, and
his children with him. For unto Me the children of Israel
are servants ; they are My servants whom I brought forth
out of the land of Egypt : I am the Lord your God."
Even with the burdensomeness of debt light-
ened as above, it was yet possible that a man
might be reduced to poverty so extreme that he
should feel compelled to sell himself as a slave.
Hence arises the question of slavery, and its rela-
tion to the law of the jubilee. Under this head
two cases were possible: the first, where a man
had sold himself to a fellow-Hebrew (vv. 39-46):
the second, where a man had sold himself to a
foreigner resident in the land (vv. 47-55).
With the Hebrews and all the neighbouring
peoples, slavery was, and had been from of old,
a settled institution. Regarded simply as an ab-
stract question of morals, it might seem as if the
Lord might once for all have abolished it by an
absolute prohibition; after the manner in which
many modern reformers would deal with such
evils as the liquor traffic, etc. But the Lord was
wiser than many such. As has been remarked
already, in connection with the question of con-
cubinage, that law is not in every case the best
which may be the best intrinsically and ideally.
That law is the best which can be best enforced
in the actual moral status of the people, and con-
sequent condition of public opinion. So the
Lord did not at once prohibit slavery; but He
ordained laws which would restrict it. and
modify and ameliorate the condition of the slave
wherever slavery was permitted to exist; laws,
moreover, which have had such an educational
Leviticus xxv. 1-55.]
SABBATIC YEAR AND JUBILEE.
power as to have banished slavery from the He-
brew people.
In the first place, slavery, in the unqualified
sense of the word, is allowed only in the case of
non-Israelites. That it was permitted to hold
these as bondmen is explicitly declared (vv. 44-
46). It is, however, important, in order to form
a correct idea of Hebrew slavery, to observe that,
according to Exod. xxi. 16. man-stealing was
made a capital offence; and the law also carefully
guarded from violence and tyranny on the part
of the master the non-Israelite slave lawfully
gotten, even decreeing his emancipation from his
master in extreme cases of this kind (Exod xxi.
20. 21, 26, 27).
With regard to the Hebrew bondman, the law
recognises no property of the master in his per-
son; that a servant of Jehovah should be a slave
of another servant of Jehovah is denied; because
they are His servants, no other can own them
(vv. 42, 55). Thus, while the case is supposed
(ver. 39) that a man through stress of poverty
may sell himself to a fellow-Hebrew as a bond-
servant, the sale is held as afifecting only the
master's right to his service, but not to his per-
son. " Thou shalt not make him to serve as a
bondservant: as an hired servant, and as a so-
journer, he shall be with thee."
Further, it is elsewhere provided (Exod. xxi.
2) that in no case shall such sale hold valid for a
longer time than six years; in the seventh year
the man was to have the privilege of going out
free for nothing. And in this chapter is added
a further alleviation of the bondage (vv. 40, 41):
" He shall serve with thee unto the year of
jubilee: then shall he go out from thee, he and
his children with him, and shall return unto his
own family, and unto the possession of his
fathers shall he return. For they are My serv-
ants, which I brought forth out of the land of
Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen."
That is, if it so happened that before the six
years of his prescribed service had been com-
pleted the jubilee year came in, he was to be
exempted from the obligation to service for the
remainder of that period.
The remaining verses of this part of the law
(vv. 44-46) provide that the Israelite may take to
himself bondmen of " the children of the stran-
gers " that sojourn among them; and that to
such the law of the periodic release shall not be
held to apply. Such are " bondmen for ever."
" Ye shall make them an inheritance for your
children after you, to hold for a possession; of
them shall ye take your bondmen for ever."
It is to be borne in mind that even in such
cases the law which commanded the kind treat-
ment of all the strangers in the land (xix. 33, 34)
would apply; so that even where permanent
slavery was allowed it was placed under humanis-
ing restriction.
In vv. 47-55 is taken up, finally, the case where
a poor Israelite should have sold himself as a
slave to a foreigner resident in the land. In all
such cases it is ordered that the owner of the
man must recognise the right of redemption.
That is, it was the privilege of the man himself,
or of any of his near kindred, to buy him out of
bondage. Compensation to the owner is, how-
ever, enjoined in such cases according to the
number of the years remaining to the next
jubilee, at which time he would be obliged to re-
Ipase him (ver. 54), whether redeemed or not.
Thus we read (vv. 50-52) : " He shall reckon with
him that bought him from the year that he sold
himself to him unto the year of jubilee: and the
price of his sale shall be according unto the
number of years; according to the time of an
hired servant shall he be with him. If there be
yet many years, according unto them he shall
give back the price of his redemption out of the
money that he was bought for. And if there re-
main but few years unto the year of jubilee, then
he shall reckon with him; according unto his
years shall he give back the price of his redemp-
tion. As a servant hired year by year shall he
be with him."
Furthermore, it is commanded (ver. 53) that
the owner of the Israelite, for so long time as he
may remain in bondage, shall " not rule over him
with rigour;" and by the addition of the words
" in thy sight " it is intimated that God would
hold the collective nation responsible for seeing
that no oppression was exercised by any alien
over any of their enslaved brethren. To which
it should also be added, finally, that the regula-
tions for the release of the slave carefully pro-
vided for the maintenance of the family relation.
Families were not to be parted in the emancipa-
tion of the jubilee; the man who went out free
was to take his children with him (vv. 41, 54).
In the case, however, where the wife had been
given him by his master, she and her children re-
mained in bondage after his emancipation in the
seventh year; but of course only until she had
reached her seventh year of service. But if the
slave already had his wife when he became a
slave, then she and their children went out with
him in the seventh year (Exod. xxi. 3, 4). The
contrast in the spirit of these laws with that of
the institution of slavery as it formerly existed in
the Southern States of America, and elsewhere
in Christendom, is obvious.
These, then, were the regulations connected
with the application of the ordinance of the
jubilee year to rights of property, whether in real
estate or in slaves. In respect to the cessation
from the cultivation of the soil which was en-
joined for the year, the law was essentially the
same as that for the sabbatic year, except that,
apparently, the right of property in the spon-
taneous produce of the land, which was in abey-
ance in the former case, was in so far recognised
in the latter that each man was allowed to " eat
the increase of the jubilee year out of the field "
(ver. 12).
/
Practical Objects of the Sabbatic Year
AND Jubilee Law.
Such was this extraordinary legislation, the
like of which will be sought in vain in any other
people. It is indeed true that, in some instances,
ancient lawgivers decreed that land should not
be permanently alienated, or that individuals
should not hold more than a certain amount of
land. Thus, for example, the Lacedemonians
were forbidden to sell their lands, and the Dal-
matians were wont to redistribute their lands
every eight years. But laws such as these only
present accidental coincidences with single
features of the jubilee year; an agreement to be
accounted for by the fact that the aim of such
lawgivers was, in so far, the same as that of the
Hebrew code, that they sought thus to guard
against excessive accumulations of property in
the hands of individuals, and those consequent
3^4
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
great inequalities in the distribution of wealth
which, in all lands and ages, and never more
clearly than in our own, have been seen to be
fraught with the gravest dangers to the highest
interests of society. Beyond this single point we
shall search in vain the history of any other
people for an analogy to these laws concerning
the sabbatic and the jubilee year.
What was the immediate object of this remark-
able legislation? It is not irrelevant to observe
that in so far as regards the prescription of a
periodic rest to the land, agricultural science
recognises that this is an advantage, especially in
places where it may be difficult to obtain ferti-
lisers for the soil in adequate amount. But it
cannot be supposed that this was the chief ob-
ject of these ordinances, not even in so far as
they had respect to the land. We shall not err
in regarding them as intended, like all in the
Levitical system, to make Israel to be in reality,
what they were called to be, a people holy, i. e.,
fully consecrated to the Lord. The bearing of
these laws on this end is not hard to perceive.
In the first place, the law of the sabbatic year
and the jubilee was a most impressive lesson as
to the relation of God to what men call their
property; and, in particular, as to His relation to
man's property in land. By these ordinances
every Israelite was to be reminded in a most
impressive way that the land which he tilled, or
on which he fed his flocks and herds, belonged,
not to himself, but to God. Just as God taught
him that his time belonged to Him, by putting
in a claim for the absolute consecration to Him-
self of every seventh day, so here He reminded
Israel that the land belonged to Him, by assert-
ing a similar claim on the land every seventh
year, and twice in a century for two years in
succession.
No one will pretend that the law of the sab-
batic year or the jubilee is binding on communi-
ties now. But it is a question for our times as
to whether the basal principle regarding the re-
lation of God to land, and by necessary conse-
quence the right of man regarding land, which is
fundamental to these laws, is not in its very
nature of perpetual force. Surely, there is noth-
ing in Scripture to suggest that God's ownership
of the land was limited to the land of Palestine,
or to that land only during Israel's occupancy
of it. Instead of this, Jehovah everywhere repre-
sents Himself as having given the land to Israel,
and therefore by necessary implication as hav-
ing a like right over it while as yet the Canaan-
ites were dwelling in it. Again, the purpose of
God's dealing with Egypt is said to be that Pha-
raoh might know this same truth: that the earth
(or land) was the Lord's (Exod. ix. 29); and in
Psalm xxiv. i it is stated, as a broad truth, with-
out qualification or restriction, that the earth is
the Lord's, as well as that which fills it. It is
true that there is no suggestion in any of these
passages that the relation of God to the earth or
to the land is different from His relation to other
property; but it is intended to emphasise the fact
that in the use of land, as of all else, we are to
regard ourselves as God's stewards, and hold
and use it as in trust from Him.
The vital relation of this great truth to the
burning questions of our day regarding the
rights of men in land is self-evident. It does
not indeed determine how the land question
should be dealt with in any particular country,
but it does settle it that if in these matters we
will act in the fear of God, we must keep this
principle steadily before us, that, primarily, the
land belongs to the Lord, and is to be used ac-
cordingly. How, as a matter of fact, God did
order that the land should be used, in the only
instance when He has condescended Himself to
order the political government of a nation, we
have already seen, and shall presently consider
more fully.
It is obvious that the natural and therefore in-
tended effect of these regulations, if obeyed,
would have been to impose a constant and
powerful check upon man's natural covetousness
and greed of gain. Every seventh year the He-
brew was to pause in his toil for wealth, and for
one whole year he was to waive even his ordinary
right to the spontaneous produce of his fields;
which year of abstinence from sowing and reap-
ing once in fifty years was doubled. Add to this
the strict prohibition of lending money upon
interest to a fellow-Israelite, and we can see how
far-reaching and effective, if obeyed, were such
regulations likely to be in restraining that in-
satiate greed for riches which ever grows the
more by that which feeds it.
Yet again; the law of the sabbatic year and the
jubilee was adapted to serve also as a singularly
powerful discipline in that faith toward God
which is the soul of all true religion. In this
practical way every Hebrew was to be taught
that " man doth not live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God." The lesson is ever hard to learn, though
none the less necessary. This thought is
alluded to in ver. 20, where it is supposed that a
man might raise the very natural objection to
these laws, " What shall we eat the seventh
year?" To which the answer is given, with
reference even to the extreme case of the jubilee
year: " I will command My blessing upon you in
the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for
the three years; until the ninth year ... ye shall
eat the old store."
But probably the most prominent and impor-
tant object of the regulations in this chapter was
to secure, as far as possible, the equal distribu-
tion of wealth, by preventing excessive accumu-
lations either of land or of capital in the hands of
a few. while the mass should be sunk in poverty.
It is certain that these laws, if carried out, would
have had a marvellous effect in this respect. As
for capital, we all know what an important factor
in the production of wealth is accumulation by
interest on loans, especially when the interest is
constantly compounded. There can be no doubt
of its immense power as an instrument for at
once enriching the lender and in proportion im-
poverishing the borrower. But among the
Israelites, to receive interest or its equivalent
was prohibited. One other chief cause of the
excessive wealth of individuals among us, as in
all ages, is the acquirement in perpetuity by indi-
viduals of a disproportionate amount of the pub-
lic land. The condition of things in the United
Kingdom is familiar to all, with its inevitable
effect on the condition of large masses of people;
and in parts of the United States there are indi-
cations of a like tendency working toward the
similar disadvantage of many small landholders
and cultivators. But in Israel, if these laws
should be carried into effect, such a state of
things, so often witnessed among other nations,
was made for ever impossible. Individual
ownership in the land itself was forbidden; no
i«,eviticus xxv. 1-55.]
SABBATIC YEAR AND JUBILEE.
365
man was allowed more than a leasehold right;
nor could he, even by adding largely to his lease-
holds, increase his wealth indefinitely, so as to
transmit a fortune to his children, to be still
further augmented by a similar process in the
next and succeeding generations; for every fifty
years the jubilee came around, and whatever
leaseholds he might have acquired from less for-
tunate brethren, reverted unconditionally to the
original owner or his legal heirs.
However impracticable such arrangements
may seem to us under the conditions of modern
life, yet it must be confessed that in the case of a
nation just starting on its career in a new coun-
try, as was Israel at that time, nothing could
well be thought of more likely to be effective
toward securing, along with careful regard to the
rights of property, an equal distribution of
wealth among the people, than the legislation
which is placed before us in this chapten.
It deserves to be specially noticed by how
exact equity the laws are distinguished. While,
on the one hand, excessive accumulations, either
of capital or of land, were thus made impossible,
there is here nothing of the destructive com-
munism advocated by many in our day. These
laws put no premium on laziness; for if a man,
through indolence or vice, was compelled to sell
out his right in his land, he had no security of
obtaining it again until the jubilee; that is to
say, upon an average, during his working life-
time. On the other hand, encouragement was
given to industry, as a man who was thrifty
might, by purchase of leaseholds, materially in-
crease his wealth and comfort in life. And the
cflfect on inheritance is evident. There could, on
the one hand, be no inheritance of such colossal
and overgrown fortunes as are possible in our
modern states, — no blessing, certainly, in many
cases, to the heirs; and neither, on the other
hand, could there be any inheritance of hopeless
and degrading poverty. A man might have had
an indolent or a vicious father, who had thus
forfeited his landholding; but while the father
V'ould doubtless suflfer deserved poverty during
bis active life, the young man, when the jubilee
returned, and the lost paternal inheritance re-
verted to him, would have the opportunity to
see whether he might not, with his father's ex-
perience before him as a warning, do better, and
retrieve the fortunes of the family. In any case,
he would not start upon the work of life
■weighted, as are multitudes among us, with a
crushing and almost irremovable burden of
poverty.
It is certain, no doubt, that these laws are
not morally binding now: and no less certain,
probably, that failing, as they did, to secure ob-
servance in Israel, such laws, even if enacted,
could not in our day be practically carried out
any more than then. Nevertheless, so much we
may safely say, that the intention and aim of
these laws as regards the equal distribution of
wealth in the community ought to be the aim of
all wise legislation now. It is certain that all
good government ought to seek in all righteous
and equitable ways to prevent the formation in
the community of classes, either of the excess-
ively rich or of the excessively poor. Absolute
equality in this respect is doubtless unattain-
able, and in a world intended for purposes of
moral training and discipline were even un-
desirable; but extreme wealth or extreme
poverty are certainly evils to the prevention
24— Vol. I.
of which our legislators may well give their
minds. Only it needs also to be kept in
mind that these Hebrew laws no less distinctly
teach us that this end is to be sought only in
such a way as shall neither, on the one hand, put
a premium on laziness and vice, nor, on the
other, deny to the virtuous and industrious the
advantage which industry and virtue deserve, of
additional wealth, comfort, and exemption from
toilsome drudgery.
In close connection with all this it will be ob-
served that all this legislation, while guarding the
rights of the rich, is evidently inspired by that
same merciful regard for the poor which marks
the Levitical law throughout. For in all these
regulations it is assumed that there would still be
poor in the land; but the law secured to the poor
great mitigations of poverty. Every seventh
year the produce of the land was to be free alike
to all; if one were poor his brother was to up-
hold him; when lending him, he was not to add
to the debt the burden of interest or increase.
And then there was to the poor man the ever-
present assurance, which alone would take oflF
half the bitterness of poverty, that through the
coming of the jubilee the children at least would
have a new chance, and start life on an equality,
in respect of inheritance in land, with the sons
of the richest. And when we remember the
close connection between extreme poverty and
every variety of crime, it is plain that the whole
legislation is as admirably adapted to the pre-
vention of crime as of abject and hopeless
poverty. Well might Asaph use the words
which he employs, with evident allusion to the
trumpet sound which ushered in the jubilee:
"Happy the people that know the joyful sound!"
i. e., that have the blessed experience of the
jubilee, that supreme earthly sabbatism of the
people of God.*
Most significant and full of instruction, no
less to us than to Israel, was the ordinance that
both the sabbatic and the jubilee years should
date from the day of Atonement. It was when,
having completed the solemn ritual of that day,
the high priest put on again his beautiful gar-
ments and came forth, having made atonement
for all the transgressions of Israel, that the
trumpet of the iubilee was to be sounded. Thus
was Israel reminded in the most impressive man-
ner possible that all these social, civil, and com-
munal blessings were possible only on condition
of reconciliation with God through atoning
blood; atonement in the highest and fullest sense,
which should reach even to the Holy of Holies,
and place the blood on the very mercy-seat of
Jehovah. This is true still, though the nations
have yet to learn it. The salvation of nations,
no less than that of individuals, is conditioned
by national fellowship with God, secured through
the great Atonement of the Lord. Not until the
nations learn this lesson may we expect to see
the crying evils of the earth removed, or the
questions of property, of land-holding, of capital
and labour, justly and happily solved.
Typical Significance of the Sabbatic
AND Jubilee Years.
But we must not forget that the sabbatic year
and the year of jubilee, following the seventh
seven of years, are the two last members of a
♦ See Psalm Ixxxix. 15.
i66
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
sabbatic system of septenary periods, namely,
the sabbath of the seventh day, the feast of
Pentecost, following the expiry of the seventh
week from Passover, and then the still more
sacred seventh month, with its two great feasts,
and the day of atonement intervening. But, as we
have seen, we have good scriptural authority for
regarding all these as typical. Each in succession
brings out another stage or aspect of the great
Messianic redemption, in a progressive revela-
tion historically unfolding. In all of these alike
we have been able to trace thoughts connected
with the sabbatic idea, as pointing forward to the
final rest, redemption, and consummated restora-
tion, the sabbatism that remaineth to the people
of God. To these preceding sabbatic periods
these last two are closely related. Both alike be-
gan on the great day of atonement, in which all
Israel was to afflict their souls in penitence for
sin; and on that day they both began when the
high priest came out from within the veil, where,
from the time of his offering the sin-ofTering, he
had been hidden from the sight of Israel for a
season; and both alike were ushered in with a
trumpet blast.
We shall hardly go amiss if we see in both of
these — first in the sabbatic year, and still more
clearly in the year of jubilee — a prophetic fore-
shadowing in type of that final repentance of the
children of Israel in the latter days, and their
consequent re-establishment in their land, which
the prophets so fully and explicitly predict. In
that day they are to return, as the prophets bear
witness, every man to the land which the Lord
gave for an inheritance to their fathers. Indeed,
one might say with truth that even the lesser
restoration from Babylon was prefigured in this
ordinance; but, without doubt, its chief and su-
preme reference must be to that greater restora-
tion still in the future, of which we read, for
example, in Isa. xi. ii. when "the Lord shall set
His hand again the second time to recover the
remnant of His people, which shall remain, from
Assyria, and from Egypt, . . . and from the
islands of the sea."
But the typical reference of these sacred years
of sabbatism reaches yet beyond what pertains to
Isrr r1 alone. For not only, according to the
prophets and apostles, is there to be a restoration
of Israel, but also, as the Apostle Peter declared
to the Jews (Acts iii. 19-21). closely connected
with and consequent on this, a " restoration of
all things." And it is in this great, final, and ex-
ceedingly glorious restoration of the time of the
end that we recognise the ultimate antitype of
these sabbatic seasons. When read in the light
of later predictions they appear to point forward
with singular distinctness to what, according to
the Holy Word, shall be when Jesus Christ, the
heavenly High Priest, shall come forth from
within the veil; when the last trumpet shall
sound, and He who was " once offered to bear
the sins of many " shall appear a second time,
apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto
salvation (Heb. ix. 28).
Even in the beginning of the Pentateuch (Gen.
iii. 17-19) it is explicitly taught that because of
Adam's sin, the curse of God, in some mysteri-
ous way, fell even upon the material earthly crea^
tion. We read that the Lord said unto Adam:
" Cursed is the ground for thv sake; in toil shalt
thni.t eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also
and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou
shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy
face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto
the ground." It is because of sin, then, that
man is doomed to labour, toilsome and imper-
fectly requited by an unwilling soil. It lies im
mediately before us that both the sabbatic year
and the year of jubilee, by the ordinance regard-
ing the rest for the land, and the special promise
of sufficiency without exhausting labour, in-
volved for Israel a temporary suspension of the
full operation of this curse. The ordinance
therefore points unmistakably in a prophetic way
to what the New Testament explicitly predicts —
the coming of a day when, with man redeemed,
material nature also shall share the great de-
liverance. In a word, in the sabbatic year, and
in a yet higher form in the year of jubilee, we
have in symbol the wonderful truth which in the
most didactic language is formally declared by
the Apostle Paul in these words (Rom. viii. 19-
22) : " The earnest expectation of the creation
waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.
For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of
its own will, but by reason of him who subjected
it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be de-
livered from the bondage of corruption into the
liberty of the glory of the children of God. For
we know that the whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until now."
The jubilee year contained in type all this, and
more. Where the sabbatic year had typically
pointed only to a coming rest of the earth from
the primeval curse, the jubilee, falling, not on a
seventh, but on an eighth year, following imme-
diately on the sabbatic seventh, pointed also to
the permanence of this blessed condition. It is
the festival, by eminence, of the new creation, of
paradise completely and for ever restored.
Moreover, as falling in the fiftieth year, and
therefore on an eighth year of the sabbatic calen-
dar, the jubilee was to the week of years as the
Lord's day to the week of days. Like that, it is
the festival of resurrection. This is as clearly
foreshadowed in the type as the other. For in
the year of jubilee not only was the land to rest,
but every bond-slave was to be released, and to
return to his inheritance and to his family. In
the light of what has preceded, and of other
revelations of Scripture, we can hardly miss of
perceiving the typical meaning of this. For what
is the great event which the Apostle Paul, in the
passage just cited, associates in time with the de-
liverance of the earthly creation, but " the re-
demption of the body," as the final issue of the
atoning work of Christ? For as yet even be-
lievers are in bondage to death and the grave;
but the day which is coming, the day of earth's
redemption, shall bring to all that are Christ's
all that are Israelites indeed, deliverance " from
the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the
glory of the children of God."
And as the slave who was freed in the year of
jubilee therewith also returned to his forfeited in-
heritance, so also shall it be in that day. For
precisely this is given us by the Holy Spirit in
the New Testament (i Peter i. 4, 5), as another
aspect of the day when the heavenly Aaron shall
come forth from the Holiest. For we are be-
gotten vJito an inheritance, reserved in heaven for
us, " who by the power of God are guarded
through faith unto a salvation ready to be re-
vealed in the last time." Cast out through death
from the inheritance of the earth, which in the
beginning was given by God to our first father,
and to his seed in him, but which was lost to hin
Leviticus xxvi. 1-46. J
PROMISES OF THE COVENANT.
367
and to his children through his sin, the great
jubilee of the future shall bring us again, every
man who is in Christ by faith, into the lost in-
heritance, redeemed and glorified citizens of a
redeemed and glorified earth. Hence it is that
in Rev. xxii. we are shown in visipn, first, the
new earth, delivered from the curse, and then the
New Jerusalem, the Church of the risen and
glorified saints of God, descending from God out
of heaven, to assume possession of the purchased
inheritance.
And the law adds also: " Ye shall return every
man unto his family;" which gives the last
feature here prefigured of that supreme sabbatism
which remaineth for the people of God (Heb. iv.
9). It shall bring the reunion of those who had
been parted and scattered. The day of resurrec-
tion is accordingly spoken of (2 Thess. ii. i) as
a day of " gathering together " of all who,
though one in Christ, have been rudely parted by
death. And yet more, it will be " the day of our
gathering together unto Him," even the blessed
Lord Jesus Christ, the " Gael," the Kinsman-
Redeemer of the ruined bondsmen and their lost
inheritance: " Whom not having seen, we love,"
but then expect to see even as He is, and be-
holding Him, be like Him, and be with Him for
ever and for ever. Who should not long for the
day? — the day when for the first time, this last
type of Leviticus shall pass into complete fulfil-
ment in the antitype: the day of " the restoration
of all things;" the day of the deliverance of the
material creation from her present bondage to
corruption; the day also of the release of every
true Israelite from the bondage of death, and the
eternal establishment of all such with the Elder
Brother, the First-begotten, in the enjoyment of
the inheritance of the saints in light.
" Love, rest, and home !
Sweet hope !
Lord ! tarry not, but COME ! "
PART III.
CONCLUSION AND APPENDIX.
Leviticus xxvi., xxvii.
1. Conclusion : Promises and Threatenings : xxvi.
2. APPENDIX: Concerning Vows : xxvii.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PROMISES AND THREATS OF THE
COVENANT.
Leviticus xxvi. 1-46.
One would have expected that this chapter
would have been the last in the book of Leviti-
cus, for it forms a natural and fitting close to
the whole law as hitherto recorded. But what-
ever may have been the reason of its present
literary form, the fact remains that while this
chapter is, in outward form, the conclusion of
the Levitical law, another chapter follows it in
the manner of an appendix.
Chapter xxvi. opens with these words (vv. i,
2): "Ye shall make you no idols, neither shall
ye rear you up a graven image, or a pillar,
neither shall ye place any figured stone in your
land, to bow down unto it: for I am the Lord
your God. Ye shall keep My sabbaths, and
reverence My sanctuary: I am the Lord."
These verses, as they stand in the English
versions as a preface to this chapter, at first sight
seem but distantly related to what follows; and
the Chaldee paraphrast and others have there-
fore appended them to the preceding chapter.
But with that they have even less evident con-
nection. The thought of the editor of this part
of the canon, however, seems to have been that
the three commands which are here repeated
might be regarded as presenting a compendious
summary, in its fundamental principles, of the
whole law, the promises and threatenings at-
tached to which immediately follow. And the
more we think upon these commands and what
they involve, the more evident will appear the fit-
ness of their selection from the whole law to in-
troduce this chapter.
The commands which are here repeated are
three: namely, (i) a detailed prohibition of idol-
atry in the forms then chiefly prevalent; (2) an
injunction to observe God's sabbaths; and (3)
to reverence His sanctuary. Inasmuch as the
various forms of idol-worship, which are here
forbidden, all involved the recognition ot gods
other than Jehovah, it is plain that ver. i is in
effect inclusive of the first and second command-
ments of the decalogue. The injunction to keep
God's sabbaths, although in principle including
all the sabbatic times previously appointed, evi-
dently refers especially to the weekly sabbath of
the fourth commandment; while the command to
reverence the sanctuary of Jenovah covers in
principle the ground of the third. And thus, in
fact, these three injunctions essentially include
the four commands of the decalogue which have
to do with man's duty to God, and are thus fun-
damental to all other duties, both to God and
man. Very appropriately, then, are these verses
given here as a brief summary of the law to
which the following promises and threatenings
are annexed. And their suitableness to that
which follows is the more clear when we remem-
ber that the weekly sabbath, in particular, is else-
where (Exod. xxxi. 12-17) declared to be a sign
of God's covenant with Israel, to which these
promises and threats belong; and that the pres-
ence of Jehovah's sanctuary also, which they are
here charged to reverence, was a continual visi-
ble witness among them of the special presence
of God in Israel in pursuance of that covenant.
After this pertinent summation of the most
fundamental commands of the law, the remainder
of the chapter contains, first (vv. 3-13). promises
of blessing from God, in case they shall obey this
law; secondly (vv. 14-39), threats of chastising
judgment, in case they disobey: and, thirdly (vv.
40-45), a prediction of their final repentance, and
promise of their gracious restoration thereupon
to the favour of God. and the everlasting endur-
ance of God's covenant to preserve them in ex-
istence as a nation. The chapter then closes
(ver. 46) with the declaration: "These are the
statutes and judgments and laws, which the Lord
made between Him and the children of Israel in
mount Sinai by the hand of Moses."
The Promises of the Covenant.
Leviticus xxvi. 3-13.
"If ye walk in My statutes, and keep My command-
ments, and do tliem ; then I will Rive your rains in their
season, and the land shall yield h-^r increase, and the trees
368
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing
shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach
unto the sowing time : and ye shall eat your bread to the
full, and dwell in your land safely. And I will give peace
in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make
you afraid : and I will cause evil beasts to cease out of the
land, neither shall the sword go through your land. And
ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you
by the sword. And five of you shall chase an hundred,
and an hundred of you shall chase ten thousand : and
your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. And I
will have respect unto you, and make you fruitful, and
multiply you ; and I will establish My covenant with you.
And ye shall eat old store long kept, and ye shall bring
forth the old because of the new. And I will set My tab-
ernacle among you : and My soul shall not abhor you.
And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye
shall be My people. I am the Lord your God, which
brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should
not be their bondmen ; and I have broken the bars of your
yoke, and made you go upright."
The promises of the covenant are thus to the
effect that if Israel shall keep the law, God will
give them rain and fruitful seasons, harvests so
abundant that the " threshing shall reach unto
the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the
sowing time;" internal security; deliverance from
the wild beasts, which are still such a scourge in
many parts of the East; and such power and
spirit, that no enemy shall be able to stand be-
fore them, but five of them shall chase an hun-
dred, and an hundred chase ten thousand. Then
(ver. 9) is renewed the promise, given long be-
fore to Abraham, of a great increase in their
numbers; and thereupon, very naturally, is re-
peated the promise of abundant harvests, so
that notwithstanding they shall be so multiplied,
one year's harvest should not be consumed be-
fore it would have to be removed from the gran-
aries to make room for the new (ver. 10). And
then this section ends with the assurance which
secures all other blessings, temporal and spirit-
ual, that God will abide among them in His
tabernacle, and will be their God, and they shall
be His people. And the fulfilment of all this is
guaranteed by the person, the purpose, and the
past dealing of the Promiser; Himself, Jehovah;
His purpose, to deliver them from bondage; and
His past mercy, in breaking the bands of their
yoke.
" The Vengeance of the Covenant."
Leviticus xxvi. 14-46.
" But if ye will not hearken unto Me, and will not do all
these commandments ; and if ye shall reject My statutes,
and if your soul abhor My judgments, so that ye will not
do all My commandments, but break My covenant ; I also
will do this unto you ; I will appoint terror over you, even
consumption and fever, that shall consume the eyes, and
make the soul to pine away : and ye shall sow your seed
in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. And I will set My
face against you, and ye shall be smitten before your ene-
mies : they that hate you shall rule over you ; and ye
shall flee when none pursueth you. And if ye will not yet
for these things hearken unto me, then I will chastise you
seven times more for your sins. And I will break the
pride of your power ; and I will make your heaven as
iron, and your earth as brass : and your strength shall be
spent in vain : for your land shall not yield her increase,
neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruit. And
if ye walk contrary unto Me, and will not hearken unto
Me ; T will bring seven times more plagues upon you ac-
cording to your sins. And I will send the beast of the
field among you, which shall rob you of your children,
and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number;
and your ways shall become desolate. And if by these
things ye will not be reformed unto Me, but will walk con-
trary unto Me ; then will I also walk contrary unto you ;
and I will smite you, even I, seven times for your sins.
And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall execute the
vengeance of the covenant ; and ye shall be gathered to-
gether within your cities: and I'will send the pestilence
among you ; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the
enemy. When I break your staff of bread, ten women
shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver
your bread again by weight : and ye shall eat, and not bt
satisfied. And if ye will not for all this hearken unto Me,
but walk contrary unto Me ; then I will walk contrary
unto you in fury ; and I also will chastise you seven times
for your sins. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and
the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat. And I will de-
stroy your high places, and cut down your sun-images,
and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols ;
and My soul shall abhor you. And I will make your cities
a waste, and will bring your sanctuaries unto desolation,
and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.
And 1 will bring the land into desolation : and your ene-
mies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And
you will I scatter among the nations, and I will draw out
the sword after you : and your land shall be a desolation,
and your cities shall be a waste. Then shall the land en-
joy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in
your enemies' land ; even then shall the land rest, and en-
joy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall
have rest ; even the rest which it had not in your sabbaths,
when ye dwelt upon it. And as for them that are left of
you I will send a faintness into their heart in the lands of
their enemies : and the sound of a driven leaf shall chase
them ; and they shall flee, as one fleeth from the sword ;
and they shall fall when none pursueth. And they shall
stumble one upon another, as it were before the sword,
when none pursueth : and ye shall have no power to stand
before your enemies. And ye shall perish among the na-
tions, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
And they that are left of you shall pine away in their in-
iquity in your enemies' lands ; and also in the iniquities
of their fathers shall they pine away with them. And
they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their
fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against
Me, and also that because they have walked contrary
unto Me, I also walked contrary unto them, and brought
them into the land of their enemies : if then their uncir-
cumcised heart be humbled, and they then accept of the
punishment of their iniquity ; then will I remember My
covenant with Jacob ; and also My covenant with Isaac,
and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember;
and I will remember the land. The land also shall be left
of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth
desolate without them ; and they shall accept of the pun-
ishment of their iniquity : because, even because they re-
jected My judgments, and their soul abhorred My stat-
utes. And yet for all that, when they be in the land of
their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor
them, to destroy them utterly, and to break My covenant
with tHem : for I am the Lord their God : but I will for
their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors,
whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the
sight of the nations, that I might be their God : I am the
Lord. These are the statutes and judgments and laws,
which the Lord made between Him and the children of
Israel in mount Sinai by the hand of Moses."
So, if Israel should not obey the command-
ments of the Lord, but break that covenant
which they had made with Him, when they had
said unto the Lord (Exod. xxiv. 7): "All that
the Lord hath spoken will we do, and be obe-
dient;" then they are threatened, first in a general
way (vv. 14-17) with terrible judgments, which
shall reverse, and more than reverse, all the
blessings. God will appoint over them " terror;"
disease shall ravage them, consumption and
fever; their enemies shall lay waste the land,
defeat them in battle, and rule over them; and
instead of five of them chasing an hundred, they
should flee when none was pursuing (vv. 17, 18).
Then follow four series of threats, each condi-
tioned by the supposition that through what they
should have already experienced of Jehovah's
jrdgment they should not repent; each also
introduced by the formula, " I will chastise
(or " smite ") you seven times for your
sins." In these four times repeated series
of denunciations, thus introduced, we are not
to insist that numerical precision was in-
tended; neither can we, with some, give to
the " seven times " a numerical or temporal ref-
erence. The thought which runs through all
these denunciations, and determines the form
which they take, is this: that the judgments
threatened as to follow each new display of hard-
ness and impenitence on the part of Israel shall
be marked by continually increasing severity;
Leviticus xxvi. 1-46.]
PROMISES OF THE COVENANT.
369
and the phrase " seven times," by the reference
to the sacred number " seven," intimates that
the vengeance should be " the vengeance of the
covenant " (ver. 25), and also the awful thor-
oughness and completeness with which the
threatened judgments, in case of their continued
obduracy, would be inflicted.
This interpretation is sustained by the details
of each section. The first series (vv. 18-20), in
which the threatenings of vv. 14-17 are de-
veloped, adds to what had been previously
threatened, the withholding of harvest for lack
of rain. He who had promised to send the
rains " in their season," if they were obedient,
now declares that if they will not hearken unto
Him for the other chastisements before de-
nounced. He will " make their heaven as iron,
and their earth as brass." The second series
' threatens in addition their devastation by wild
beasts, which shall rob them of their children
and their cattle; and also, in consequence of
these great judgments, with a great diminution
of their numbers. The third series (vv. 23-26)
repeats under forms still more intense, the
threats of sword, pestilence, and famine. The
stafT of bread shall be broken, and when, stricken
with pestilence, they are gathered together in
their cities, one oven shall suffice ten women for
their baking, and bread shall be distributed by
rations and in insufficient quantity (vv. 25, 26).
It is intimated that with these extraordinary
judgments it shall become increasingly evident
that it is Jehovah who is thus dealing with them
for the breach of His covenant. This is sug-
gested (ver. 24) by the emphatic use of the per-
sonal pronoun in the Hebrew, only to be ren-
dered in English by a stress of voice; and by the
declaration (ver. 25) that the sword which should
be brought upon them should " execute the
vengeance of the covenant."
The same remark applies with still more em-
phasis to the next and last of these sub-sections
(vv. 27-39), the terrific denunciations of which
are introduced by these words, which almost
seem to flash with the fire of God's avenging
wrath: " If ... ye will walk contrary unto Me;
then I will walk contrary unto you in fury (lit.,
" I will walk with you in fury of opposition ") ;
and I also will chastise you seven times for your
sins." All that has been threatened before is
here repeated with every circumstance which
could add terror to the picture. Was famine
threatened? it shall be so awful in its severity
that they shall eat the flesh of their own sons and
daughters. The high places which had been the
scenes of their licentious worship should be de-
stroyed, and the " sun-images " which they had
worshipped, going after Baal, should be cut
down; and, in visible sign of the Divine wrath
and of God's holy contempt for the impotent
idols for which they had forsaken the Lord, upon
the fallen idols should lie the dead corpses of
their worshippers. The sanctuaries (with
special, — though, perhaps, not exclusive, — refer-
ence, as the following words show, to the holy
places of Jehovah's tabernacle or temple)
should become a desolation; the sweet savour of
their sacrifices should be rejected. The holy
people should be scattered into other lands; the
land should become so desolate that those of
their enemies who should dwell in it should
themselves be astonished at its transformation.
And so, while they should be scattered in their
enemies' land, the land would " enjoy her sab-
baths;"* i. e., it should thus, untilled and deso-
late, enjoy the rest which Jehovah had com-
manded them to give the land each seventh year,
which they had not observed. Meanwhile, the
condition of the banished nation in the lands of
their captivity should be most pitiful: minished
in number, those that were left alive should pine
away in their iniquities, and in the iniquity of
their fathers; timid and broken-spirited, they
should fiee before the sound of a broken leaf, and
the land of their enemies should " eat them up."
And herewith ends the second section of this
remarkable prophecy. Promising Israel the
highest prosperity in the land of Canaan, if they
will keep the words of this covenant, it threatens
them with successive judgments of sword,
famine, and pestilence, of continually increasing
severity, to culminate, if they yet persist in dis-
obedience, in their expulsion from the land for
a prolonged period; and predicts their continued
existence, despite the most distressing condi-
tions, in the lands of their enemies, while their
own land meanwhile lies desolate and untilled
without them.
The fundamental importance and instructive-
ness of this prophecy is evident from the fact that
all later predictions concerning the fortunes of
Israel are but its more detailed exposition and
application to successive historical conditions.
Still more evident is its profound significance
when we recall to mind the fact, disputed by
none, that not only is it an epitome of all later
prophecy of Holy Scripture concerning Israel,
but, no less truly, an epitome of Israel's history.
So strictly true is this that we may accurately de-
scribe the history ot that nation, from the days
of Moses until now, as but the translation of this
chapter from the language of prediction into that
of history.
The facts which illustrate this statement are
so familiar that one scarcely needs to refer to
them. The numerous visitations in the days of
the Judges, when again and again the people
were given into the hands of their enemies for
their sins, and so often as then they repented,
were again and again delivered; the heavier judg-
ments of later days, first in the days of the earlier
kings, and afterwards culminating in the captivity
of the ten tribes, following the siege and capture
of Samaria, 721 b. c, and, still later, the terrible
siege and capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchad-
nezzar, 586 B. c, to the horrors of which the
Lamentations of Jeremiah bear most sorrowful
witness; — what were all these events, with others
of lesser importance, but an historical unfolding
of this twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus.''
And how, since Old Testament days, this
prophecy has been continually illustrated in
Israel's history, is, or should be, familiar to all.
As apostasy has succeeded to apostasy, judg-
ment has followed upon judgment. To a Nebu-
* Much has been made of this reference to the neglect of
the sabbatic years as evidence of the late composition of
the chapter ; but surely in this argument there is little
force. For, even apart from any question of inspiration,
the ordinance of the sabbatic year was of such an extraor-
dinary character, so opposed" alike to human selfishness
and eagerness for pain, and calling for such faith in God,
that it would require no great knowledge of human na-
ture to anticipate its probable neglect, even on natural
grounds. But, even were this not so, still an argument of
this kind against the Mosaic origin of this minatory sec-
tion of the covenant can have decisive force for those only
who, for whatsoever reason, have come to disbelieve that
God can tell beforehand what free agents will do, or that,
if He know. He can impart that knowledge to His serv-
ants.
37°
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
chadnezzar succeeded an Antiochus Epiphanes;
and, after the Greco-Syrian judgment, then, fol-
lowing the supreme national crime of the rejec-
tion and crucifixion of their promised Messiah,
came the Roman captivity, the most terrible of
all: a judgment continued even until now in the
eighteen hundred years of Israel's exile from the
land of the covenant, and their scattering among
the nations, — eighteen hundred years of tragic
suffering, such as no other nation has ever
known, or, knowing, has yet survived; sufferings
which are still exhibited before the eyes of all
the world to-day in the bitter experiences of the
four millions of Jews in the Empire of the Czar,
and the persecutions of Anti-Shemitism in other
lands.
Existing, rather than living, under such con-
ditions for centuries, as a natural result, the
Jewish people became few in number, as here
predicted; having been reduced from not less
than seven or .eight millions in the days of the
kingdom, to a minimum, about two hundred
years ago, of not more than three millions.*
And, strangest of all, throughout this time the
once fertile land has lam desolate, for the Gen-
tiles have never settled in it in any great number;
and in place of a population of five hundred to
the square mile in the days of Solomon, we find
now only a few hundred thousand miserable
people, and the most of the land, for lack of
cultivation, in such a condition that nothing
can easily exceed its desolation. And when we
have said all this, and much more that might be
said without exaggeration, we have but simply
ter;tified that vv. 31-34 of this chapter have in
the fullest possible sense become historical fact.
For it was written (vv. 32-34) : " I will bring the
land into desolation: and your enemies which
dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And you
will I scatter among the nations, and I will draw
out the sword after you: and your land shall be
a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.
Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long
as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies'
land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy
her sabbaths."
These facts make this chapter to be an apolo-
getic of prime importance. It is this, because
we have here evidence of foreknowledge, and
therefore of the supernatural inspiration of the
Holy Spirit of God in the prophecy here re-
corded. The facts cannot be adequately ex-
plained, either on the supposition of fortunate
guessing or of accidental coincidence. It was
not indeed impossible to forecast on natural
grounds that Israel would become corrupt, or
that, if so, they should experience disaster in
consequence of their moral depravation. For
God has not one law for Israel and another for
other nations. Nor does the argument rest on
the details of these threatened judgments, as con-
sisting in the sword, famine, and pestilence; for
other nations have experienced these calamities,
though, indeed, few in equal measure with Is-
rael; and of these one has a natural dependence
on another.
But setting aside these elements of the proph-
ecy, as of less apologetic significance, two par-
ticulars yet remain in which this predicted ex-
♦So Basnage ("History of the Jews," London, 1700,
chap, xxviii , sec. 15) estimated it in his day. Since then,
however, their number has materially increased, and is
still increasing: ; a fact the significance of which has been
pointed out by the present writer in " The Jews ; or. Pre-
diction and Fulfilment " (New York, 1883, pp. 178-83).
perience has been unique, and antecedently to
the event in so high degree improbable, that
we can reasonably think here neither of shrewd
human forecast nor of chance agreement of pre-
diction and fulfilment. The one is the predicted
survival of exiled Israel as a nation in the land of
their enemies, their indestructibility throughout
centuries of unequalled suffering; the other, the
extraordinary fact that their land, so rich and
fertile, which was at that time and for centuries
afterwards one of the principal highways of the
world's commerce and travel, the coveted pos-
session of many nations from a remote antiquity,
should during the whole period of Israel's ban-
ishment remain comparatively unoccupied and
untilled.
As regards the former particular, we may
s.earch history in vain for a similar phenomenon.
Here is a people who, at their best, as compared I
with many other nations, such as the Egyptians,
Babylonians, and Romans, were few in number
ana in material resources; who now have been
scattered from their land for centuries, crushed
and oppressed always, in a degree and for a
length of time never experienced by any other
people; yet never merging in the nations with
whom they were mingled, or losing in the least
their peculiar racial characteristics and distinct
national identity. This, although now for a long
time matter of history, was yet, a priori, so im-
probable that all history records no other in-
stance of the kind; and yet all this had to be if
those words of ver. 44 were to prove true:
" When they be in the land of their enemies, I
will not reject them, neither will I abhor them,
to destroy them utterly." With abundant reason
has Professor Christlieb referred to this fact as
an unanswerable apologetic, thus: " We point to
the people of Israel as a perennial historical mir-
acle. The continued existence of this nation up
to the present day, the preservation of its national
peculiarities throughout thousands of years, in
spite of all dispersion and oppression, remains
so unparalleled a phenomenon, that without the
special providential prefjaration of God, and His
constant interference and protection, it would
be impossible for us to explain it. For where
else is there a people over which such judgments
have passed, and yet not ended in destruction? "*
No less remarkable and significant is the long-
continued depopulation of the land of Israel.
For it was and is by nature a richly fertile land;
and at the time of this prediction — whether it
be assigned to an earlier or later period — it was
upon one of the chief commercial and military
routes of the world, and its possession has thus
been an object of ambition to all the dominant
nations of history. Surely, one would have ex-
pected that if Israel should be cast out of such
a land, it would at once and always be occupied
by others who should cultivate its proverbially
productive soil. But it was not to be so, for it
had been otherwise written. And yet it seems as
if it had scarcely been possible that through all
these later centuries of the history of Christen-
dom, the land could have thus lain desolate, ex-
cept for the so momentous discovery in 1497 of
the Cape route to India, by which event — which
no one could in so remote days have well antici-
pated— the tide of commerce with the East was
turned away from Egypt, Syria, and Palestine,
to the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans; so that
the land of Israel was left, like a city made to
♦ "Modern Doubt and Christian Belief," p. 333.
Leviticus xxvi. 1-46.]
PROMISES OF THE COVENANT.
371
stand solitary in a desert by the shifting of the
channel of a river; and its predicted desolation
thus went on to receive its most complete, con-
summate, and now long-realised fulfilment.
So, then, stands the case. It is truly difficult
to understand how one can fairly escape the in-
ference from these facts, namely, that they imply
in this chapter such a prescience of the future as
is not possible to man, and therefore demonstrate
that the Spirit of God must, in the deepest and
truest sensC; have been the author of these pre-
dictions of the future of the chosen people and
their land.
And it is of the very first importance, with
reference to the controversies ot our day re-
garding this question, that we note the fact that
the argument is of such a nature that it is not
in the least dependent upon the date that any
may have assigned to the origin of this chapter.
Even though we should, with Graf and Well-
hausen, attribute its composition to exilian or
post-exilian times, it would still remain true that
the chapter contained unmistakable predictions
regarding the nation and the land; predictions
which, if fulfilled, no doubt, in a degree, in the
days of the Babylonian exile and the return, were
yet to receive a fulfilment far more minute, ex-
haustive, and impressive, in centuries which then
were still in a far distant future. But if this be
granted, it is plain that these facts impose a
limitation upon the conclusions of criticism.
That only is true science which takes into view
all the facts with respect to any phenomenon for
which one seeks to account; and in this case the
facts which are to be explained by any theory,
are not merely peculiarities of style and vocabu-
lary, etc., but also this phenomenon of a demon-
strably predictive element in the chapter; a phe-
nomenon which requires for its explanation the
assumption of a supernatural inspiration as one
of the factors in its authorship. But if this is
so, how can we reconcile with such a Divine in-
spiration any theory which makes the last state-
ment of the chapter, that " these are the statutes
which the Lord made ... in mount Sinai by
the hand of Moses," to be untrue, and the pre-
ceding " laws " to be thus, in plain language, a
forgery of exilian or post-exilian times?
The Promised Restoration.
Leviticus xxvi. 40-45.
"And they shall confess their iniquity, and the
iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass which they
trespassed against Me, and also that because they have
walked contrary Unto Me, I also walked contrary unto
them, and brought them into the land of their ene-
mies : if then their uncircumcised heart be humbled,
and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity ;
then will I remember My covenant with Jacob ; and also
My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with
Abraham will 1 remember ; and I will remember the
land. The land also shall be left of them, and .shall enjoy
her sabbaths, while .she lieth desolate without them ; and
they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
because, even because they rejected Mv judgments, and
their soul abhorred My statutes. And yet for all that,
when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not reject
them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly,
and to break My covenant with them : for I am the Lord
their God : but I will for their sakes remember the cove-
nant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the
land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be
their God : I am the Lord."
This closing section of this extraordinary
chapter yet remains to be considered. It is the
most remarkable of all, whether from a historical
or a religious point of view. It declares that
even under so extreme visitations of Divine
wrath, and howsoever long Israel's stubborn re-
bellion and impenitence should continue, yet the
nation should never become extinct and pass
away. Very impressive are the words (vv. 43-
45) which emphasise this prediction: "The land
also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sab-
baths, while she lieth desolate without them;
and they shall accept* of the punishment of their
iiiiquity: because, even because they rejected My
judgments, and their soul abhorred My statutes.
And yet for all that, when thev be in the land
of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither
will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and
to break My covenant with them: for I am the
Lord their God: but I will for their sakes re-
member the covenant of their ancestors, whom
I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the
sight of the nations, that I might be their God:
I am the Lord."
As to what is included in this promise of ever-
lasting covenant mercy, we are told explicitly
(ver. 4o)t that as the final result of these re-
peated and long-continued judgments, the chil-
dren of Israel " shall confess their iniquity, and
the iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass
which they trespassed " against the Lord. Also
they will acknowledge (ver. 41) that all these
calamities have been sent upon them by the
Lord; that it is because they have walked con-
trary unto Him that He has also walked contrary
unto them, and brought them into the land of
their enemies. And then follows the great
promise (vv. 41, 42): "If then their uncircum-
cised heart be humbled, and they then accept of
the punishment of their iniquity; then will I re-
member My covenant with Jacob; and also My
covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with
Abraham will I remember; and I will remember
the land."
These words are very full and explicit. That
they have had already a partial and inadequate
fulfilment in the restoration from Babylon, and
the spiritual quickening by which it was ac-
companied, is not to be denied. But one only
needs to refer to the covenants to which refer- *•
ence is made, and especially the covenant with
Abraham, as recorded in the book of Genesis, $
to see that by no possibility can that Babylonian
restoration be said to have exhausted this proph-
ecy. Since those earlier days Israel has again
forsaken the Lord, and committed the greatest
of all their national sins in the rejection and
crucifixion of the promised Messiah; and there-
fore, again, according to the threat of the earlier
part of this chapter, they have been cast out of
their land and scattered among the nations, and
the land, again, for centuries has been left a
desolation. But for all this, God's covenant with
Israel has not lapsed, nor, as we are here form-
ally assured, can it ever lapse. To imagine, with
some, that because of the new dispensation of
grace to the Gentiles which has come in. there-
fore the promises of this covenant have become
* It is the same Hebrew word which is rendered "en-
joy " when applied to the land and "accept " when applied
to Israel : it might thus be rendered " enjoy " in the latter
case — " they shall enjoy the punishment of their iniquity,"
when the words would express a severe irony, a figure of
which we have examples elsewhere in the Scriptures.
+ The " if " which introduces ver. 40 in the Authorised
version has no equivalent in the Hebrew, and should
therefore be omitted, as in the revision.
t See Gen. xii. 1-3; xiii. 14-17; xv. 5-21; xvii. 2-11; xxii.
372
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
void, is a mistake which is fatal to all right
understanding of the prophetic word. As for
the spiritual blessing of true repentance and a
national turning unto God, Zechariah, after the
Babylonian captivity, represents the prediction
as yet to have a larger and far more blessed ful-
filment, in a day which, beyond all controversy,
has never yet risen on the world. For it is
written (Zech. xii. 8-14; xiii. i): "In that day
... I will pour upon the house of David, and
upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of
grace and of supplication; and they shall look
unto Me whom they have pierced: and they
shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his
only son. and shall be in bitterness for Him, as
one that is in bitterness for his firstborn; ... all
the families that remain, every family apart, and
their wives apart. In that day there shall be a
fountain opened to the house of David and to
the inhabitants .of Jerusalem, for sin and for un-
cleanness." And that this great promise, which
implies by its very terms the previous " pierc-
ing " of the Messiah, is still valid for the nation
in the new dispensation, is expressly testified by
the Apostle Paul, who formally leaches, with
regard to Israel, that " God did not cast off His
people which He foreknew;" that " the gifts and
calling of God are without repentance;" and
that therefore the days are surely coming when
"all Israel shall be saved" (Rom. xi. 2, 29, 26).
And while nothing is said in this chapter of
Leviticus as to the relation of this future repent-
ance of Israel to the establishment of the king-
dom of God, we only speak according to the ex-
press teaching both of the later prophets and of
• the apostles, when we add that we are not to
think of this covenant of God concerning Israel
as of little consequence to our faith and hope
as Christians. For we are plainly taught, with
regard to the present exclusion and impenitence
of Israel (Rom. xi. 15), that " the receiving of
them" again shall be as "life from the dead;"
which, again, is only what long before had been
declared in the Old Testament (Psalm cii. 13-
16) ; that when God shall arise and have mercy
^ upon Zion, and the set time to have pity upon
her shall come, the nations shall fear the name of
the Lord, and all the kings of the earth His
glory.
And while we may grant that the matter is in
itself of less moment, it is yet of importance to
observe that the very covenant which promises
spiritual mercy to the people, as explicitly as-
sures us (ver. 42) that, when Israel confesses its
sin, God " will remember the land " as well as
the people. All that has been said for the pres-
ent and unchangeable validity of the former part
of this promise, is of necessity true for this latter
part also. To affirm the former, and on that
ground maintain the faith and expectation of
the future repentance of Israel, and yet deny the
latter part of this promise, which is no less verb-
ally explicit, regarding the land of Israel, is an
inconsistency of interpretation which is as as-
tonishing as it is common. For the restoration
of the scattered nation to their land is repeatedly
promised, as here, in connection with, and yet
in clear distinction from, their conversion,
by both the pre- and post-exilian prophets. And
if, for reasons not hard to discover, the promise
concerning the land is not in so many words
repeated in the New Testament, its future fulfil-
ment is yet, to say the least, distinctly assumed
in the prediction of Christ (Luke xxi. 24), that
Israel, because of their rejection of Him, should
be " led captive into all the nations, and Jeru-
salem be trodden down of the Gentiles," — not for
ever, but only — " until the times of the Gentiles
be fulfilled." Surely these words of our Lord
imply that, whenever these " times of the Gen-
tiles " shall have run their course, their present
domination over the Holy City and the Holy
Land shall end.
Nor is such a restoration of Israel to their
land, with all that it implies, inconsistent, as
some have urged, with the spirit and principles
of the Gospel. Many a Gentile nation is greatly
favoured of the Lord, and, as one mark of that
favour, is permitted to abide in peace and pros-
perity in their own land. Why shoulu it be any
more alien to the spirit of the Gospel that peni-
tent Israel should be blessed in like manner,
and, upon their turning unto the Lord, also,
like many other nations, be permitted to dwell in
peace and safety in that land which lies almost
empty and desolate for them until this day? And
if it be urged that, admitting this interpretation,
we shall also be obliged to admit that Israel is in
the future to be exalted to a position of pre-
eminence among the nations, which, again, is
inconsistent, it is said, with the principles of the
Gospel dispensation, we must again deny this last
assertion, and for a similar reason. If not in-
consistent with the Gospel that the British na-
tion, for example, should to-day hold a position
of exceptional eminence and world-wide in-
fluence among the nations, how can it be incon-
sistent with the Gospel that Israel, when repent-
ant before God, should be in like manner exalted
of Him to national eminence and glory?
While in itself this question may be of little
consequence, yet in another aspect it is of no
small moment that we steadfastly afifirm the per-
manent validity of this part of the promise of the
covenant v/ith Israel as given in t\\':s chapter.
For it is not too much to say that the logic and
the exegesis which make the promise to have be-
come void with rer^ard to Israel's land, if ac-
cepted, would equally justify one in affirming
the abrogation of the promise of Israel's final
repentance, if the exigencies of any eschatolog-
ical theory should seem to require it. Either
both parts of this promise in ver. 42 are still
valid, or neither is now valid; and if either is
still in force, the other is in force also. These
two, the promise coiicerning the people, and the
' promise concernirijl the land, stand or fall to-
gether.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CONCERNING VOWS.
Leviticus xxvii. 1-34.
As already remarked, the book of Leviticus
certainly seems, at first sight, to be properly
completed with the previous chapter; and hence
it has been not unnaturally suggested that this
chapter has by some editor been transferred,
either of intention or accident, from an earlier
part of the book — as, e. g., after chapter xxy.
The question is one of no importance; but it is
not hard to perceive a good reason for the posi-
tion of this chapter after not only the rest of
the law, but also after the words of promise and
threatening which conclude and seal its prescrip-
Leviticus xxvii. 1-34-]
CONCERNING VOWS.
373
tions. For what has preceded has concerned
duties of religion which were obligatory upon
all Israelites; the regulations of this chapter, on
the contrary, have to do with special vows, which
were obligatory on no one, and concerning which
it is expressly said (Deut. xxiii. 22) : '; If thou
shalt forbear to vow, it shall be no sin m thee.
To these, therefore, the promises and threats of
the covenant could not directly apply, and there-
fore the law which regulates the making and
keeping of vows is not unfitly made to follow,
as an appendix, the other legislation of the book.
Howsoever the making of vows be not obliga-
tory as a necessary part of the religious life, yet,
in all ages and in all religions, a certain instinct
of the heart has often led persons, either in order
to procure something from God, or as a thank-
ofifering for some special favour received, or else
as a spontaneous expression of love to God, to
" make a special vow." But just in proportion
to the sincerity and depth of the devout feeling
which suggests such special acts of worship and
devotion, will be the desire to act in the vow,
as in all else, according to the will of God, so
that the vow may be accepted of Him. What
then may onq properly dedicate to God in a vow?
And, again, if by any stress of circumstances a
man feels compelled to seek release from a vow,
is he at liberty to recall it? and if so, then under
what conditions? Such are the questions which
in this chapter were answered for Israel.
As for the matter of a vow, it is ruled that an
Israelite might thus consecrate unto the Lord
either persons, or of the beasts 01 his possession,
or his dwelling, or the right in any part of his
land On the other hand, " the firstling among
beasts" (vv. 26, 27), any "devoted thing" (vv.
28, 29), and the tithe (vv. 30-33) might not be
made the object oj a special vow, for the simple
reason that on various grounds each of these
belonged unto the Lord as His due already.
Under each of these special heads is given a
schedule of valuation, according to which, if a
man should wish for any reason to redeem again
for his own use that which, either by prior Di-
vine claim or by special vow, had been dedicated
to the Lord, he might be permitted to do so.
Of the Vowing of Persons.
Leviticus xxvii. 1-8.
"And the Lord spake unto :Moses, saying. Speak unto
the children of Israel, and say unto them, When a man
shall accomplish a vow, the persons shall be for the Lord
by thy estimation. And thy estimation shall be of the
male from twenty years old even unto sixty years old,
even thy estimation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after
the shekel of the sanctuary. And if it be a female, then
thy estimation shall be thirtv shekels. And if it be from
five years old even unto twehtv years old, then thy esti-
mation shall be of the male twenty .shekels, and for the
female ten shekels. And if it be from a month old even
unto five years old, then thy estimation shall be of the
male five shekels of silver, and for the female thy estima-
tion shall be three shekels of silver. And if it be from
sixty years old and upwar* ; if it be a male, then thy es-
timation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten
shekels. But if he be poorer than thy estimation, then he
shall be set before the priest, and the priest shall value
him ; according to the ability of him that vowed shall the
priest value him."
First, we have the law (vv. 2-8) concerning
the vowing of persons. In this case it does not
appear that it was intended that the personal vow
should be fulfilled by the actual devotement of
the service of the person to the sanctuary. For
such service abundant provision was made by
the separation of the Levites, and it can hardly
be imagined that under ordinary conditions it
would be possible to find special occupation
about the sanctuary for all who might be
prompted thus to dedicate themselves by a vow
to the Lord. Moreover, apart from tins, we
read here of the vowing to the Lord of young
children, from five years of age down to one
month, from whom tabernacle service is not to
be thought of.
The vow which dedicated the person to the
Lord was therefore usually discharged by the
simple expedient of a commutation price to be
paid into the treasury of the sanctuary, as the
symbolic equivalent of the value of his self-
dedication. The persons thus consecrated are
said to be " for the Lord," and this fact was to
be recognised and their special dedication to
Him discharged by the payment of a certain sum
of money. The amount to be paid in each in-
stance is fixed by the law before us, with an evi-
dent reference to the labour value of the person
thus given to the Lord in the vow, as determined
by two factors— the sex and the age. Inasmuch
as the woman is inferior in strength to the man,
she is rated lower than he is. As affected by age,
persons vowed are distributed into four classes:
the lowest, from one month up to five years; the
second, from five years to twenty; the third, from
twenty to sixty; the fourth, from sixty years of
age and upwards.
The law takes first (vv. 3, 4) the case of per-
sons in the prime of their working powers, from
twenty to sixty years old, for whom the highest
commutation rate is fixed; namely, fifty shekels
for the male and thirty for a female. " after the
shekel of the sanctuary," i. e., of full standard
weight. If younger than this, obviously the
labour value of the person's service would be
less; it is therefore fixed (ver. 5) at twenty
shekels for the male and ten for the female, if
the age be from five to twenty; and if the person
be over sixty, then (ver. 7), as the feebleness of
age is coming on, the rate is fifteen shekels for
the male and ten for the female.* In the case of
a child from one month to five years old, the rate
is fixed (ver. 6) at five, or, in a female, then at
three shekels. In this last case it will be ob-
served that the rate for the male is the same as
that appointed (Numb, xviii. 15, 16) for the re-
demption of the firstborn, " from a month old,"
in all cases. As in that ordinance, so here, the
payment was merely a symbolic recognition of
the special claim of God on the person, without
any reference to a labour value.
But although the sum was so small that even
at the most it could not nearly represent the
actual value of the labour of such as were able
to labour, yet one can see that cases might occur
when a man might be moved to make such a vow
of dedication of himself or of a child to the Lord,
while he was yet too poor to pay even such a
small amount. Hence the kindly provision (ver.
8") that if any person be poorer than this estirna-
tion, he shall not therefore be excluded from the
privilege of self-dedication to the Lord, but " he
♦ These commutation rates are so low that it is plain
that thev could not have represented the actual value of
the individual's labour. The highest sum which is
named— fifty shekels— as the rate for a man from twenty
to sixty years of age, taking the shekel as ^.r. i.i-'^
$0 =;47J. would onlv amount to ^s 14-?- oioT., or $27,375- aveu
from tnis alone it'is clear that, as stated above, the chief
reference in these figures must have been symbolic of a
claim of God upon the person, graded according to his
capacity for service.
374
IHE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
shall be set before the priest, and the priest shall
value him; according to the ability of him that
vowed shall the priest value him."
Of the Vowing of Domestic Animals.
Leviticus xxvii. 9-13.
■' .\nd if it be abeast, whereof men oflferan oblation unto
the Lord, all that any man giveth of such unto the Lord
.shall be holy. He shall not alter it, nor change it, a good
ioi- a bad, or a bad for a good: and if he shall at all change
beast for beast, then both it and that for which it is
changed shall be holy. And if it be any unclean beast, of
which they do not offer an oblation unto the Lord, then
he shall set the beast before the priest : and the priest
shall value it, whether it be good or bad : as thou the
priest valuest it, so shall it be. But if he will indeed re-
deem it. then he shall add the fifth part thereof unto thy
estimation."
This next section concerns the vowing to the
Lord of domestic animals (vv. 9-13). If the ani-
mal thus dedicated to the Lord were such as
could be used in sacrifice, then the animal itself
was taken for the sanctuary service, and the vow
was unalterable and irrevocable. If, however,
the animal vowed was " any unclean beast," then
the priest (ver. 12) was to set a price upon it,
according to its value: for which, we may infer,
it was to be sold and the proceeds devoted to
the sanctuary.
In this case, the person who had vowed the
animal was allowed to redeem it to himself again
(ver. 13) by payment of this estimated price and
one-fifth additional, a provision which was evi-
dently intended to be of the nature of a fine, and
to be a check upon the making of rash vows.
Of the Vowing of Houses and Fields.
Leviticus xxvii. 14-25.
" And when a man shall sanctify his house to be holy
unto the Lord, then the priest shall estimate it, whether it
be good or bad : as the priest shall estimate it, so shall it
stand. And if he that sanctified it will redeem his house,
then he shall add the fifth part of the money of thy estima-
tion unto it, and it shall be his. And if a inan shall sanc-
tify unto the Lord part of the field of his possession, then
thy estimation shall be according to the sowing thereof :
the sowing of a homer of barley shall be valued at fifty
shekels of silver. If he sanctify his field from the year of
jubilee, according to thy estimation it shall stand. But
if he sanctify his field after the jubilee, then the priest
shall reckon' unto him the money according to the years
that remain unto the j'ear of jubilee, and an abatement
shall be made from thy estimation. And if he that sancti-
fied the field will indeed redeem it, then he shall add the
fifth part of the money of thy estimation unto it, and it
shall be assured to him. And if he will not redeem the
field, or if he have sold the field to another man, it shall
not be redeemed any more : but the field, when it goeth
out in the jubilee, shall be holy unto the Lord, as a field
devoted ; the possession thereof shall be the priest's.
And if he sanctify unto the Lord a field which he hath
bought, which is not of the field of his possession ; then
the priest shall reckon unto him the worth of thy estima-
tion unto the year of jubilee : and he shall give thine esti-
mation in that day, as a holy thing unto the Lord. In the
year of jubilee the field shall return unto him of whom it
was bought, even to him to whom the possession of the
land belongeth. And all thy estimations shall be accord-
ing to the shekel of the sanctuary : twenty gerahs shall be
the shekel."
The law regarding the consecration of a man's
house unto the Lord by a vow (vv. 14, 15) is
very simple. The priest is to estimate its value,
without right of appeal. Apparently, the man
might still live in it, if he desired, but only as
one living in a house belonging to another; pre-
sumably, a rental was to be paid, on the basis of
the priest's estimation of value, into the sanc-
tuary treasury. If the man wished again to re-
deem it, then, as in the case of the beast that was
vowed, he must pay into the treasury the esti-
mated value of the house, with the addition of
one-fifth.
In the case of the " sanctifying " or dedication
of a field by a special vow two cases might arise,
which are dealt with in succession. The first
case (vv. 16-21) was the dedication to the Lord
of a field which belonged to the Israelite by
inheritance; the second (vv. 22-24), that of one
which had come to him by purchase. In the
former case, the priest was to fix a price upon
the field on the basis of fifty shekels for so much
land as would be sown with a homer — about eight
bushels — of barley. In case the dedication took
effect from the year of jubilee, this full price was
to be paid into the Lord's treasury for the field;
but if from a later year in the cycle, then the rate
was to be diminished in proportion to the number
of years of the jubilee period which might have
already passed at the date of the vow. Inas-
much as iff the case of a field which had been
purchased, it was ordered that the price of the
estimation should be paid down to the priest " in
that day " (ver. 23) in which the appraisal was
made, it would appear as if, in the present case,
the man was allowed to pay it annually, a shekel
for each year of the jubilee period, or by instal-
ments otherwise, as he might choose, as a peri-
odic recognition of the special claim of the Lord
upon that field, in consequence of his vow. Re-
demption of the field from the obligation of the
vow was permitted under the condition of the
fifth added to the priest's estimation, e. g., on the
payment of sixty instead of fifty shekels (ver.
19).
If, however, without having thus redeemed the
field, the man who vowed should sell it to an-
other man, it is ordered that the field, which
otherwise would revert to him again in full right
of usufruct when the jubilee year came round,
should be forfeited; so that when the jubilee
came the exclusive right of the field would hence-
forth belong to the priest, as in the case of a
field devoted by the ban. The intention of this
regulation is evidently penal; for the field, dur-
ing the time covered by the vow, was in a special
sense the Lord's; and the man had the use of it
for himself only upon condition of a certain
annual payment; to sell it, therefore, during that
time, was, in fact, from the legal point of view,
to sell property, absolute right in which he
had by his vow renounced in lavour of the Lord.
The case of the dedication in a vow of a field
belonging to a man, not as a paternal inherit-
ance, but by purchase (vv. 22-24), only differed
from the former in that, as already remarked,
immediate payment in full ■ of the sum at which
it was estimated was made obligatory; when the
jubilee year came, the field reverted to the orig-
inal owner, according to the law (xxv. 28).
The reason for thus insisting on full immediate
payment, in the case of the dedication of a field
acquired by purchase, is f)lain, when we refer to
the law (xxv. 25), according to which the orig-
inal owner had the right of redemption guaran-
teed to him at any time before the jubilee. If,
in the case of such a dedicated field, any part of
the amount due to the sanctuary were still un-
paid, obviously this, as a lien upon the land,
would stand in the way of such redemption. The
regtilation of immediate payment is therefore in-
tended to protect the original owner's right to
redeem the field.
Leviticus xxvii. 1-34.]
CONCERNING VOWS.
375
Ver. 25 lays down the general principle that in
all these estimations and commutations the
shekel must be " the shekel of the sanctuary,"
twenty gerahs to the shekel; — words which are
not to be understood as pointing to the existence
of two distinct shekels as current, but simply as
meaning that the shekel must be of full weight,
such as only could pass current in transactions
with the sanctuary.
The " Vow " in New Testament Ethics.
Not without importance is the question
whether the vow, as brought before us here, in
the sense of a voluntary promise to God of some-
thing not due to Him by the law, has, of right,
a place in New Testament ethics and practical
life. It is to be observed in approaching this
question, that the Mosaic law here simply deals
with a religious custom which it found prevail-
ing, and while it gives it a certain tacit sanction,
yet neither here or elsewhere ever recommends
the practice; nor does the whole Old Testament
represent God as influenced by such a voluntary
promise, to do something which otherwise He
would not have done. At the same time, inas-
much as the religious impulse which prompts to
the vow, howsoever liable to lead to an abuse of
the practice, may be in itself right, Moses takes
the matter in hand, as in this chapter and else-
where, and deals with it simply in an educational
way. If a man will vow, while it is not forbid-
den, he is elsewhere (Deut. xxiii. 22) reminded
that there is no special merit in it; if he forbear,
he is no worse a man.
Further, the evident purpose of these regula-
tions is to teach that, whereas it must in the
nature of the case be a very serious thing to
enter into a voluntary engagement of anything
to the holy God, it is not to be done hastily and
rajhly; hence a check is put upon such incon-
siderate promising, by the refusal of the law to
release from the voluntary obligation, in some
cases, upon any terms; and by its refusal, in any
case, to release except under the condition of
a very material fine for breach of promise. It
was thus taught clearly that if men made prom-
ises to God, they must keep them. The spirit
of these regulations has been precisely expressed
by the Preacher (Eccl. v. 5, 6): " Better is it that
thou shouldst not vow, than thou shouldst vow
and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy
flesh to sin; neither say thou before the messen-
ger [of God],* that it was an error: wherefore
should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy
the work of thine hands?" Finally, in the care-
ful guarding of the practice by the penalty at-
tached also to change or substitution in a thing
vowed, or to selling that which had been vowed
to God, as if it were one's own; and, last of all,
by insisting that the full-weight shekel of the
sanctuary should be made the standard in all the
appraisals involved in the vow, — the law kept
steadily and uncompromisingly before the con-
science the absolute necessity of being strictly
honest with God.
But in all this there is nothing which neces-
sarily passes over to the new dispensation, ex-
cept the moral principles which are assumed in
these regulations. A hasty promise to God, in
* So certainly should we render instead of "angel." in
accordance with the sugsrestion of the margin (R.V.). The
reference is to the priest, as Mai. ii. 7 makes very clear:
" He [the priest] is the mes.scnger of the Lord."
an inconsiderate spirit, even of that which ought
to be freely promised Him, is sin, as mucn now
as then; and, still more, the breaking of any
promise to Him when once made. So we may
take hence to ourselves the lesson of absolute
honesty in all our dealing with God, — a lesson
not less needed now than then.
Yet this does not touch the central question:
Has the vow, in the sense above defined —
namely, the promise to God of something not
due to Him in the law — a place in New Testa-
rnent ethics? It is true that it is nowhere for-
bidden; but as little is it approved. The refer-
ence of our Lord (Matt. xv. 5, 6) to the abuse of
the vow by the Pharisees to justify neglect of
parental claims does not imply the propriety of
vows at present; for the old dispensation was
then still in force. The vows of Paul (Acts
xviii. 18; xxi. 24-26) apparently refer to the vow
of a Nazarite, and in no case present a binding
example for us, inasmuch as they are but illustra-
tions of his frequent conformity to Jewish usages
in things involving no sin, in which he became
a Jew that he might gain the Jews. On the
other hand, the New Testament conception of
Christian life and duty seems clearly to leave no
room for a voluntary promise to God of what
is not due, seeing that, through the transcendent
obligation of grateful love to the Lord for His
redeeming love, there is no possible degree of
devotement of self or of one's substance which
could be regarded as not already God's due.
" He died for all, that they which live should no
longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who
for their sakes died and rose again." The vow,
in the sense brought before us in this chapter,
is essentially correlated to a legal system such as
the Mosaic, in which dues to God are prescribed
by rule. In New Testament ethics, as distin-
guished from those of the Old, we must therefore
conclude that for the vow there is no logical
place.
The question is not merely speculative and un-
practical. In fact, we here come upon one of the
fundamental points of difference between Romish
and Protestant ethics. For it is the Romish
doctrine that, besides such works as are essential
to a state of salvation, which are by God made
obligatory upon all, there are other works which,
as Rome regards the matter, are not commanded,
but are only made matters of Divine counsel, in
order to the attainment, by means of their ob-
servance, of a higher type of Christian life. Such
works as these, unlike the former class, because
not of universal obligation, may properly be
made the subject of a vow. These are, espe-
cially, the voluntary renunciation of all property,
abstinence from marriage, and the monastic life.
But this distinction of precepts and counsels,
and the theory of vows, and of works of super-
erogation, which Rome has based upon it, all
Protestants have with one consent rejected, and
that with abundant reason. For not only do we
fail to find any justification for these views in
the New Testament, but the history of the
Church has shown, with what should be convinc-
ing clearness, that, howsoever we may gladly
recognise in the monastic communities of Rome,
in all ages, men and women living under special
vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity, whose
purity of life and motive, and sincere devotion to
the Lord, cannot be justly called in question,
it is none the less clear that, on the whole, the
tendency of the system has been toward either
376
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
legalism on the one hand, or a sad licentiousness
of life on the other. In this matter of vows, as
in so many things, it has been the fatal error of
the Roman Church that, under the cover of a
supposed Old Testament warrant, she has re-
turned to " the weak and beggarly elements "
which, according to the New Testament, have
only a temporary use in the earliest childhood of
religious life.
Exclusions from the Vow.
Leviticus xxvii. 26-33.
" Only the firstling among beasts, which is made a first-
ling to the Lord, no man shall sanctify it ; whether it be
ox or sheep, it is the Lord's. And if it be of an unclean
beast, then he shall ransom it according to thine estima-
tion, and shall add unto it the fifth part thereof : or if it be
not redeemed, then it shall be sold according to thy esti-
mation. Notwithstanding, no devoted thing, that a man
shall devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, whether of
man or beast, or of the field of his possession, shall be sold
or redeemed : every devoted thing is most holy unto the
Lord. None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall
be ransomed ; he shall surely be put to death. And all
the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of
the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's : it is holy unto the Lord.
And if a man will redeem aught of his tithe, he shall add
unto it the fifth part thereof. And all the tithe of the herd
or the flock, whatsoever passeth under the rod, the tenth
shall be holy unto the Lord. He shall not search whether
it be good or bad, neither shall he change it : and if he
change it at all, then both it and that for which it is
changed shall be holy ; it shall not be redeemed."
The remaining verses of this chapter specify
three classes of property which could not be
dedicated by a special vow, namely, " the firstling
among beasts" (ver. 26); any "devoted thing
(vv. 28, 29), i. e., anything which had been de-
voted to the Lord by the ban — as, e. g., all the
persons and property in the city of Jericho by
Joshua (vii. 17) ; and, lastly, " the tithe of the
land" (ver. 30). The reason for prohibiting the
vowing of any of these is in every case one and
the same; either by the law or by a previous per-
sonal act they already belonged to the Lord. To
devote them in a vow would therefore be to vow
to the Lord that over which one had no right.
As for the firstborn, the Lord had declared His
everlasting claim on these at the time of the
Exodus (Exod. xiii. 12-15); to vow to give
the Lord His own, had been absurd. To the
law previously given, however, concerning the
firstling of unclean beasts (Exod. xiii. 13), it is
here added that, if a man wish to redeem such a
firstling, the same law shall apply as in the re-
demption of what has been vowed; namely, the
priest was to appraise it, and then the man whose
it had been might redeem it by the payment of
the amount thus fixed, increased by one-fifth.
The Law of the Ban.
Leviticus xxvii. 28, 29.
" Notwithstanding, no devoted thing, that a man shall
devote unto the Lord of all that he hath, whether of man
or beast, or of the field of his possession, shall be sold or
redeemed : every devoted thing is most holy unto the
Lord. None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall
be ransomed ; he shall surely be put to death."
Neither could any " devoted thing " be given
*o the Lord by a vow, and for the same reason —
rhat it belonged to Him already. But it is added
that, unlike that which has been vowed, the
Lord's firstlings and the tithes, that which has
been devoted may neither be sold nor redeemed.
If it be a person which is thus " devoted," " he
shall surely be put to death " (ver. 29). The
reason of this law is found in the nature of the
herem or ban. It devoted to the Lord only such
persons and things as were in a condition of
irreformable hostility and irreconcilable antag-
onism to the kingdom of God. By the ban such
were turned over to God, in order to the total
nullification of their power for evil; by destroy-
ing whatever was capable of destruction, as the
persons and all living things that belonged to
them; and by devoting to the Lord's service in the
sanctuary and priesthood such of their property
as, like silver, gold, and land, was in its nature
incapable of destruction. In such devoted per-
sons or things no man therefore was allowed to
assert any personal claim or interest, such as the
right of sale or of redemption would imply.
Elsewhere the Israelite is forbidden even to de-
sire the silver or gold that was on the idols in
devoted cities (Deut. vii. 25), or to bring it into
his house or tent, on penalty of being himself
banned or devoted like them; a threat which was
carried out in the case of Achan (Josh, vii.), who,
for appropriating a wedge of gold and a garment
which had been devoted, accoramg to the law
here and elsewhere declared, was summarily put
to death.
This is not the place to enter fully into a dis-
cussion of the very grave questions which arise
in connection with this law of the ban, in which
it is ordered that " none devoted," " whether of
man or beast," " shall be ransomed," but " shall
be surely put to death." The most familiar in-
stance of its application is furnished by the case
of the Canaanitish cities, which Joshua, in ac-
cordance with this law of Lev. xxvii. 28, 29, ut-
terly destroyed, with their inhabitants and every
living thing that was in them. There are many
sincere believers in Christ who find it almost im-
possible to believe that it can be true that God
commanded such a slaughter as this; and the
difficulty well deserves a brief consideration. It
may not indeed be possible wholly to remove it
from every mind; but one may well call attention,
in connection with these verses, to certain con-
siderations which should at least suffice very
greatly to relieve its stress.
In the first place, it is imperative to remember
that, if we accept the teaching of Scripture, we
have before us in this history, not the govern-
ment of man, but the government of God, a true
theocracy. Now it is obvious that if even falli-
ble men may be rightly granted power to con-
demn men to death, for the sake of the public
good, much more must this right be conceded,
and that without any limitation, to the infinitely
righteous and infallible King of kings, if, in
accord with the Scripture declarations. He was,
literally and really, the political Head (if we may
be allowed the expression) of the Israelitish na-
tion. Further, if this absolute right of God in
matters of life and death be admitted, as it must
be, it is plain that He may rightly delegate the
execution of His decrees to human agents. If
this right is granted to one of our fellow-men,
as to a king or a magistrate, much more to God.
Granting that the theocratic government of
Israel was a historical fact, the only question
then remaining as to the right of the ban. con-
cerns the justice of its application in particular
cases. With regard to this, we may concede that
it was quite possible that men might sometimes
apply this law without Divine authority; but we
are not required to defend such cases, if any be
Leviticus xxvii. 1-34.]
CONCERNING VOWS.
377
shown, any more than to excuse the infliction of
capital punishment in America sometimes by
lynch law. These cases furnish no argument
against its infliction after due legal process, and
by legitimate governmental authority. As to
the terrible execution of this law of the ban, in
the uestruction of the inhabitants of the Canaan-
itish cities, if the fact of the theocratic authority
be granted, it is not so difficult to justify this as
some have imagined. Nor, conversely, when the
actual facts are thoroughly known, can the truth
of the statement of the Scripture that God com-
manded this terrible destruction, be regarded as
irreconcilable with those moral perfections which
Scripture and reason alike attribute to the Su-
preme Being.
The researches and discoveries of recent years
have let in a flood of light upon the state of
society prevailing among those Canaanitish
tribes at the date of their destruction; and they
warrant us in saying that in the whole history
of our race it would be hard to point to any
civilised community which has sunken to such a
depth of wickedness and moral pollution. As
we have already seen, the book of Leviticus
gives many dark hints of unnamable horrors
among the Canaanitish races: the fearful cruelties
of the worship of Molech, and the unmentionable
impurities of the cult of Ashtoreth; the prohibi-
tion among some of these of female chastity, re-
quiring that all be morally sacrificed* — one can-
not go into these things. And when now we
read in Holy Scripture that the infinitely pure,
holy, and righteous God commanded that these
utterly depraved and abandoned communities
should be extirpated from the face of the earth,
is it, after all, so hard to believe that this should
be true? Nay, may we not rather with abundant
reason say that it would have been far more diffi-
cult to reconcile with the character of God if He
had suffered them any longer to exist?
Nor have we yet fully stated the case. For we
must, in addition, recall the fact that these cor-
rupt communities, which by this law of the ban
were devoted to utter destruction, were in no
out-of-the-way corner of the world, but on one
of its chief highways. The Phoenicians, for in-
stance, more than any people of that time, were
the navigators and travellers of the age; so that
from Canaan as a center this horrible moral pes-
tilence was inevitably carried by them hither and
thither, a worse than the " black death," to the
very extremities of the known world. Have we
then so certainly good reason to call in question
the righteousness of the law which here ordains
that no person thus devoted should be ransomed,
but be surely put to death? Rather are we in-
clined to see in this law of the theocratic king-
dom, and its execution in Canaan — so often held
up as an illustration of the awful cruelty of the
old theocratic regime — not only a conspicuous
vinuication of the righteousness and justice of
God, but a no less illustrious manifestation of
His mercy; — of His mercy, not merely to Israel,
but to the whole human race of that age, who
because of this deadly infection of moral evil had
otherwise again everywhere sunk to such un-
imaginable depths of depravity as to have re-
quired a second flood for the cleansing of the
world. This certainly was the way in which
the Psalmist regarded it, when (Psalm cxxxvi.
17-22) he praised Jehovah as One who " smote
• On this subject, among other authorities, see Ebrard,
" Apologetik," 2 Th»il, pp. 167-90, especi.il'v p. 17^
great kings, and slew famous kings, and gave
their land for an heritage, even an heritage unto
Israel His servant: for nis mercy endureth for
ever;" a thought which is again more formally
expressed (Psalm Ixii. 12) in the words: "Unto
Thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for Thou ren-
derest to every man according to his work."
Nor can we leave this law of the ban without
noting the very solemn suggestion which it con-
tains that there may be in the universe persons
who, despite the great redemption, are morally
irredeemable, hopelessly obdurate; for whom,
under the government of a God infinitely right-
eous and merciful, nothing remains but the ex-
ecution of the ban — the " eternal fire which is
prepared for the devil and his angels " (Matt.
XXV. 41); "a fierceness of fire which shall de-
vour the adversaries" (Heb. x. 27). And this,
not merely although, but because God's " mercy
endureth for ever."
The Law of the Tithe.
Leviticus xxvi. 30-33.
" And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the
land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's : it is holy
unto the Lord. And if a man will redeem aught of his
tithe, he shall add unto it the fifth part thereof. And all
the tithe of the herd or the flock, whatsoever passeth under
the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord. He shall
not search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he
change it : and if he change it at all, then both it and that
for which it is changed shall be holy ; it shall not be re-
deemed."
Last of all these exclusions from the vow is
mentioned the tithe. " Whether of the seed of
the land, or of the herd, or of the flock," it is
declared to be " holy unto the Lord;" " it is the
Lord's." That because of this it cannot be given
to the Lord by a special vow, although not form-
ally stated, is self-evident. No man can give
away what belongs to another, or give God what
He has already. In Numb, xviii. 21 it is said
that this tenth should be given " unto the chil-
dren of Levi . . . for the service of the tent of
meeting."
Most extraordinary is the contention of Well-
hausen and others, that since in Deuteronomy no
tithe is mentioned other than of the product of
the land, therefore, because of the mention here
also of a tithe of the herd and the flock, we must
infer that we have here a late interpolation into
the " priest-code," marking a time when now
the exactions of the priestly caste had been ex-
tended to the utmost limit. This is not the place
to go into the question of the relation of the
law of Deuteronomy to that which we have here;
but we should rather, with Dillmann,* from the
same premisses argue the exact opposite, namely,
that we have here the very earliest form of the
tithe law. For that an ordinance so extending
the rights of the priestly class should have been
" smuggled " into the Sinaitic laws after the days
of Nehemiah, as Wellhausen. Reuss, and Kuenen
suppose, is simply "unthinkable;"! while, on the
other hand, when we find already in Gen. xxviii.
22 Jacob promising unto the Lord the tenth of
all that He should give him, at a time when he
was living the life of a nomad herdsman, it is
inconceivable that he should have meant " all,
excepting the increase of the flocks and herds,"
which were his chief possession.
* See "Die Rticher Exodus und Leviticus," pp. 635-618.
+ See " Undenkbar ; " so Dillmann. ot>. c;'/"., p- 6?.i.
378
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS.
The truth is that the dedication of a tithe, in
various forms, as an acknowledgment of depend-
ence upon and reverence to God, is one of the
most widely-spread and best-attested practices of
the most remote antiquity. We read of it among
the Romans, the Greeks, the ancient Pelasgians,
the Carthaginians, and the Phoenicians; and in
the Pentateuch, in full accord with all this, we
find not only Jacob, as in the passage cited, but,
at a yet earlier time, Abraham, more than four
hundred years before Moses, giving tithes to
Melchizedek. The law, in the exact form in
which we have it here, is therefore in perfect har-
mony with all that we know of the customs both
of the Hebrews and surrounding peoples, from a
time even much earlier than that of the Exodus.
Very naturally the reference to the tithe, as
thus from of old belonging to the Lord, and
therefore incapable of being vowed, gives oc-
casion to other regulations respecting it. Like
unclean animals, houses, and lands which had
been vowed, so also the tithe, or any part of it,
might be redeemed by the individual for his own
use, upon payment of the usual mulct of one-
fifth additional to its assessed value. So also
it is further ordered, with special regard to the
tithe of the herd and the flock, •' that whatso-
ever passeth under the rod," i. e., whatever is
counted, as the manner was, by being made to
pass into or out of the fold under the herds-
man's staff, " the tenth "—that is, every tenth
animal as in its turn it comes — " shall be holy
to the Lord." The owner was not to search
whether the animal thus selected was good or
bad, nor change it, so as to give the Lord a
poorer animal, and keep a better one for himself;
and if he broke this law, then, as in the case of
the unclean beast vowed, as the penalty he was
to forfeit to the sanctuary both the original and
its attempted substitute, and also lose the right of
redemption.
A very practical question emerges just here, as
to the continued obligation of this law of the
tithe. Although we hear nothing of the tithe
in the first Christian centuries, it began to be
advocated in the fourth century by Jerome, Au-
gustine, and others, and, as is well known, the
system of ecclesiastical tithing soon became es-
tablished as the law of the Church. Although
the system by no means disappeared with the
Reformation, but passed from the Roman into
the Reformed Churches, yet the modern spirit
has become more and more adverse to the
medijeval system, till, with the progressive hos-
tility in society to all connection of the Church
and the State, and in the Church the develop-
ment of a sometimes exaggerated voluntaryism,
tithing as a system seems likely to disappear
altogether, as it has already from the most of
Christendom.
But in consequence of this, and the total sever-
ance of the Church from the State, in the United
States and the Dominion of Canada, the necessity
of securing adequate provision for the mainten-
ance and extension of the Church, is more and
more directing the attention of those concerned
in the practical economics of the Church, to this
venerable institution of the tithe as the solution
of many difficulties. Among such there are
many who, while quite opposed to any enforce-
ment of a law of tithing for the benefit of the
Church by the civil power, nevertheless earnestly
maintain that the law of the tithe, as we have it
here, is of permanent obligation and binding on
the conscience of every Christian. What is the
truth in the matter.'' In particular, what is the
teaching of the New Testament?
In attempting to settle for ourselves this ques-
tion, it is to be observed, in order to clear
thinking on this subject, that in tne law of the
tithe as here declared there are two elements — the
one moral, the other legal, — which should be
carefully distinguished. First and fundamental
is the principle that it is our duty to set apart to
God a certain fixed proportion of our income.
The other and — technically speaking — positive
element in the law is that which declares that the
proportion to be given to the Lord is precisely
one-tenth. Now, of these two, the first principle-
is distinctly recognised and reaffirmed in the
New Testament as of continued validity in this
dispensation; while, on the other hand, as to the
precise proportion of our income to be thus set
apart for the Lord, the New Testament writers
are everywhere silent.
As regards the first principle, the Apostle
Paul, writing to the Corinthians, orders that " on
the first day of the week " — the day of the primi-
tive Christian worship — " every one " shall '' lay
by him in store, as God hath prospered him."
He adds that he had given the same command
also to the Churches of Galatia (i Cor. xvi. i,
2). This most clearly gives apostolic sanction to
the fundamental principle of the tithe, namely,
that a definite portion of our income should be
set apart for God. While, on the other hand,
neither in this connection, where a mention of the
law of the tithe might naturally have been ex-
pected, if it had been still binding as to the
letter, nor in any other place does either the
Apostle Paul or any other New Testament writer
intimate that the Levitical law, requiring the pre-
cise proportion of a tenth, was still in force; — a
fact which is the more noteworthy that so much
is said of the duty of Christian benevolence.
To this general statement with regard to the
testimony of the New Testament on this subject,
the words of our Lord to the Pharisees (Matt,
xxiii. 23), regarding their tithing of " mint and
anise and cummin " — " these ye ought to have
done " — can.-ot be taken as an exception, or as
proving that the law is binding for this dispensa-
tion; for the simple reason that the present dis-
pensation had not at that time yet begun, and
those to whom He spoke were still under the
Levitical law, the authority of which He there
reaffirms. From these facts we conclude that the
law of these verses, in so far as it requires the
setting apart to God of a certain defiyite propor-
tion of our income, is doubtless of continued and
lasting obligation; but that, in so far as it requires
from all alike the exact proportion of one-tenth,
it is binding on the conscience no longer.
Nor is it difficult to see why the New Testa-
ment should not lay down this or any other pre-
cise proportion of giving to income, as a universal
law. It is only according to the characteristic
usage of the New Testament law to leave to the
individual conscience very much regarding the
details of worship and conduct, which under the
Levitical law was regulated by specific rules;
which the Apostle Paul explains (Gal. iv. 1-5)
by reference to the fact that t!ie earlier method
was intended for and adapted to a lower and
more immature stage of religious development:
even as a child, during his minority, is kept
under guardians and stewards, from whose au-
thority, when he comes of age, he is free.
Leviticus xxvii. 1-34.]
CONCERNING VOWS.
379
But, still further, it seems to be often forgotten
by those who argue for the present and perma-
nent obligation of this law, that it was here for
the first time formally appointed by God as a
binding law, in connection with a certain divinely
instituted system of theocratic government,
which, if carried out, would, as we have seen,
effectively prevent excessive accumulations of
wealth in the hands of individuals, and thus se-
cure for the Israelites, in a degree the world has
never seen, an equal distribution of property.
In such a system it is evident that it would be
possible to exact a certain fixed and definite pro-
portion of income for sacred purposes, with the
certainty that the requirement would work with
perfect justice and fairness to all. But with us,
social and economic conditions are so very
different, wealth is so very unequally distributed,
that no such law as that of the tithe could be
made to work otherwise than unequally and un-
fairly. To the very poor it must often be a heavy
burden; to the very rich, a proportion, so small
as to be a practical exemption. While, for the
former, the law, if insisted on, would sometimes
require a poor man to take bread out of the
mouth of wife and children, it would still leave
the millionaire with thousands to spend on need-
less luxuries. The latter might often more easily
give nine-tenths of his income than the former
could give one-twentieth.
It is thus no surprising thing that the inspired
men who laid the foundations of the New Testa-
ment Church did not reaffirm the law of the tithe
as to the letter. And yet, on the other hand, let
us not forget that the law of the tithe, as regards
the moral element 01 the law, is still in force. It
forbids the Christian to leave, as so often, the
amount he will give for the Lord's work, to im-
pulse and caprice. Statedly and conscientiously
he is to " lay by him in store as the Lord hath
prospered him." If any ask how much should
the proportion be, one might say that by fair in-
ference the tenth might safely be taken as an
average minimum of giving, countmg rich and
poor together. But the New Testament (2 Cor.
viii. 7, 9) answers after a different and most
characteristic manner: " See that ye abound in
this grace. . . . For ye know the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich,
yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye
through His poverty might become rich." Let
there be but regular and systematic giving to the
Lord's work, under the law of a fixed proportion
of gifts to income, and under the holy inspira-
tion of this sacred remembrance of the grace
of our Lord, and then the Lord's treasury will
never be empty, nor the Lord be robbed of His
tithe.
And so hereupon the book of Leviticus closes
with the formal declaration — referring, no doubt,
strictly speaking, to the regulations of this last
chapter — that " these are the commandments,
which the Lord commanded Moses for the chil-
dren of Israel in mount Sinai." The words as
explicitly assert Mosaic origin and authority for
these last laws of the book, as the opening words
asserted the same for the law of the offerings
with which it begins. The significance of these
repeated declarations respecting the origin and
authority of the laws contained in this book has
been repeatedly pointed out, and nothing further
need be added here.
To sum up all: — what the Lord, in this book of
Leviticus, has said, was not for Israel alone.
The supreme lesson of this law is for men now,
for the Church of the New Testament as well.
For the individual and for the nation, holiness,
consisting in full consecration of body and soul
to the Lord, and separation from all that defileth,
is the Divine ideal, to the attainment of which
Jew and Gentile alike are called. And the only
ivay of its attainment is through the atoning
Sacrifice, and the mediation of the High Priest
appointed of God; and the only evidence of its
attainment is a joyful obedience, hearty and un-
reserved, to all the commandments of God. For
us all it stands written: " Ye shall be holy; for
I, Jehovah, your God, am holy."
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
a6-Voi.L
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Chapter I. Chapter XIV.
Introductory, 385 Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,
Chapter II. Chapter XV.
The Census and the Camp, . . . .389 Tithes and Cleansings, . . . ,
Chapter III. Chapter XVI.
Priests and Levites, 392 Sorrow and Failure at Kadesh,
Chapter IV. Chapter XVII.
Defilement and Purgation, .... 396 The Last March and the First Campaign,
Chapter V. Chapter XVIII.
Nazaritism : The Blessing of Aaron, . . 399 Balaam Invoked, . . . . .
ClliTTER VI. ChAI'IKK XIX.
Sanctuary and Passover, 403 Balaam on the Way, , , . .
Chapter VII. Chapter XX.
The Cloud and the March, . . . .407 Balaam's Parables
Chapter VIII. Chapter XXI.
Hobab the Kenite, / . 411 The Matter of Baal-Peor,
Chapter IX. Chapter XXII.
The Strain of the Desert Journey, . . . 414 A New Generation, . . . .
Chapter X, Chapter XXIII.
The Jealousy of Miriam and Aaron, . . . 418 Offerings and Vows, . . . .
Chapter XI. Chapter XXIV.
The Spies and Their Report, . . . .422 War and Settlement, . . . .
Chapter XII. Chapter XXV.
The Doom of the Unbelieving, . . . 426 The Way and the Lot
Chapter XIII. Chapter XXVI.
Offerings : Sabbath-Keeping : Dress, . . 429 The Cities of Refuge,
i^AGE
433
43V
440
445
449
. 453
457
461
. 465
470
475
. 48c
• e
483
381
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
BY THE REV. ROBERT A. WATSON, M. A., D. D.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
To summon from the past and reproduce with
any detail the story of Israel's life in the desert
is now impossible. The outlines alone remain,
severe, careless of almost everything that does
not bear on religion. Neither from Exodus nor
from Numbers can we gather those touches that
would enable us to reconstruct the incidents of a
single day as it passed in the camp or on the
march. The tribes move from one " wilderness "
to another. The hardship of the time of wander-
ing appears unrelieved, for throughout the his-
tory the doings of God, not the achievements or
sufferings of the people, are the great theme.
The patriotism of the Book of Numbers is of
a kind that reminds us continually of the proph-
ecies. Resentment against the distrustful and
rebellious, like that which Amos, Hosea, and
Jeremiah express, is felt in almost every portion
of the narrative. At the same time the difference
between Numbers and the books of the prophets
is wide and striking. Here the style is simple,
often stern, with little emotion, scarcely any
rhetoric. The legislative purpose reacts on the
historical, and makes the spirit of the book
severe. Seldom does the writer allow himself
respite from the grave task of presenting Israel's
duties and delinquencies, and exalting the maj-
esty of God. We are made continually to feel
the burden with which the affairs of the people
are charged; and yet the book is no poem: to
excite sympathy or lead up to a great climax
does not come within the design.
Nevertheless, so far as a book of incident and
statute can resemble poetry, there is a parallel
between Numbers and a form of literature pro-
duced under other skies, other conditions — the
Greek drama. The same is true of Exodus and
Deuteronomy; but Numbers will be found es-
pecially to bear out the comparison. The like-
ness may be traced in the presentation of a main
idea, the relation of various groups of persons
carrying out or opposing that main idea, and the
Puritanism of form and situation. The Book of
Numbers may be called eternal literature more
fitly than the Iliad and Mneid have been called
eternal poems; and the keen ethical strain and
high religious thought make the movement tragi-
cal throughout. Moses the leader is seen with
his helpers and opponents, Aaron and Miriam,
Joshua and Hobab, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,
Balak and Balaam. He is brought into ex-
tremity; he despairs and appeals passionately to
Heaven; in an hour of pride he falls into sin
which brings doom upon him. The people, mur-
muring, craving, suffering, are always a vague
multitude. The tent, the cloud, the incense, the
wars, the strain of the wilderness journey, the
hope of the land beyond — all have a dim solem-
nity. The occupying thought is of Jehovah's pur-
pose and the revelation of His character. Moses
is the prophet of this Divine mystery, stands for
it almost alone, urges it upon Israel, is the means
of impressing it by judgments and victories, by
priestly law and ceremony, by the very example
of his own failure in sudden trial. With a graver
and bolder purpose than any embodied in the
dramatic masterpieces of Greece, the story of
Numbers finds its place not in literature only,
but in the development of universal religion, and
breathes that Divine inspiration which belongs
to the Hebrew and to him alone among those
who speak of God and man.
The Divine discipline of human life is an ele-
ment of the theme, but in contrast to the Greek
dramas the books of the exodus are not indi-
vidualistic. Moses is great, but he is so as the
teacher of religion, the servant of Jehovah, the
lawgiver of Israel. Jehovah, His religion. His
law, are above Moses. The personality of the
leader stands clear; yet he is not the hero of the
Book of Numbers. The purpose of the history
leaves him, when he has done his work, to die
on Mount Abarim, and presses on, that Jehovah
may be seen as a man of war, that Israel may be
brought to its inheritance and begin its new
career. The voice of men in the Greek tragedy
is, as Mr. Ruskin says, " We trusted in the gods;
we thought that wisdom and courage would save
us. Our wisdom and courage deceive us to our
death." When Moses despairs, that is not his
cry. There is no Fate stronger than God; and
He looks far into the future in the discipline He
appoints to men, to His people Israel. The re-
mote, the unfulfilled, gleams along the desert.
There is a light from the pillar of fire even when
the pestilence is abroad, and the graves of the
lustful are dug, and the camp is dissolved in tears
because Aaron is dead, because Moses has
climbed the last mountain and shall never again
be seen.
In respect of content, one point shows like-
ness between the Greek drama and our book — the
vague conception of death. It is not an extinc-
tion of life, but the human being goes on into an
existence of which there is no definite idea.
What remains has no reckoning, no object. The
recoil of the Hebrew is not indeed piteous, and
fraught with horror, like that of the Greek, al-
though death is the last punishment of men who
transgress. For Aaron and Moses, and all who
have served their generation, it is a high and
venerated Power that claims them when the hour
of departure comes. The God they have obeyed
in life calls them, and they are gathered to their
people. No note of despair is heard like that in
the Iphigenia' in Aulis, —
" He raves who prays
To die. 'Tis better to live on in woe
Than to die nobly."
Dying as well as living men are with God; and
this God is the Lord of all. Immense is the
difference between the Greek who trusts or
dreads many powers above, beneath, and the
Hebrew realising himself, however dimly, as the
servant of Jehovah the holy, the eternal. This
great idea, seized by Moses, introduced by him
into the faith of his people, remained it may
be indefinite, yet always present to the thought
of Israel with many implications till the time of
385
t86
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
full revelation came with Christ, and He said:
■'Now that the dead are raised, even Moses
showed, in the bush, when he called the Lord the
God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob. For He is not the God of the
dead, but of the living." The wide interval be-
tween a people whose religion contained this
thought, in whose history it is interwoven, and
a people whose religion was polytheistic and
natural is seen in the whole strain of their litera-
ture and life. Even Plato the luminous finds it
impossible to overpass the shadows of pagan in-
terpretations. " In regard to the facts of a
future life, a man," said Phaedo, " must either
learn or find out their nature; or, if he cannot do
this, take at any rate the best and least assailable
of human words, and, borne on this as on a raft,
perform in peril the voyage of life, unless he
should be able to accomplish the journey with
less risk and danger on a surer vessel — some
word Divine." Now Israel had a Divine word;
and life was not perilous.
The problem which appears again and again in
Moses' relation with the people is that of the
theocratic idea as against the grasping at im-
mediate success. At various points, from the
start in Egypt onwards, the opportunity of as-
suming a regal position comes to Moses. He is
virtually dictator, and he might be king. But
a rare singleness of mind keeps him true to Je-
hovah's lordship, which he endeavours to stamp
on the conscience of the people and the course
of their development. He has often to do so at
the greatest risk to himself. He holds back the
people in what seems the hour of advance, and
it is the will of Jehovah by which they are de-
tained. The Unseen King is their Helper and
equally their Rhadamanthine Judge; and on
Moses falls the burden of forcing that fact upon
their minds.
Israel could never, according to Moses' idea,
become a great people in the sense in which the
nations of the world were great. Amongst them
greatness was sought in despite of morality, in
defiance of all that Jehovah commanded. Israel
might never be great in wealth, territory, in-
fluence, but she was to be true. She existed for
Jehovah, while the gods of other nations existed
for them, had no part to play without them.
Jehovah was not to be overborne either by the
will or the needs of His people. He was the
self-existent Lord. The Name did not represent
a supernatural assistance which could be secured
on terms, or by any authorised person. Moses
himself, though he entreated Jehovah, did not
change Him. His own desire was sometimes
thwarted: and he had often to give the oracle
with sorrow and disappointment.
Moses is not the priest of the people: the
priesthood comes in as a ministering body, neces-
sary for religious ends and ideas, but never
governing, never even interpreting. It is singu-
lar from this point of view that the so-called
Priests' Code should be attributed confidently
to a caste ambitious of ruling or practically en-
throned. Wellhausen ridicules the " fine " dis-
tinction between hierocracy and theocracy. He
affirms that government of God is the same thing
as rule of priest: and he may afifirm this because
he thinks so. The Book of Numbers, as it
stands, mijrht have been written to prove that
they are not equivalent: and Wellhausen himself
shows that they are not by more than one of his
conclusions. The theocracy, he says, is in its
nature intimately allied to the Roman Catholic
Church, which is, in fact, its child; and on the
whole he prefers to speak of the Jewish Church
rather than the theocracy. But if any modern
religious body is to be named as a child of the
Hebrew theocracy, it must not be one in which
the priest intervenes continually between faith
and God. Wellhausen says again that " the
sacred constitution of Judaism was an artificial
product " as contrasted with the broadly human
indigenous element, the real idea of man's rela-
tion to God; and when a priesthood, as in later
Judaism, becomes the governing body, God is,
so far, dethroned. Now Moses did not give to
Aaron greater power than he himself possessed,
and his own power is constantly represented,
as exercised in submission to Jehovah. A theoc-
racy might be established without a priesthood;
in fact, the mediation of the prophet approaches
the ideal far more than that of the priest. But
in the beginnings of Israel the priesthood was
required, received a subordinate place of its own,
to which it was throughout rigidly confined. As
for priestly government, that, we may say, has no
support anywhere in the Pentateuch.
The Book of Numbers, called also " In the
wilderness," opens with the second month of the
second year after the exodus, and goes on to the
arrival of the tribes in the plains of Moab by the
Jordan. As a whole it ma\ be said to carry out
the historical and religious ideas of Exodus and
Leviticus: and both the history and the legisla-
tion flow into three main channels. They go to
establish the separateness of Israel as a people,
the separateness of the tribe of Levi and the
priesthood, andvthe separateness and authority
of Jehovah. The first of these objects is served
by the accounts of the census, of the redemption
of the first-born, the laws of national atonement
and distinctive dress, and generally the Divine
discipline of Israel recorded in the course of the
book. The second line of purpose may be traced
in the careful enumeration of the Levites; the
minute allocation of duties connected with the
tabernacle to the Gershonites, the Kohathites,
and the Merarites; the special consecration of the
Aaronic priesthood; the elaboration of ceremon-
ials requiring priestly service; and various strik-
ing incidents, such as the judgment of Korah
and his company, and the budding of Aaron's
almond twig. Lastly, the institution of some
cleansing rites, the sin offering of chap. xix. for
example, the details of punishment that fell upon
offenders against the law, the precautions en-
joined with regard to the ark and the sanctmry,
together with the multiplication of sacrifices,
went to emphasise the sanctity of worship and
the holiness of the unseen King. The book is
sacerdotal; it is marked even more by a physical
and moral Puritanism, exceedingly stringent at
many points.
The whole system of religious observance and
priestly ministration set forth in the Mosaic
books may seem difficult to account for, not in-
deed as a national development, but as a moral
and religious gain. We are ready to ask how
God could in any sense have been the author of
a code of laws imposing so many intricate cere-
monies, which required a whole tribe of Levites
and priests to perform them. Where was the
spiritual use that justified the system, as neces-
sary, as wise, as Divine? Inquiries like these
INTRODUCTORY.
387
will arise in the minds of believing men, and
sufficient answer must be sought for.
In the following way the religious worth and
tiierefore the inspiration of the ceremonial law
may be found. The primitive notion that Jeho-
vah was the exclusive property of Israel, the
pledged patron of the nation, tended to mipair
the sense of His moral purity. An ignorant
people inclined to many forms of immorality
could not have a right conception of the Divine
holiness; and the more it was accepted as a
commonplace of faith that Jehovah knew them
alone of all the families of the earth, the more
was right belief towards Him imperilled. A
psalmist who in the name of God reproves " the
wicked " indicates the danger: " Thou thoughtest
that I was altogether such an one as thyself."
Now the priesthood, the sacrifices, all provisions
for maintaining the sanctity of the ark and the
altar, and all rules of ceremonial cleansing, were
means of preventing that fatal error. The Is-
raelites began without the solemn temples and
impressive mysteries that made the religion of
Egypt venerable. In the desert and in Canaan,
till the time of Solomon, the rude arrangements
of semi-civilised life kept religion at an everyday
level. The domestic makeshifts and confusion
of the early period, the frequent alarms and
changes which for centuries the nation had to
endure, must have made culture of any kind, even
religious culture, almost impossible to the mass
of the people. The law in its very complexity
and stringency provided a needful safeguard and
means of education. Moses had been acquamted
with a great sacerdotal system. Not only would
it appear to him natural to originate something
of a like kind,, but he would see no other means
of creating in rude times the idea of the Divine
holiness. For himself he found inspiration and
prophetic power in laying the foundation of the
system; and once initiated, its development nec-
essarily followed. With the progress of civilisa-
tion, the law had to keep pace, meeting the new
circumstances and needs of each succeeding
period. Certainly the genius of the Pentateuch,
and in particular of the Book of Numbers, is not
liberating. The tone is that of theocratic rigour.
But the reason is quite clear; the development of
the law was determined by the necessities and
dangers of Israel in the exodus, in the wilderness,
nnd in idolatrous, seductive Canaan.
Opening with an account of the census, the
Book of Numbers evidently stood, from the first,
quite distinct from the previous books as a com-
position or compilation. The mustering of the
tribes gave an opportunity of passing from one
group of documents to another, from one stage
'if the history to another. But the memoranda
brought together in Numbers are of various
character. Administrative, legislative, and his-
torical sources are laid under contribution. The
records have been arranged as far as possible
in chronological order; and there are traces, as
for instance in the second account of the strik-
ing of the rock by Moses, of a careful gathering
up of materials not previously used, at least in
the precise form they now have. The com-
pilers collected and transcribed with the most
reverent care, and did not venture in any case
to reject. The historical notices are for some
reason anything but consecutive, and the greater
part of the time covered by the book is virtually
passed over. On the other hand some passages
repeat details in a way that has no parallel in the
rest of the Mosaic books. The efifect generally
is that of a compilation made under ditticulties
by a scribe or scribes who were scrupulous to
preserve everything relating to the great law-
giver and the dealings of God with Israel.
Recent criticism is positive in its assertion that
the book contains several strata of narrative;
and there are certain passages, the accounts of
Korah's revolt and of Dathan and Abiram, for
instance, where without such a clew the history
must seem not a little confused. In a sense this
is disconcerting. The ordinary reader finds it
difficult to understand why an inspired book
should appear at any point incomplete or inco-
herent. The hostile critic again is ready to deny
the credibility of the whole. But the honesty of
the writing is proved by the very characteristics
that make some statements hard to interpret and
some of the records difficult to receive. The
theory that a journal of the wanderings was kept
by Moses or under his direction is quite unten-
able. Dismissing that, we fall back on the be-
lief that contemporary records of some incidents,
and traditions early committed to writing, formed
the basis of the book. The documents were un-
doubtedly ancient at the time of their final re-
cension, whensoever and by whomsoever it was
made.
By far the greater part of Numbers refers to
the second year after the exodus from Egypt,
and to what took place in the fortieth year, after
the departure from Kadesh. Regarding the in-
termediate time we are told little but that the
camp was shifted from one place to another in
the wilderness. Why the missing details have
not survived in any form cannot now be made
out. It is no sufficient explanation to say that
those events alone are preserved which struck
the popular imagination. On the other hand,
to ascribe what we have to unscrupulous or pious
fabrication is at once unpardonable and absurd.
Some may be inclined to think that the book
consists entirely of accidental scraps of tradition,
and that inspiration would have come better to
its end if the religious leelings of the people had
received more attention, and we had been shown
the gradual rise of Israel out of ignorance and
semi-barbarism. Yet even for the modern his-
torical sense the book has its own claim, by no
means slight, to high estimation and close study.
These are venerable records, reaching back to the
time they profess to describe, and presenting,
though with some traditional haze, the impor-
tant incidents of the desert journey.
Turning from the history to the legislation,
we have to inquire whether the laws regarding
priests and Levites, sacrifices and cleansings^
bear uniformly the colour of the wilderness. The
origins are certainly of the Mosaic time, and
some of the statutes elaborated here must be
founded on customs and beliefs older even than
the exodus. Yet in form many enactments are
apparently later than the time of Moses; and it
does not seem well to maintain that laws requir-
ing what was next to impossible in the wilder-
ness were, during the journey, given and en-
forced as they now stand by a wise legislator.
Did Moses require, for instance, that five shekels,
" of the shekel of the sanctuary," should be paid
for the ransom of the first-born son of a house-
hold, at a time when many families must have
had no silver and no means of obtaining it?
Does not this statute, like another which is
spoken of as deferred till the settlement in Ca-
388
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
naan, imply a fixed order and medium of ex-
change? For the sake of a theory which is in-
tended to honour Moses as the only legislator
of Israel, is it well to maintain that he imposed
conditions which could not be carried out, and
that he actually prepared the way for neglect of
his own code?
It is beyond our range to discuss the date of
the compilation of Numbers as compared with
the other Pentateuchal books, or the age of the
" Jehovistic " documents as compared with the
" Priests' Code." This, however, is of less mo-
ment, since it is now becoming clear that at-
tempts to settle these dates can only darken the
main question — the antiquity of the original rec-
ords and enactments. The assertion that Exo-
dus, Leviticus, and Numbers belong to an age
later than Ezekiel is of course meant to apply
to the present form of the books. But even in
this sense it is misleading. Those who make it
themselves assume that many things in the law
and in the history are of far older date, based
indeed on what at the time of Ezekiel must have
been immemorial usage. The main legislation
of the Pentateuch must have existed in the time
of Josiah, and even then possessed the authority
of ancient observance. The priesthood, the ark,
sacrifice and feast, the shewbread, the ephod, can
be traced back beyond the time of David to that
of Samuel and Eli, quite apart from the testi-
mony of the Books of Moses. Moreover, it is
impossible to believe that the formula " The
Lord said unto Moses " was invented at a late
date as the authority for statutes. It was the
invariable accompaniment of the ancient rule,
the mark of an origin already recognised. The
various legislative provisions we shall have to
consider had their sanction under the great or-
dinance of the law and the inspired prophetism
which directed its use and maintained its adapta-
tion to the circumstances of the people. The re-
ligious and moral code as a whole, designed to
secure profound reverence towards God and the
purity of national faith, continued the legislation
of Moses, and at every point was the task of men
who guarded as sacred the ideas of the founder
and were themselves taught oi God. The entire
law was acknowledged by Christ in this sense as
possessing the authority of the great lawgiver's
own commission.
It has been said that " the inspired condition
would seem to be one which produces a generous
indifference to pedantic accuracy in matters of
fact, and a supreme absorbing concern about
the moral and religious significance of facts." If
the former part of this statement were true, the
historical books of the Bible, and, we may say,
in particular the Book of Numbers, would de-
serve no attention as history. But nothing is
more striking in a survey of our book than the
clear unhesitating way in which incidents are set
forth, even where moral and religious ends could
not be much served by the detail that is freely
used. The account of the muster-roll is a case
in point. There we find what may be called
" pedantic accuracy." The enumeration of each
tribe is given separately, and the formula is re-
peated, " by their families, by their fathers'
houses, according to the number of the names
from twenty years old and upward, all that were
able to go forth to war." Again, the whole of
the seventh chapter, the longest in the book, is
taken up with an account of the offerings of the
tribes, made at the dedication of the altar.
These oblations are presented day after day by
the heads of the twelve tribes in order, and each
tribe brings precisely the same gifts — "one silver
charger, the weight thereof was an hundred and
thirty shekels, one silver bowl of seventy shekels
after the shekel of the sanctuary, both of them
full of fine flour mingled with oil for a meal
offering; one golden spoon of ten shekels full of
incense; one young bullock, one ram, one he-
lamb of the first year for a burnt offering; one
male of the goats for a sin offering; and for the
sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams,
five he-goats, five he-lambs of the first year."
Now the difficulty at once occurs that in the
wilderness, according to Exod. xvi., there was
no bread, no flour, that manna was the food of
the people. In Numb. xi. 6 the complaint of the
children of Israel is recorded: " Now our soul
is dried away; there is nothing at all: we have
nought save this manna to look to." In Josh.
V. 10 ff. it is stated that, after the passage of the
Jordan, " they kept the passover on the four-
teenth day of the month at even in the plains of
Jericho. And they did eat of the old corn of
the land on the morrow after the passover, un-
leavened cakes and parched corn in the self-same
day. And the manna ceased on the morrow
after they had eaten of the old corn of the land."
To the compilers of the Book of Numbers the
statement that tribe after tribe brought offerings
of fine flour mingled with oil, which could only
have been obtained from Egypt or from some
Arabian valley at a distance, must have been as
hard to receive as it is to us. Nevertheless, the
assertion is repeated no less than twelve times.
What then? Do we impugn the sincerity of the
historians? Are we to suppose them careless of
the fact? Do we not rather perceive that in the
face of what seemed insuperable difficulties they
held to what they had before them as authentic
records? No writer could be inspired and at the
same time indifferent to accuracy. If there is
one thing more than another on which we may
rely, it is that the authors of these books of
Scripture have done their very utmost by care-
ful inquiry and recension to make their account
of what took place in the wilderness full and
precise. Absolute sincerity and scrupulous care-
fulness are essential conditions for dealing suc-
cessfully with moral and religious themes; and
we have all evidence that the compilers had these
qualities. But in order to reach historical fact
they had to use the same kind of means as we
employ; and this qualifying statement, with all
that it involves, applies to the whole contents of
the book we are to consider. Our dependence
with regard to the events recorded is on the
truthfulness but not the omniscience of the men,
whoever they were, who from traditions, records,
scrolls of law, and venerable memoranda com-
piled this Scripture as we have it. They wrought
under the sense of sacred duty, and found
through that the inspiration which gives peren-
nial value to their work. With this in view we
shall take up the various matters of history and
legislation.
Recurring now, for a little, to the spirit of the
Book of Numbers, we find in the ethical passages
its highest note and power as an inspired writing.
The standard of judgment is not by any means
that of Christianity. It belongs to an age when
moral ideas had often to be enforced with in-
difference to human life; when, conversely, the
Numbers i. 1-46.]
THE CENSUS AND THE CAMP.
389
plagues and disasters that befell men were always
connected with moral offences. It belongs to
an age when the malediction of one who claimed
supernatural insight was generally believed to
carry power with it, and the blessing of God
meant earthly prosperity. And the notable fact is
that, side by side with these beliefs, righteousness
of an exalted kind is strenuously taught. For ex-
ample, the reverence for Moses and Aaron, usu-
ally so characteristic of the Book of Numbers,
is seen falling into the background when the Di-
vine judgment of their fault is recorded; and the
earnestness shown is nothing less than sublime.
In the course of the legislation Aaron is invested
with extraordinary official dignity; and Moses
appears at his best in the matter of Eldad and
Medad when he says, " Enviest thou for my
sake? Would God that all the Lord's people
were prophets, and that the Lord would put His
Spirit upon them." Yet Numbers records the
sentence pronounced upon the brothers: " Be-
cause ye believe Me not, to sanctify Me in the
eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall
not bring this congregation into the land which
I have given them." And more severe is the
form of the condemnation recorded in chap,
xxvii. 14: " Because ye rebelled against My word
in the wilderness of Zin, in the strife of the con-
gregation, to sanctify Me at the waters before
their eyes." The moral strain of the book is
keen in the punishment inflicted on a Sabbath-
breaker, in the destination to death of the whole
congregation for murmuring against God — a
judgment which, at the entreaty of Moses, was
not revoked, but only deferred — and again in
the condemnation to death of every soul that sins
presumptuously. On ^he other hand, the provis-
ion of refuge cities for the unwitting man-slayer
shows the Divine righteousness at one with
mercy.
It must be confessed the book has another
note. In order that Israel might reach and con-
quer Canaan there had to be war; and the war-
like spirit is frankly breathed. There is no
thought of converting enemies like the Midian-
ites into friends; every man of them must be put
to the sword. The census enumerates the men
fit for war. The primitive militarism is conse-
crated by Israel's necessity and destiny. When
the desert march is over, Reuben, Gad, and the
half-tribe of Manasseh must not turn peacefully
to their sheep and cattle on the east side of Jor-
dan; they must send their men of war across the
river to maintain the unity of the nation by run-
ning the hazard of battle with the rest. Experi-
ence of this inevitable discipline brought moral
gain. Religion could use even war to lift the
people into the possibility of higher life.
CHAPTER II.
THE CENSUS AND THE CAMP.
I. The Mustering.
Numbers i. 1-46.
From the place of high spiritual knowledge,
where through the revelation of God in covenant
and law Israel has been constituted His nation
and His Church, the tribes must now march with
due order and dignity. The sense of a Divine
calling and of responsibility to the Highest will
react on the whole arrangements made for the
ordinary tasks and activities of men. Social
aims may unite those who have them in common,
and the emergencies of a nation will lay con-
straint on patriotic souls. But nothing so binds
men together as a common vocation to do God's
will and maintain His faith. These ideas are to
be traced in the whole account of the mustering
of the warriors and the organisation of the camp.
We review it feeling that the dominating thought
of a Divine call to spiritual duty and progress is
far from having control of modern Christendom.
Under the JNew Covenant there is a distribution
of grace to every one, an endowment of each
according to his faith with priestly and even
kingly powers. No chief men swear fealty to
Christ on behalf of the tribes that gather to His
standard; but each believer devotes himself to the
service and receives his own commission. Yet,
while the first thought is that of personal honour
and liberty, there should follow at once the de-
sire, the determination, to find one's fit place in
the camp, in the march, in the war. The unity
is imperative, for there is one body and one
spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our
calling. The commission each receives is not to
be a free-lance in the Divine warfare, but to take
his right place in the ranks; and that place he
must find.
The enumeration, as recorded in chap, i., was
not to be of all Israelites, but of men from
twenty years old and upward, all that were able
to go forth to war. From Sinai to Canaan was
no long journey, and fighting might soon be
required. The muster was by way of preparation
for conflicts in the wilderness and for the final
struggle. It is significant that Aaron is shown
associated with Moses in gathering the results.
We see not only a preparation for war, but also
for the poll tax or tithe to be levied in support
of the priests and Levites. A sequel to the
enumeration is to be found in chap, xviii. 21:
" And unto the children of Levi, behold, I have
given all the tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in
return for their service which they serve, even the
service of the tent of meeting." The Levites
again were to give, out of what they received,
a tenth part for the maintenance of the priests.
The enactment when carried into effect would
make the support of those who ministered in holy
things a term of the national constitution.
Now taking the census as intended to impress
the personal duties of service in war and con-
tribution for religious ends, we find in it a valu-
able lesson for all who acknowledge the Divine
authority. Not remotely may the command be
interpreted thus. Take the sum of them, that
they may realise that God takes the sum of them
and expects of every man service commensurate
with his powers. The claim of Jehovah went
side by side with the claim on behalf of the
nation, for He was Head of the nation. But God
is equally the Head of all who have their life from
Him; and this numbering of the Hebrews points
to a census which is accurately registered and
never falls short of the sum of a people by a
single unit. Whoever can fight the battle of
righteousness, serve the truth by witness-bearing,
aid in relieving the weak, or help religion by
personal example and willing gift — every possible
servant of God, who is also by the very posses-
sion of life and privilege a debtor of God. is num-
bered in the daily census of His providence. The
measure of the ability of each is known. " To
590
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
whomsoever much is given, of him shall much
be required." The Divine regard of our lives
and estimate of our powers, and the accompany-
ing claim made upon us, are indeed far from be-
ing understood; even members of the Church
are strangely ignorant of their duty. But is it
thought that because no Sinai shrouded in awful
smoke towers above us, and now we are en-
camped at the foot of Calvary, where one great
offering was made for our redemption, therefore
we are free in any sense from the service Israel
was expected to render? Do any hold them-
selves relieved from the tithe because they are
Christ's freemen, and shirk the warfare because
they already enjoy the privileges of the victors?
These are the ignorant, whose complacent ex-
cuses show that they do not understand the law
of Divine religion.
True, the position of the Church among us is
not of the kind which the Mosaic law gave to the
priesthood in Israel. Tithes are gathered, not
from those only who are numbered within the
Church and acknowledge obligations, but also
from those outside, and always by another au-
thority than that of Divine commandment. In
this way the whole matter of the support of re-
ligion is confused in these lands both for mem-
bers of the national Churches and for those be-
yond their borders. Successfully as the old
Hebrew scheme may once have wrought, it is
now hopelessly out of line with the development
of society. The census does not in any way de-
termine what a national Church can claim.
.\aron does not stand beside Moses to watch
the enrollment of the tribes, families, and house-
holds as they come to be numbered. Yet, by the
highest law of all, which neither Church nor
State can alter, the demand for service is en-
forced. There is a warlike duty from which none
are exempt, from which there is no discharge.
Although the ideal of an organised humanity
appears as yet far ofif in our schemes of govern-
ment and social melioration, providentially it is
being carried into effect. Laws are at work that
need no human administration. By the Divine
ordinance generous efifort for the common good
and the ends of religion is made imperative.
Obedience brings its reward: "The liberal de-
viscth liberal things, and by liberal things shall
he stand." Neglect is also punished: the sure
result of selfishness is an impoverished life.
The census is described as having been
thoroughly organised. Keil and Delitzsch think
that the registering may have taken place " ac-
cording to the classification adopted at Jethro's
suggestion for the administration of justice — viz.,
in thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens." They
also defend the total of six hundred and three
thousand five hundred and fifty, which is pre-
cisely the same as that reached apparently nine
months before. It is an obvious explanation of
what appears a perplexing agreement, that the
enumeration may have occupied nine months.
But the number is certainly large, much larger
than the muster-rolls of the Book of Judges
would lead us to expect, if we reckon back from
them. Nor can any explanation be rnen that
is satisfactory in all respects. We may shrink
from interfering with these numerical statements
carefully set down thousands of years ago. Yet
we feel that the haze of remoteness hangs over
this roll of the tribes and all after-reckonings
based upon it.
Of the twelve princes named in chap. i. 5-15,
as overseers of the census, Nahshon, son of
Amminadab, of the tribe of Judah, has peculiar
distinction. His name is found in the genealogy
of David given in the Book of Ruth (chap. iv.
20). It also appears in the " book of the genera-
tion of Jesus Christ " (Matt, i.) and the roll of
Joseph's ancestry recorded by St. Luke. One
after another in that honourable line which gave
the Hebrews their Psalmist and the world its
Saviour is but a name to us. Yet the life repre-
sented by the name Nahshon, spent mainly in the
wilderness, had its part in far-off results; and so
had many a life, not even named — the hard lives
of brave fathers and burdened mothers in Israel,
who, on the weary march through the desert,
had their sorrow and pain, their scanty joy and
hope. Far away is the endurance of those He-
brew men and women, yet it is related to our own
religion, our salvation. The discipline of the
wilderness made men of courage, women great in
faith. Beneath their feet the Arabian sand burned,
above them the sun flamed; they heard alarms of
war, and followed the pillar of smoke for their
appointed time, looking, even when they knew
they looked in vain, for the land beyond of which
Jehovah had spoken. Unaware of their nation's
destiny, they toiled and suffered to serve a great
Divine plan which in the course of the ages came
to ripeness. And the thought brings help to our-
selves. We too have our desert journey, our
duty and hardship, with an outlook not merely
personal. It is our privilege, if we will take it
so, to aid the Divine plan for the humanity that
is to be, the great brotherhood in which Christ
shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.
Like a prince of Judah, or a humble nameless
mother in Israel, each m^y find abiding dignity
of life in doing well some allotted part in the
great enterprise.
The age of service fixed for the men of the
tribes may yield suggestions for our time. It is
not of warlike service we have to think, but of
that which depends on spiritual influence and in-
tellectual power. And we may ask whether the
limits on one side and the other have any par-
allel for us. Young men and women, having
reached the age of bodily and mental vigour, are
to hold themselves enrolled in the ranks of the
army of God. There is a time of learning and
preparation, when knowledge is to be acquired,
when the principles of life are to be grasped,
and the soul is to find its inspiration through
personal faith. Then there should come that
self-consecration by which response is made to
the claim of God. Neither should that be pre-
mature, nor should it be deferred. When an aim-
less, irresolute adolescence is followed by years
of drifting and experimenting without clear re-
ligious purpose, the best opportunity of life is
thrown away. And this far too frequently occurs
among those on whom parental influence and the
finest Christian teaching have been expended.
The time arrives when such young men and wo-
men should begin to serve the Church and the
world; but they are still unprepared because they
have not considered the great questions of duty,
and seen that they have a part to play on the
field of endeavour. It is true, no time can be
fixed. The public service of Christ has been
begun by some in very early youth; and the re-
sults have justified their adventure. From the
humble tasks they first undertook they have gone
on steadily to places of high responsibility, never
once looking back, learning while they taught,
Nu:nbefs ii.]
THE CENSUS AND THE CAMP.
391
gaining faith while they imparted it to others.
Each for himself or herself, in this matter of
supreme importance, must seek the guidance and
realise the vocation of God. But delay is often
indulged, and the twentieth, even the thirtieth
year, passes without a single effort in the holy
service. One could wish for a Divine conscrip-
tion, a command laid on every one in youth to be
ready at a certain day and hour to take the sword
of the Spirit.
On the other side also many need to recon-
sider. No time was fixed for the end of the ser-
vice to which the Israelites were summoned. As
long as a man could carry arms he was to hold
himself ready for the field. Not the increasing
cares of his family, not the disinclination which
comes with years, was to weigh against the ordi-
nance of Jehovah. But service now, however
cheerfully it may be rendered in early manhood
and womanhood, is often renounced altogether
when knowledge and power are coming to ripe-
ness with the experience of life. Doubtless there
are many excuses to be made for heads of house-
holds who are leaving their young folk to repre-
sent them in religion, and pretty much in every-
thing outside the mere maintaining of existence
or the enjoyment of it. The demands of public
service all round are sometimes quite out of
proportion to the available time and strength.
Yet the Christian duty never lapses; and it is a
great evil when the balance is wanting between
old and young, tried and untried.
2. The Tribe of Levi.
Numbers i. 47-54.
The tribe of Levi is not numbered with the
rest. No warlike service, no half-shekel for the
sanctuary, is to be exacted from the Levite.
His contribution to the general good is to be
of another kind. Pitching their tents about the
tabernacle, the men of this tribe are to guard the
sanctuary from careless or rude intrusion, and
minister unto it, taking charge of its parts and
furniture, dismantling it when it is to be re-
moved, setting it up again when anotlier stage of
the march is over.
In this order it is implied that, although ac-
cording to the ideal of the Mosaic law Israel was
to be a holy nation, yet the reality fell very far
short of it. " The Lord spake unto Moses, say-
ing. Speak unto all the congregation of the chil-
dren of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be
holy: for I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev.
xix. I, 2). Again and again this command of
consecration is given. But neither in the wilder-
ness, nor throughout the pre-exilic history, nor
after the Babylonian affliction had purged the
nation of idolatry, was Israel so holy that access
to the sanctuary could be allowed to the men
of the tribes. Rather, as time went by. did the
need for special consecration of those about the
temple become more evident. Although by
statute the tribe of Levi was well provided for,
it cannot be said that the life of the Levite was
at any time enviable from a worldly point of
view; at the best it was a kind of honourable
poverty. Something else than mere priest-craft
upheld the system which separated the whole
tribe; something else made the Levites content
with their position. There was a real and im-
perative sense of need to guard the sanctities of
religion, a jealousy for the honour of God,
which, originating with Moses and the priest-
hood, was felt throughout the whole nation.
As we have seen, the scheme of Israel's religion
required this array of servants of the sanctuary.
Under Christianity the ideal of the life of faith
and the manner of worship are entirely different.
A way into the holy place of the Divine presence
is now open to every believer, and each may have
boldness to enter it. But even under Christi-
anity there is a general failure from holiness,
from the spiritual worship of God. And as
among the Hebrews, so among Christians, the
need for a body of guardians of sacred truth and
pure religion has been widely acknowledged.
Throughout the Church generally down to the
Reformation, and still in countries like Russia
and Spain, we may even say in England, the con-
dition of things is like that in Israel. A people
conscious of ignorance and secularity, feeling
nevertheless the need of religion, willmgly sup-
ports the " priests," sometimes a great army, who
conduct the worship of God. There is nothing
to wonder at here, in a sense; much, indeed, for
which to be thankful. Yet the system is not the
New Testament one; and those who endeavour
to realise the ideal are not to be branded and
scorned as schismatics. They should be hon-
oured for their noble eflfort to reach and use the
holy consecration of the Christian.
3. The Camp.
Numbers ii.
The second chapter is devoted to the arrange-
ment of the camp and the position of the various
tribes on the march. The front is eastward, and
Judah has the post of honour in the van; at its
head Nahshon son of Amminadab. Issachar
and Zebulun, closely associated with Judah in the
genealogy as descended from Leah, are the others
in front of the tabernacle. The right wing, to
the south of the tabernacle, is composed of
Reuben, Simeon, and Gad, again connected by
the hereditary tie, Gad by descent from the
" handmaid of Leah." The seniority of Reuben
is apparently acknowledged by the position of
the tribe at the head of the right wing, which
would sustain the first attack of the desert clans;
for dignity and onerous duty go together. The
rear is formed by Ephraim, Manasseh. and Ben-
jamin, connected with one another by descent
from Rachel. Northward, on the left of the ad-
vance, Dan, Asher, and Naphtali have their po-
sition. Standards of divisions and ensigns of
families are not forgotten in the description of
the camp; and Jewish tradition has ventured to
state what some of these were. Judah is said to
have been a lion (compare " the lion that is of
the tribe of Judah." Rev. v. 5) ; Reuben, the im-
age of a human head; Ephraim, an ox; and Dan
an eagle. If this tradition is accepted, it will
connect the four main ensigns of Israel with the
vision of Ezekiel in which the same four figures
were united in each of the four living creatures
that issued from the fiery cloud.
The picture of the great organised camp and
orderly march of Israel is interesting; but it pre-
sents a contrast to the disorganised, disorderly
condition of human society in every land and
every age. While it may be said that there are
nations leagued in creed, allied by descent, which
form the van; that others, similarly connected
more or less, constitute the right and left wings
392
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
of the advancing host; and the rest, straggling far
behind, bring up the rear — this is but a very im-
aginative representation of the fact. No people
advances as with one mind and one heart; no
group of nations can be said to have a single
standard. Time and destiny urge on the host, and
all is to be won by steady resolute endeavour.
Yet some are encamped, while others are moving
about restlessly or engaged in petty conflicts that
have nothing to do with moral gain. There
should be unity; but one division is embroiled
with another, tribe crosses swords with tribe.
The truth is that as Israel came far short of real
spiritual organisation and due disposition of its
forces to serve a common end, so it is still with
the human race. Nor do the schemes that are
occasionally tried to some extent promise a
remedy for our disorder. For the symbol of our
most holy faith is not set in the midst by most
of those who aim at social organisation, nor do
they dream of seeking a better country, that is,
a heavenly. The description of the camp of Is-
rael has something to teach us still. Without
the Divine law there is no progress, without a
Divine rallying-point there is no unity. Faith
must control, the standard of Christianity must
show the way; otherwise the nations will only
wander aimlessly, and. fight and die in the desert.
CHAPTER III.
PRIESTS AND LEVITES.
I. The Priesthood.
Numbers iii. i-io.
In the opening verse of this chapter, which
relates to the designation of the priesthood,
Moses is named, for once, after his brother.
According to the genealogy of Exod. vi., Aaron
was the elder; and this may have led to the se-
lection of his as the priestly house — which again
would give him priority in a passage relating
to the hierarchy. If Moses had chosen, his un-
doubted claims would have secured the priestly
offtce for his family. But he did not desire this;
and indeed the duties of administrative head of
the people were suf^ciently heavy. Aaron was
apparently fitted for the sacerdotal office, and
without peculiar qualifications for any other. He
seems to have had no origftiating power, but to
have been ready to fall in with and direct the
routine of ceremonial worship. And we may
assume that Moses knew the surviving sons of
Aaron to be of the stamp of their father, likely
to inaugurate a race of steady, devoted servants
of the altar.
Yet all Aaron's sons had not been of this quiet
disposition. Nadab and Abihu, the two eldest,
had sinned presumptuously, and brought on
themselves the doom of death. No fewer than
five times is their fall referred to in the books
of Leviticus and Numbers. Whatever that
strange fire was which they put in their censers
and used before the Lord, the judgment that be-
fell them was signal and impressive. And here
reference is made to the fact that they died with-
out issue, as if to mark the barrenness of the
sacrilegious. Did it not appear that inherent
disqualification for the priesthood, the moral
blindness or self-will which was shown in their
presumptuous act, had been foreseen by God,
who wrote them childless in His book? This
race must not be continued. Israel must not
begin with priests who desecrate the altar.
W^hether the death of those two sons of Aaron
came by an unexpected stroke, or was a doom
inflicted after judgment in which their father had
to acquiesce, the terrible event left a most ef-
fectual warning. The order appointed for the
incense offering, and all other sacred duties,
would thenceforth be rigidly observed. And the
incident — revived continually for the priests when
they studied the Law — must have had especial
significance through their knowledge of the use
and meaning of fire in idolatrous worship. The
temptation was often felt, against which the fate
of Nadab and Abihu set every priest on his
guard, to mingle the supposed virtue of other
religious symbols with the sanctities of Jehovah.
Who can doubt that priests of Israel, secretly
tempted by the rites of sun-worship, might have
gone the length of carrying the fire of Baal into
Jehovah's temple, if the memory of this doom
had not held back the hand? Here also the deg-
radation of the burnt offering by "taking flame
from a common fire was by implication forbid-
den. The source of that which is the symbol
of Divine purity must be sacredly pure.
Those who minister in holy things have still
a corresponding danger, and may find here a
needed warning. The fervour shown in sacred
worship and work must have an origin that is
purely religious. He who pleads earnestly with
God on behalf of men, or rises to impassioned
appeal in beseeching men to repent, appearing as
an ambassador of Christ urged by the love of
souls, has to do not with symbols, but with truths,
ideas. Divine mysteries infinitely more sacred
than the incense and fire of Old Testament wor-
ship. For the Hebrew priest outward and formal
consecration sufficed. For the minister of the
New Testament, the purity must be of the heart
and soul. Yet it is possible for the heat of alien
Zeal, of mere self-love or official ambition, to be
carried into duties the most solemn that fall to
the lot of man; and if it is not in the Spirit of
God a preacher speaks or offers the sacrifice of
thanksgiving, if some other inspiration makes
him eloquent and gives his voice its tremulous
notes, sin like that of Nadab and Abihu is com-
mitted, or rather a sin greater than theirs. With
profound sorrow it must be confessed that the
" strange fire " from idolatrous altars too often
desecrates the service of God. Excitement is
sought by those who minister in order that the
temperament may be raised to the degree neces-
sary for free and ardent speech; and it is not
always of a purely religious kind. Those who
hear may for a time be deceived by the pretence
of unction, by dramatic tones, by alien fire. But
the difference is felt when it cannot be defined;
and on the spiritual life of the ministrant the
effect is simply fatal.
The surviving sons of Aaron, Eleazar and
Ithamar, were anointed ^nd " consecrated to
minister in the priest's ofifice." The form of
designation is indicated by the expression,
" whose hand he filled to exercise priesthood."
This has been explained as referring to a portion
of the ceremony described in Lev. viii. 26 f.
"And out of the basket of unleavened bread, that
was before the Lord, he took one unleavened
cake, and one cake of oiled bread, and one wafer,
and placed them on the fat. and upon the right
thigh: and he put the whole upon the hands of
Numbers iii. 11-13-40-51.]
PRIESTS AND LEVITES.
393
Aaron, and upon the hands of his sons, and
waved them for a wave offering before the Lord."
The explanation is scarcely satisfactory. In the
long ceremony of consecration this incident was
not the only one to which the expression " filling
the hand " was applied; and something simpler
must be found as the source of an idiomatic
phrase. To fill the hand would naturally mean
to pay or hire, and we seem to be pointed to
the time when for the patriarchal priesthood
there was substituted one that was official, sup-
ported by the community. In Exod. xxviii. 41
and in Lev. viii. 33, the expression in xjuestion
is used in a general sense incompatible with its
reference to any particular portion of the cere-
mony of consecration. It is also used in Judges
xvii., where to all appearance the consecration
of Micah's Levite implied little else than the
first payment on account of a stipulated hire.
The phrase, then, appears to be a mark of his-
tory, and carries the mind back to the simple
origin of the priestly office.
Eleazar and Ithamar " ministered in the priest's
office in the presence of Aaron their father."
So far as the narrative of the Pentateuch gives in-
formation, there were originally, and during the
whole of the wilderness journey, no other priests
than Aaron and his sons. Nadab and Abihu
having died, there remained but the two besides
their father. Phinehas the son of Eleazar ap-
pears in the history, but is not called a priest, nor
has he any priestly functions. What he does
is indeed quite apart from the holy office. And
this early restriction of the number is not only
in favour of the Pentateuchal history, but partly
explains the fact that in Deuteronomy the priests
and Levites are apparently identified. Taking
at their very heaviest the duties specially laid
on the priests, much must have fallen to the
share of their assistants, who had their own
consecration as ministers of the sanctuary. It
is certain that members of the Levitical families
were in course of time admitted to the full status
of priests.
The direction is given in ver. 10, " Thou shalt
appoint Aaron and his sons, and they shall keep
their priesthood; and the stranger that cometh
nigh shall be put to death." This is rigorously
exclusive, and seems to contrast with the state-
ments of Deuteronomy, " At that time the Lord
separated the tribe of Levi to bear the ark of the
covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord
to minister unto Him and to bless in His name
unto this day" (x. 8); and again, "The priests
the Levites, even all the tribe of Levi, shall have
no portion nor inheritance with Israel; they shall
eat the offerings of the Lord made by fire, and
His inheritance" (xviii. i); and once more,
" Moses wrote the law and delivered it unto the
priests, the sons of Levi, which bore the ark of
the covenant of the Lord, and unto all the elders
of Israel " (xxxi. 9). Throughout Deuteronomy
the priests are never called sons of Aaron, nor is
Aaron called a priest. Whether the cause of this
apparent discrepancy is that Deuteronomy re-
garded the arrangements for the priestly service
in a different light, or that the distinction of
priests from Levites fell into abeyance and was
afterwards revived, the variation cannot be ig-
nored. In the book of Joshua " the children
of Aaron the priest " appear on a few occasions,
and certain of the duties of high priest are as-
cribed to Eleazar. Yet even in Joshua the im-
portance attached to the Aaronic house is far less
than in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers; and the
expression " the priests the Levites " occurs
twice. If we regard the origin of the Aaronic
priesthood as belonging to the Mosaic period,
then the wars and disturbances of the settlement
in Canaan must have entirely disorganized the
system originally instituted. In the days of the
judges there seems to have been no orderly ob-
servance of those laws which gave the priesthood
importance. Scattered Levites had to do as they
best could what was possible in the way of sacri-
fice and purification. And this confusion may
have begun in the plain of Moab. The death of
Aaron, the personal insignificance of his sons,
and still more the death of Moses himself, would
place the administration of religious as well as
secular affairs on an entirely different footing.
Memoranda preserved in Leviticus and Numbers
may therefore be more ancient than those of
Deuteronomy; and Deuteronomy, describing
the state of things before the passage of Jordan,
may in regard to the priesthood reflect the con-
ditions of new development, the course of which
did not blend with the original design till after
the captivity.
The tribe of Levi is, according to ver. 6 ff.,
appointed to minister to Aaron, and to keep his
charge and that of the congregation before the
" tent of meeting," to do the service of the taber-
nacle. For all the necessary work connected
with the sanctuary the Levites are " wholly given
unto Aaron on behalf of the children of Israel."
It was of course in accordance with the patriar-
chal idea that each clan should have a hereditary
chief. Here, however, an arbitrary rule breaks
in. For Aaron was not by primogeniture head
of the tribe of Levi. He belonged to a younger
family of the tribe. The arrangements made by
Moses as the representative of God superseded
the succession by birthright. And this is by no
means the only case in which a law usually ad-
hered to was broken through. According to the
history the high-priesthood did not invariably
follow the line of Eleazar. At a certain point
a descendant of Ithamar was for some reason
raised to the dignity. Samuel, too, became virtu-
ally a priest, and rose higher than any high-priest
before the captivity, although he was not even of
the tribe of Levi. The law of spiritual endow-
ment in his case set the other aside. And is it
not often so? The course of providence brings
forward the man who can guide affairs. While
his work lasts he is practically supreme. It is
useless to question or rebel. Neither in religion
nor in government can the appeal to Divine right
or to constitutional order alter the fact. Korah
need not revolt against Moses; nor may Aaron
imagine that he can push himself into the front.
And Aaron, as head of the tribe of Levi, and of
the religious administration, is safe in his own
position so long only as his office is well served.
It is to responsibility he is called, rather than
to honour. Let him do his duty, otherwise he
will surely become merely a name or a figure.
2. The First-born.
Numbers iii. 11-13, 40-51.
These two passages supplement each other and
may be taken together. Jehovah claims the
first-born in Israel. He hallowed them unto
Himself on the day when He smote all the first-
born in the land of Egypt. They are now num-
394
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
bered from a month old and upward. But in-
stead of their being appointed personally to holy
service, the Levites are substituted for them.
The whole account supplies a scheme of the
origin of the sacerdotal tribe.
It has been questioned whether the number of
the first-born, which is 22,2~t^, can in any way be
made to agree with the total number of the male
Israelites, previously stated at 603,550. Well-
hausen is specially contemptuous of a tradition
or calculation which, he says, would give an
average of forty children to each woman. But
the difiticulty partly yields if it is kept in view
that the Levites were separated for the service
of the sanctuary. Naturally it would be the heir-
apparent alone of each family group whose lia-
bility to this kind of duty fell to be considered.
The head of a household was, according to the
ancient reckoning, its priest. In Abraham's
family no one counted as a first-born but Isaac.
Now that a generation of Israelites is growing
up sanctified by the covenant, it appears fit that
the presumptive priest should either be devoted
to sacerdotal duty, or relieved of it by a Levite
as his substitute. Suppose each family had five
tents, and suppose further that the children born
before the exodus are not reckoned, the number
will not be found at all disproportionate. The
absolute number remains a difficulty.
Dr. Robertson Smith argues from his own
premises about the sanctity of the first-born.
He repudiates the notion that at one time the
Hebrews actually sacrificed all their first-born
sons; yet he affirms that " there must have been
some point of attachment in ancient custom for
the belief that the Deity asked for such a sacri-
fice." * "I apprehend," he proceeds, " that all
the prerogatives of the first-born among Semitic
peoples are originally prerogatives of sanctity;
the sacred blood of the kin flows purest and
strongest in him (Gen. xlix. 3). Neither in the
case of children nor in that of cattle did the con-
genital holiness of the first-born originally imply
that they must be sacrificed or given to the
Deity on the altar, but only that if sacrifice was
to be made, they were the best and fittest because
the holiest victims." The passage in Numbers
may be confidently declared to be far from any
such conception. The special fitness for sacri-
fice of th*: first-born of an animal is assumed:
the fitness of the heir of a family, again, is
plainly not to become a sacrifice, but to ofifer sacri-
fice. The Srst-born of the Egyptians died. But
it is the life, the holy activity of His own people,
not their death, God desires. And this holy
activity, rising to its highest function in the first-
born, is according to our passage laid on the
Levites to a certain extent. Not entirely indeed.
The whole congregation is still consecrated and
must be holy. All are bound by the covenant.
The head of each family group will still have to
officiate as a priest in celebrating the passover.
Certain duties, however, are transferred for the
better protection of the sanctities of worship.
The first-born are found to exceed the number
of the Levites by two hundred and seventy-three;
and for their redemption Moses takes '* five
shekels apiece by the poll; after the shekel of
the sanctuary." The money thus collected is
given unto Aaron and his sons.
The method of redemption here presented,
purely arbitrary in respect of the sum appointed
for the ransom of each life, is fitly contrasted by
* " Religion of the Semites," p. 445.
the Apostle Peter with that of the Christian dis-
pensation. He adopts the word redeem, taking it
over from the old economy, but says, " Ye were
redeemed not with corruptible things, with silver
or gold, from your vam manner of life handed
down from your fathers." And the difference is
not only that the Christian is redeemed with the
precious blood of Christ, but this also, that, while
the first-born Israelite was relieved of certain
parts of the holy service which might have been
claimed of him by Jehovah, it is for sacred
service, " to be a holy priesthood to offer up
spiritual sacrifices," Christians are redeemed.
In the one case exemption, in the other case con-
secration is the end. The difference is indeed
great, and show's how much the two covenants
are in contrast with each other. It is not to
enable us to escape any of the duties or obliga-
tions of life Christ has given Himself for us.
It is to make us fit for those duties, to bring us
fully under those obligations, to purify us that
we may serve God with our bodies and spirits
which are His.
A passage in Exodus (xiii. 11 f.) must not be
overlooked in connection with that presently
under consideration. The enactment there is to
the effect that when Israel is brought into the
land of the Canaanites every first-born of beasts
shall be set apart unto the Lord, the firstling of
an ass shall be redeemed with a lamb or killed,
and all first-born children shall be redeemed.
Here the singular point is that the law is de-
ferred, and does not come into operation till the
settlement in Canaan. Either this was set aside
for the provisions made in Numbers, or these are
to be interpreted by it. The difficulties of the
former view are greatly increased by the men-
tion of the " shekel of the sanctuary," which
seems to imply a settled medium of exchange,
hardly possible in the wilderness.
In Numb. viii. 18, 19, the subject of redemp-
tion is again touched, and the additions are sig-
nificant. Now the service of the Levites " in the
tent of meeting " is by way of atonement for the
children of Israel, " that there be no plague
among the children of Israel when the children
of Israel come nigh unto the sanctuary." Atone-
ment is not with blood in this case, but by the
service of the living substitute. While the gen-
eral scope of the Mosaic law requires the shed-
ding of blood in order that the claim of God
may be met, this exception must not be forgot-
ten. And in a sense it is the chief instance of
atonement, far transcending in expressiveness
those in which animals were slaughtered for pro-
pitiation. The whole congregation, threatened
with plagues and disasters in approaching God,
has protection through the holy service of the
Levitical tribe. Here is substitution of a kind
which makes a striking point in the symbolism
of the Old Testament in its relation to the New.
The principle may be seen in patriarchal history.
The ten in Sodom, if ten righteous men could
have been found, would have saved it, would
have been its atonement in a sense, not by their
death on its behalf but by their life. And Moses
himself, standing alone between God and Israel,
prevails by his pleading and saves the nation
from its doom. So our Lord says of His dis-
ciples, " Ye are the salt of the earth." Their
holy devotion preserves the mass from moral
corruption and spiritual death. Again, " for the
elect's sake," the days of tribulation shall be
shortened (Matt. xxiv. 22).
Numbers iii. 14-39-iv.]
PRIESTS AND LEVITES.
395
The ceremonies appointed for the cleansing
and consecration of the Levites, described in viii.
5-26, may be noticed here. They differ consider-
ably from those enjoined for the consecration of
priests. Neither were the Levites anointed with
sacred oil, for instance, nor were they sprinkled
with the blood of sacrifices; nor, again, do they
seem to have worn any special dress, even in the
tabernacle court. There was, however, an im-
pressive ritual which would produce in their
minds a consciousness of separation and devotion
to God. The water of expiation, literally of sin,
was first to be sprinkled upon them, a baptism
not signifying anything like regeneration, but
having reference to possible defilements of the
flesh. A razor was then to be made to pass over
the whole body, and the clothes were to be
washed, also to remove actual as well as legal
impurity. This cleansing completed, the sacri-
fices followed. One bullock for a burnt offering,
with its accompanying meal offering, and one for
a sin olfering were provided. The people being
assembled towards the door of the tent of meet-
ing, the Levites were placed in front of them to
be presented to Jehovah. The prmces probably
laid their hands on the Levites, so declaring them
the representatives of all for their special office.
Then Aaron had to offer the sacrifices for the
Levites, and the Levites themselves as living
sacrifices to Jehovah. The Levites laid their
hands on the bullocks, making them their sub-
stitutes for the symbolic purpose. Aaron and his
sons slew the animals and offered them in the ap-
pointed way. Burning the one bullock upon the
altar, around which its blood had been sprinkled.
of the other burning only certain portions called
the fat. Then the ceremony of waving was per-
formed, or what was possible in the circum-
stances, each Levite being passed through the
hands of Aaron or one of his sons. So set apart,
they were, according to viii. 24, required to wait
upon the work of the tent of meeting, each
from his twenty-fifth to his fiftieth year. The
service had been previously ordered to begin at
the thirtieth year (iv. 3). Afterwards the time of
ministry was still further extended (i Chron.
xxiii. 24-27).
Such is the account of the symbolic cleansing
and the representative ministry of the Levites;
and we see both a parallel and a contrast to what
is demanded now for the Christian life of obe-
dience and devotion to God. Purification there
must be from all defilement of flesh and spirit.
With the change which takes place when by re-
pentance and faith in Christ we enter into the
free service of God there must be a definite and
earnest purging of the whole nature. " As ye
presented your members as servants to unclean-
ness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now
present your members as servants to righteous-
ness unto sanctification " (Rom. vi. 19). " Mor-
tify therefore your members which are upon the
earth; fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil
desire, and covetousness, the which is idolatry,
. . . put ye also away all these: anger, wrath,
malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your
mouth: lie not one to another; seeing that ye have
put off the old man with his doings, and have
put on the new man " (Col. iii. 5, 8, 9). Thus
the purity of heart and soul so imperfectly rep-
resented by the cleansings of the Levites is set
forth as the indispensable preparation of the
Christian. And the contrast lies in this, that the
purification required by the New Testament law
is for all, and is the same for each. Whether
one is to serve in the ministry of the Gospel or
sweep a room as for God's cause, the same pro-
found purity is needful. Ail in the Kingdom of
God are to be holy, for He is holy.
3. Levitical Service.
Numbers iii. 14-39; iv.
The sacred service of the Levites is described
in detail. There are three divisions, the Ger-
shonites, the Kohathites, the Merarites. The
Gershonites, from a month old and upward,
numbered 7,500; the Kohathites, 8,600; the Mer-
arites, 6,200. Eleazar, son of Aaron, is prince of
the princes of the Levites.
The office of the Kohathites is of peculiar
sanctity, next to that of Aaron and his sons.
They are not " cut off " or specially separated
from among the Levites (iv. 18); but they have
duties that require great care, and they must not
venture to approach the most holy things till
preparation has been made by the priests. The
manner of that preparation is fully described.
When order has been given for the setting for-
ward of the camp. Aaron and his sons cover the
ark of the covenant first with the veil of the
screen, then with a covering of sealskin, and
lastly with a cloth of blue; they also insert in the
rings the long staves with which the ark is to be
carried. Next the table of shewbread is covered
with a blue cloth; the dishes, spoons, bowls, and
cups are placed on the top, over them a scarlet
cloth, and above that a sealskin covering; the
staves of the table are also placed in readiness.
The candlestick and its lamps and other appur-
tenances are wrapped up in like manner and put
on a frame. Then the golden altar by itself, and
the vessels used in the service of the sanctuary by
themselves are covered with blue cloth and seal-
skin and made ready for carriage. Finally, the
great altar is cleansed of ashes, covered up with
purple cloth and sealskin, and its staves set in
their rings. When all this is done the sons of
Kohath may advance to bear the holy things,
never touching them lest they die.
The question arises, why so great care is con-
sidered necessary that none but the priests should
handle the furniture of the sanctuary. We have
learned to think that a real religion should avoid
secrecy, that everything connected with it should
be done in the open light of day. Why, then,
is the shrine of Jehovah guarded with such elab-
orate precaution? And the answer is that the
idea of mystery appears here as absolutely need-
ful, in order to maintain the solemn feelings of
the people and their sense of the holiness of
God. Not only because the Israelites were rude
and earthly, but also because the whole system
was symbolic, the holy things were kept from
common sight. In this respect the worship de-
scribed in these books of Moses resembled that
of other nations of antiquity. The Egyptian
temple had its innermost shrine where the arks
of the gods were placed; and into that most
holy place with its silver soil the priests alone
went. But even Egyptian worship, with all its
mystery, did not always conceal the arks and
statues of the gods. When those gods were be-
lieved to be favourable, the arks were carried in
procession, the images so far unveiled that they
396
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
could be seen by the people. It was entirely
different in the case of the sacred symbols and
instruments of Hebrew worship, according to the
ideal of the law. And the elaborate precautions
are to be regarded as indicating the highest tide-
mark of symbolised sanctity. Jehovah was not
like Egyptian or Assyrian or Phoenician gods.
These might be represented by statues which the
people could see. But everything used in His
worship must be kept apart. The worship must
be of faith; and the ark which was the great
symbol must remain always invisible. The effect
of this on the popular mind was complex, vary-
ing with the changing circumstances of the na-
tion ; and to trace it would be an interesting
piece of study. It may be remembered that in
the time of most ardent Judaism the want of the
ark made no difference to the veneration in which
the temple was held and the intense devotion
of the people to their religion. The ark was
used as a talisman in Eli's time ; in the temj^le
erected after the captivity there was no ark ; its
place in the holy of holies was occupied by a
stone.
The Gershonites had as their charge the
screens and curtains of the tabernacle, or most
holy place, and the tent of meeting or holy place,
also the curtains of the court of the tabernacle.
The boards, bars, pillars, and sockets of the
tabernacle and of the court were to be entrusted
to the Merarites.
In the whole careful ordering of the duties to
be discharged by these Levites we see a figure
of the service to be rendered to God and men
in one aspect of it. Organisation, attention to
details, and subordination of those who carry out
schemes to the appointed officials, and of all,
both inferior and superior, to law — these ideas
are here fully represented. Assuming the inca-
pacity of many for spontaneous effort, the prin-
ciple that God is not a God of confusion but of
order in the churches of the saints may be held
to point to subordination of a similar kind even
tinder Christianity. But the idea carried to its full
limit, implies an inequality between men
which the free spirit of Christianity will not ad-
mit. It is an honour for men to be connected
with any spiritual enterprise, even as bearers of
burdens. Those who take such a place may be
spiritual men, thoughtful men, as intelligent and
earnest as their official superiors. But the Le-
vites, according to the law, were to be bearers
of burdens, menials of the sanctuary from gener-
ation to generation. Here the parallel absolutely
fails. No Christian, however cordially he may
fill such a place for a time, is bound to it in
perpetuity. His way is open to the highest
duties and honours of a redeemed son of God.
In a sense Judaism even did not prevent the
spiritual advancement of any Levite, or any man.
The priesthood was practically closed, but the
office of the prophet, really higher than that of the
priest, was not. From the routine work of the
priesthood men like Jeremiah and Ezekiel were
called by the Spirit of God to speak in the name
of the Highest. The word of the Lord was put
into their mouths. Elijah, who was apparently
of the tribe of Manasseh, Amos and Daniel, who
belonged to Judah, became prophets. The open
door for the men of the tribes was into this call-
ing. Neither in Israel nor in Christendom is
priesthood the highest religious function. The
great servants of God might well refuse it or
throw aside its shackles.
CHAPTER IV.
DEFILEMENT AND PURGATION.
Numbers v.
The separation of Israel as a people belonging
to Jehovah proceeded on ideas of holiness which
excluded from privilege many of the Hebrews
themselves. The law did not ordain that in
cases of defilement there might be immediate
purification by washing or sacrifice. So far as
ceremonial uncleanness was concerned, we may
think this might have been provided for, and
moral offences alone might have involved the
offender in continued defilement. But just as
idolatry, blasphemy, and murder caused pollution
which could not be removed by sacrifice, but
only by the capital punishment of the guilty, so
certain bodily conditions and defects, and cer-
tain diseases, chiefly leprosy and those akin to it,
were held to cause a defilement which could not
be purged by any ceremony. A high standard
of bodily health and purity was required for the
priesthood; a lower standard was to be applied
to the people. And the system declaring the
uncleanness of many animals, and of the person
under various conditions, touched at countless
points the life of society. An Israelite who was
unclean for one or other of a hundred reasons
could not approach the sanctuary. He had his
portion in God after a sense; yet for a time, it
might be for life, the peculiar blessings of holy
fellowship were denied him. He could celebrate
no feast. He had no share in the great atone-
ment. The precautions and terms to be ob-
served were of such a nature that if the law had
been at any time stringently enforced a very
large percentage of the people would have been
denied access to the altar.
It may appear a strange thing that the precept,
" Ye shall be holy; for I am holy," was affixed
not only to moral duties but with almost the
same force to ceremonial duties. We can under-
stand this, however, when we trace the result of
the priestly ordinances. They created religious
care and feeling; and the end was gained not so
much by directing attention, as we now do, to
faults of conduct, defects of will, sins of injustice,
impurity, intemperance, and the like, but by keep-
ing up a scrupulous attention to matters not,
properly speaking, either moral or immoral, not
ethical as we say, which were yet declared to be
of moment in religion. The moral law did its
part. But to make the enforcement of moral
statutes, many of which bore on desire and will,
the only means of urging the fear of God, would
have resulted practical!}' in a very bare and de-
sultory cultus. Among a comparatively rude
people like the Israelites it would have been ab-
surd to institute a religion consisting of
" morality touched by emotion." For the mass
of people still it is equally hopeless. There must
be ordinances of prayer, praise, sacrament, and
the duties which reach Godward through the
Church. The value of the whole ceremonial
system of the Mosaic law is clear from this point
of view; and we need not wonder in the least at
the nature of many provisions which, without
grasp of the principle, we might reckon irksome
and useless. The origin of some of the statutes
is apparently hygienic; others again reach back
to customs and beliefs of a very primitive world.
Numbers v.]
DEFILEMENT AND PURGATION.
397
But they are made part of the sacred law in
order to enforce the conviction that the judg-
ment of God enters into the whole of life, fol-
lows men wherever they go, decides as to their
state with relation to Him hour by hour, almost
moment by moment. The ceremonial law was
a constant and strenuous lesson in regard to the
omnipresence of God, and the oversight of hu-
man affairs by Him. It created a conscience of
God's existence. His control. His superintend-
ence of each life. And for a certain stage of the
education of Israel this could be achieved in no
other way. The moral and spiritual progress of
a people, depending on the recognition of the
authority of One who is of purer eyes than to
behold iniquity, depends also, of necessity, on
the sense of His oversight of human life at every
point.
1. Exclusion from the Camp.
Numbers v. 1-4.
The rigidness of the law which excluded
lepers from the camp and afterwards from the
cities had its necessity in the presumed nature
of their disease. Leprosy was regarded as con-
tagious, and practically incurable by any medical
appliances, requiring to be kept in check by
strenuous measures. Care for the general health
meant hardship to the lepers; but this could not
be avoided. From friends and home they were
sent forth to live together as best they might,
and spend what remained of life in almost hope-
less separation. The authority of Moses is at-
tached to the statute of exclusion, and there can
be no doubt of its great antiquity. In Leviticus
there are detailed enactments regarding the dis-
ease, some of which contemplate its decay and
provide for the restoration to privilege of those
who had been cured. The ceremonies were
complicated, and among them were sacrifices to
be offered by way of " atonement." The leper
was alienated from God, severed from the con-
gregation as one guilty in the eye of the law
(Lev. xiv. 12); and there can be no wonder that
with this among other facts before him the writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the law
as having a mere " shadow of the good things to
come."
And yet, in view of the malignant nature of the
disease and the peril it caused to the general
health, we must admit the wisdom of segregating
those afflicted with leprosy. That Israel might
be a robust people capable of its destiny, a rule
like this was needful. It anticipated our modern
^ laws made in harmony with advanced medical
science, which require segregation or isolation
in cases of virulent disease.
It has been affirmed that leprosy was from the
first regarded as symbolic of moral disease, and
that the legislation was from this point of view.
There is, however, no evidence to support the
theory. Indeed the conception of moral evil
would have been confused rather than helped by
any such idea. For although evil habits taint the
mind and vice ruins it as leprosy taints and de-
stroys the body; although the infectious nature
of sin is fitly indicated by the insidious spread of
this disease — one point in which there is no re-
semblance would make the symbol dangerously
misleading. A few here and there were attacked
by leprosy, and these with their blotched dis-
figured bodies were easily distinguished from the
26— Vol. I.
healthy. But this was in contrast with the secret
moral malady by which all were tainted. The
teaching that leprosy is a type of sin would make,
not for morality, but for hypocrisy. The symp-
toms of a bad nature, like the signs of leprosy,
would be looked for and found by every man in
his neighbour, not in his own heart. The hypo-
crite would be encouraged in his self-satisfaction
because he escaped the judgment of his fellow
men. But the disease of sin is endemic, uni-
versal. The whole congregation was by reason
of that excluded from the sanctuary of God.
According to the idea which underlies the
priest law, leprosy did not typify sin; it meant
sin. In no single place, indeed, is this directly
affirmed. Yet the belief connecting bodily afflic-
tions and calamities with transgressions implied
it, and the fact that guilt-offerings had to be
made for the leper when he was cleansed.
Again, in the cases of Miriam, of Gehazi, and of
Uzziah, the punishment of sin was leprosy.
Under the conditions of climate which often pre-
vailed, the germs of this disease might rapidly
be developed by excitement, especially by the ex-
citement of immoral rashness. Here we may
find the connection which the law assumes be-
tween leprosy and guilt, and the origin of the
statute which made the intervention of the priests
necessary. In their poor dwellings beyond camp
and city wall the lepers lay under a double re-
proach. They were not only tainted in body but
appeared as sinners above others, men on whom
some divine judgment had fallen, as the very
name of their disease implied. And not till One
came who did not fear to lay His hand on the
leprous flesh, whose touch brought healing and
life, was the pressure of the moral condemnation
taken away. Of many cases of leprosy He would
have said, as of the blindness He cured: "Neither
did this man sin, nor his parents."
Now is the law to be charged with creating a
class of social pariahs? Is there any reason for
saying that in some way the legislation should
have expressed pity rather than the rigour which
appears in the passage before us and other enact-
ments regarding leprosy? It would be easy to
bring arguments which would seem to prove the
law defective here. But in matters of this kind
civilisation and Christian culture could not be
forestalled. What was possible, what in the con-
ditions that existed could be carried into effect,
this only was commanded. These old enact-
ments sprang out of the best wisdom and religion
of the age. But they do not represent the whole
of the Divine will, the Divine mercy, even as
they were contemporaneously revealed. Add to
the statutes regarding leprosy the other, " Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," and those
that enjoined kindness to the poor and provision
for their needs, and the true tenor of the legis-
lation will be understood. According to these
laws there were to be no pariahs in Israel. It
was a sad necessity if any were excluded from
the congregation of God's people. The laws of
brotherhood would insure for the wretched
colony outside the camp every possible con-
sideration. Denied access to God in festival and
sacrifice, the lepers appealed to the humane feel-
ings of the people. With their pathetic cry,
"Unclean, unclean!" their loose hair and rent
clothes, they confessed a miserable state that
touched every heart. As time went on, the law
of segregation was interpreted liberally. Even
in the synagogues a place was set apart for the
398
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
lepers. The kindlj' disposition promoted by the
Mosaic institutions was shown thus, and in many-
other ways.
The lepers banished outside the camp remind
us of those who have for no wrong-doing of
their own to endure social reproach. Were
sometimes good men and women among the He-
brews, men with kind hearts, good mothers and
daughters, attacked by this disease and com-
pelled to betake themselves to the squalid tents
of the lepers? That decree of rigorous precau-
tion is outdone by the strange fact that under the
providence of God, in His world, the best have
often had to undergo opprobrium and cruelty;
that Jesus Himself was crucified as a malefactor,
bore the curse of him that " hangeth upon a
tree." We see great suffering which is not due
to moral delinquency: and we see the sting of it
taken quite away. The stern ordinances of
nature have light thrown upon them from a
higher world. " Himself took our infirmities
and bare our sicknesses." For our sakes He was
the object of brutal mockery, the sufferer, the
sacrifice.
Besides the lepers and those who had an issue,
every one who was unclean by reason of touch-
ing a dead body was to be excluded from the
camp. This provision appears to rest on the
idea that death was no " debt of nature," but un-
natural, the result of the curse of God. Asso-
ciated, however, in the statute before us with
leprosy, dehlement from the dead may have been
decreed to prevent the spread of disease. Many
maladies too well known to us have an infectious
character; and those who were present at a
death would be most exposed to their influence.
Pathological explanations do not by any means
account for all the kinds and causes of defile-
ment; but exclusion from the camp is the special
point here; and the cases may be classed together
as having a common origin. The notion that
some demon or fallen spirit was at work both in
producing leprosy and in causing death, was in-
volved in the customs of some barbarous tribes
and entered into the beliefs of the Egyptians and
Assyrians. This explanation, however, is too re-
mote and alien from Judaism to be applied to
th'^"'^ statutes regarding uncleanness, at least in
the lorm they have in the Mosaic books. The
few hints surviving in them, as where a bird was
to be allowed to fly away when the leper was
pronounced clean, cannot be permitted to fix a
charge of superstition on the whole code.
A singular point in the statute regarding un-
cleanness " by the dead " is that the word ^T.r
(vephesh) stands apparently for the dead body.
Of this some other explanation is needed than
the free transference of meanings in Hebrew.
Here and elsewhere in the Book of Numbers (vi.
II ; ix. 6. 7, lo: xix. i.i), as well as in various
passages in Leviticus, defilement is attributed to
the ncphesh. Commonly the word means soul or
anima! life-principle. When connected with
death it corresponds to our word " ghost." as in
Job xi. 20 ; Jer. xv. p. Now the law was that not
only those who touched a dead body, but all
present in n hou^e when death took place in it.
were unclean. The question occurs whether the
nepliesh, or soul escaping at death, was believed
to defile. As if in doubt here a rabbi said.
" The body and the soul may plead successtully
not guilty bv charging their sinful life ea'^h upon
the other. The body may say: ' Since that guilty
soul parted with me, I have been lying in the
grave as harmless as a stone.' The soul may
plead: ' Since that depraved body separated from
me, I flutter about in the air like an innocent
bird.' " Is it not possible that the nephesh meant
the efifluvium of the dead body, the active element
which, springing from corruption, diffused un-
cleanness through the whole house of death? It
seems quite in harmony with other uses of the
word, and with the idea of defilement, to inter-
pret " was unclean by the nephesh," " sinned by
the nephesh," as technical expressions carrying
this meaning. The passage Numb. xix. 13 is
peculiarly instructive— n^0"'"1t-'N D~iS*n t;*DJ3 DOS
y33n"73 — " Every one coming in contact with
the dead, with the nephesh of a man who has
died." To translate, " with the corpse of a man
who has died," would fix on the language the
fault of tautology. In Psalm xvii. 9 nephesh has
the meaning of deadly, that is to say breathing
death; and the idea here points to the meaning
suggested.
The reason given for the banishment of the
unclean is the presence of God in the congrega-
tion— " That they defile not their camp, in the
midst whereof I dwell." All that are unhealthy,
and those who have been in contact with death,
which is the result of irremediable disease or
accident, must be withdrawn from the precincts
that belong to the Holy God. Human maladies
are in contrast with the Divine health, death is
in contrast to the Divine life. Here the whole
scope of the legislation regarding defilement has
its highest range of suggestion. It was a part of
moral education to realise that God was separate
from all distortion, wasting, and decay. In glad
and deathless power He reigned in the midst of
Israel. From the living God man received life
which had to be kept pure and disciplined.
Among the Egyptians it was held to be sacrilege
when the operator, in the process preparatory to
embalming, opened a human body. He who
made the incision was driven out of the room by
his assistants with abuse and violence. Quite
different is the idea of the Mosaic law which
makes the holiness belong entirely to God, and
requires of men the preservation of the clean life
He has given. Every statute suggests that there
is a tendency in the creature to fall away from
purity and become unfit for fellowship with the
Most Holy.
2. Atonement for Trespass.
Numbers v. 5-10.
The enactment of this passage refers to the
sin of theft or any other breach of the eighth
commandment which involved trespass not only
against man, but also against God — " When a
man or woman shall commit any sin that men
commit to do a trespass against the Lord, and
that soul be guilty; then shall they confess their
sin which they have done." The statute supple-
ments one given in Lev. vi. 1-4, omitting some
details, but adding the provision that if the per-
son defrauded has died, restitution shall be made
to the go'el. and if there is no surviving relation,
to the priest. The cases specified in Leviticus
are those of false dealing in regard to a deposit
or a bargain, robbery, oppression, — probably in
^
Numbers vi.]
NAZARITISM: THE BLESSING OF AARON.
399
the way of withholding hire from a labourer, —
finding what was lost and denying it; but in each
instance false swearing is added to the offence
and constitutes it a trespass against the Lord.
Restitution to man must be made by returning
the amount and one-fifth in addition; to God by
bringing a ram without blemish, with which the
priest makes atonement.
In this statute the punishment does not seem
severe. But the penalty is imposed after con-
fession when the offence has been for some time
undetected. The ordinary law required for the
theft of an ox, if the animal had not been slaugh-
tered, double restitution; and if it had been
slaughtered or sold, fivefold restitution. In the
case of a sheep slaughtered or sold the restitu-
tion was to be fourfold. Confession of the theft,
according to the present statute, diminishes the
penalty.
Noticeable particularly is the provision for
atonement, which is nowhere else admitted in
connection with a serious breach of the moral
law. Any offence against the first four com-
mandments was to be punished with death; so
also were murder, adultery, and certain other
crimes. It might have been expected that false
swearing by any one in regard to theft or valu-
ables intrusted to him would add to his guilt.
Here, however, by means of the ram of atone-
ment even that offence is apparently expiated.
Possibly the confession is held to mitigate the
crime. Still the nature of the statute is surpris-
ing and exceptional.
3. The Water of Jealousy.
Numbers v. 11-31.
The long and remarkable statute regarding the
water 01 jealousy seems to have been interposed
to prevent, by means of an ordeal, that cruel
practice of peremptory divorce which had been
in vogue at some period among the Hebrews.
The position given to woman by the old customs
must have been exceedingly low. Under polyg-
amy a wife was in constant danger of suspicions
and a^-cusations she had no means of removing.
The whole scope of this enactment and the means
used for deciding between the husband and a sus-
pected wife point to the frequency and general
groundlessness of charges made by men in the
" hardness of their hearts," or by other women
in the hardness of theirs.
The ordeal to which the wife was to be sub-
jected was twofold. One point was the impreca-
tion cf the Divine curse upon herself if she had
been guilty. This oath was administered in
terms and with ceremonies fitted to produce the
most profound impression. She is set "' before
the Lord " — probably in the court of the sanctu-
ary. Her hair is loose. She has the offering of
jealou.sy in her hand — the tenth part of an ephah
of barley-meal. The priest holds a basin of the
■■ water of jealousy." The terms of the curse
with its frightful consequences are not only re-
peated in licr hearing, but written on a scroll
which is dropped into the water. The second
thing is her drinking of the " water of jealousy,"
■■ holy water " mingled with dust from the floor
of the sanctuary, and with the terms of the curse.
The nature of the ordeal was such that few guilty
persons would have braved it. The only thing
which appears wanting is a provision for the
punishment of the man whose wife had passed
the terrible test. Since the punishment of this
crime was death, and he made the accusation
without cause, his own judgment should have
followed. Here, however, deference had to be
paid to the notions of the time, as our Lord
clearly indicates. The absolute right, the just
equality between husband and wife, could not be
established. Nor indeed, with all our progress,
is it yet secured.
The ordeal of the water of jealousy must have
saved many an innocent life from wreck. In
one sense it was part of a system designed to
maintain a high standard of morality, and in that
system it had a place which at the time could not
be filled in any other way. The main stress lies
on the oath of purgation; and to the present day
in certain ecclesiastical courts this is in use for
the purpose of bringing to an end processes not
otherwise capable of solution. It must be noted
that our marriage laws, lax as they are thought
to be, do not give to a husband anything like the
power or allow divorce with anything like the
facility admitted by the Mosaic law as some of
the Rabbis interpreted it. And this ordeal was
of such a nature that if those in use throughout
Europe only a century ago or thereby, in the
trial of witches for instance, be compared with
it, we can at once see its superiority. Those bar-
barous tests, not used by the vulgar alone, but
by religious men and Church authorities, made
escape from false accusation next to impossible.
Here there is absolutely nothing required which
could in any sense injure or imperil an innocent
woman. She might take her oath, see it written.
and drink the water without the least fear or
hesitation. The beneficence of the law is
strongly marked along with its wisdom. It was
a wonderful provision for the time.
CHAPTER V.
NAZARITISM: THE BLESSING OF
AARON.
Numbers vi.
I. The custom of Nazaritism, which tended to
form a semi-religious caste, is obscure in its
origin. The cases of Samson and Samuel imply
that before birth some were bound in terms of
this vow by their parents. In the passage before
us nothing whatever is said as to the reasons
which the law recognised for the practice of
Nazaritism. We may believe, however, that it
was from the first, like many votive customs,
distinctly religious. One who had been deliv-
ered from some danger or restored to health
might adopt this method of showing his thank-
fulness to God. It is impossible to connect
Nazaritism with any sacerdotal duty. A man
under the vow had no function, no privilege,
that in the least approached that of the priest.
Nor can we trace any parallel between the Naza-
rite rule and that of the fakirs of India or the
dervishes of Egypt and Arabia, whose poverty is
their mark of consecration. There is, however,
some resemblance to the vow of the Arab pil-
grim, who, on his way to the holy place, must
not cut or dress his hair, and must abstain from
bloodshed. The prophet Amos (ii. 11) claims
that God had raised up young men to be Naza-
rites, and he places their influence almost on a
400
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
level with that of the prophets as a means of
blessing to the people. We may believe, there-
fore, that they helped both morality and religion;
and the conditions of their vow seem to have
given them fine bodily health and personal ap-
pearance.
When the Nazarite vow was undertaken for a
term, say thirty, sixty, or a hundred days, the
law assumed its religious character, prescribed
the conditions to be observed, the means of re-
moving accidental defilement, and the cere-
monies to be performed when the period of sepa-
ration closed. Any man might devote himself
without appealing to the priest or going through
any religious rite; and in general his own con-
science was depended on to make him rigidly
attentive to his vow. There was to be no mo-
nastic association of Nazarites, no formal watch
kept over their conduct. They mingled with
others in ordinary life, and went about their
business as at other times. But the unshorn hair
distinguished them; they felt that the eye of God
as well as the eyes of men were upon them, and
walked warily under the sense of their pledge.
The discharge which had to be given by the
priest was a further check; it would have been
withheld if any charge of laxity had been made
against the Nazarite. The ceremonies of release
were of a kind fitted to attract general attention.
The modern pledge of abstinence bears in
various points resemblance to the Nazarite vow.
We can easily believe that indulgence in strong
drink was one of the principal sins against which
Nazaritism testified. And as in ancient Israel
that body of abstainers from the fruit of the vine,
honourably known as a caste, acknowledged by
the Divine law, formed a constant check on in-
temperance, so the existence of a large class
among ourselves, bound to abstinence, aids most
effectually in restraining the drinking customs of
the present age. When we add to the approval
of Nazaritism which is before us here the fact
that priests in the discharge of their ministry
were required to forego the use of wine, the sanc-
tion of Hebrew legislation on its moral side may
certainly be claimed for the total abstinence
pledge. No doubt the circumstances differ
greatly. Wine was the common beverage in
Palestine. It was in general so slightly intoxi-
cating that the use of it brought little tempta-
tion. But our distilled liquors and fermented
drinks are so strongly alcoholic, so dangerous to
health and morals, that the argument for absti-
nence is now immensely greater than it was
among the Hebrews." Not only as an example of
self-restraint, but as a safeguard against constant
peril, the pledge of abstinence deservedly enjoys
the sanction of the Churches of Christ.
On the other hand, the pledge of the total ab-
stainer, like the vow of the Nazarite, carries with
it a certain moral danger. One who, having
come voluntarily under such a pledge, allows
himself to break it. suffers a serious loss of
spiritual power. The abstainer, like the Naza-
rite, is his own witness, his own judge. But if
his pledge has been sacredly undertaken, sol-
emnly made, any breach of it is an offence to
conscience, a denial of obligation to God which
must react on the will and life. It was not by
using strong drink that Samson broke his vow
of Nazaritism, but in a far less serious manner —
by allowing his hair to be cut off. Still his case
is an instructive parable. The Spirit of the Lord
passed from him; he became weak as other men,
the prey of his enemies. The man who has
come under the bond of total abstinence, espe-
cially in a religious way, and breaks it, becomes
weaker than others. To confess his fault and
resume his resolution may not lift him up again.
The will is less capable, the sense of sacredness
less imperative and potent.
It is hard to say why the peculiar defilement
caused by touching a dead body or being present
at a death is that alone on which special atten-
tion is fixed in the Nazarite law (vi. 9 flf.). One
would have expected the other offence of using
wine to be dealt with rather than mere accidents,
so to speak. We can see that the law as it stands
is one of many that must have preceded the pro-
phetic period. If Amos, for example, had in-
fluenced the nature of the legislation regarding
Nazaritism, it would have been in the direction
of making drunkenness rather than ceremonial
uncleanness a special point in the statutes.
From beginning to end of his prophecy he makes
no distinct reference to ceremonial defilement.
But injustice, intemperance, disaffection to Je-
hovah, are constantly and vehemently denounced.
Hosea, again, does refer to unclean food, the
necessity of eating which would be part of
Israel's punishment in exile. But he too, unless
in this casual reference, is a moralist — cares noth-
ing, so far as his language goes, for the contact
with dead bodies or any other ceremonial defile-
ment. Judging a Nazarite, he would certainly
have regarded sobriety and purity of life as the
tests of consecration — drunkenness and neglect
of God as the sins that deserved punishment.
Hosea's condemnation of Israel is: "They have
left off to take heed to Jehovah. Whoredom and
wine and new wine take away the understand-
ing." In Ezekiel, whose schemes of worship
and of priestly work are declared to have been
the origin of the Priests' Code, the same tend-
ency is to be found. He has a passage regard-
ing unclean foods, which assumes the existence
of statutes on the subject. But as a legislator he
is not concerned with ceremonial transgressions,
the defilement caused by dead bodies, and the
like. Take into account the whole of his
prophecy, and it will be seen that the new heart
and the right spirit are for Ezekiel the main
things, and the worship of the temple he de-
scribes is to be that of a people not ceremonially
consecrated, but spiritually pure, and so in moral
unity with God. He adopts the old forms of
worship along with the priesthood, but his desire
is to give the ritual an ethical basis and aim.
The statute which applies to the discharge of
the Nazarite from his rule (vi. 13-21) is exceed-
ingly detailed, and contains provisions which on
the whole seem fitted to deter rather than en-
courage the vow. The Nazarite could not escape
from obligation as he had entered upon it, with-
out priestly intervention and mediation. He had
to offer an oblation, — one he-lamb of the first
year for a burnt offering; one ewe-lamb of the
first year for a sin offering; and for peace offer-
ings a ram, with a basket of unleavened bread,
cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, unleavened
wafers anointed with oil; and meal offerings and
drink offerings. These had to be presented by
the priest in the prescribed manner. In addi-
tion to the possible cost of repeated cleansings
which might be needful during the period of
separation, the expense of those offerings must
have been to many in a humble station almost
prohibitory. We cannot help concluding that
Numbers vi.]
NAZARITISM: THE BLESSING OF AARON.
401
under this law, at whatever time it prevailed,
Nazaritism became the privilege of the more
wealthy. Those who took the vow under the
appointed conditions must have formed a kind
of puritan aristocracy.
The final ceremonies included burning of the
hair, which was carefully removed at the door of
the tent of meeting. It was to be consumed in
the fire under the peace offering, the idea being
that the obligation of the vow and perhaps its
sanctity had been identified with the flowing
locks. The last rite of all was similar to that
used in the consecration of priests. The sodden
shoulder of the ram, an unleavened cake, and an
unleavened wafer were to be placed on the hands
of the Nazarite, and waved for a wave offering
before the Lord — thereafter, with other parts of
the sacrifice, falling to the priest. After that the
man might drink wine, perhaps in a formal way
at the close of the ceremonies.
To explain this elaborate ritual of discharge
it has been affirmed that the idea of the vow
" culminated in the sacrificial festival which ter-
minated the consecration, and in this attained to
its fullest manifestation." If this were so,
ritualism was indeed predominant. To make
such the underlying thought is to declare that
the abstinence of the Nazarite from strong drink
and dainties, to which a moralist would attach
most importance, was in the eye of the law
nothing compared to the symbolic feasting with
God and the sacerdotal functions of the final
ceremony. Far more readily would we assume
that the ritual of the discharge was superfluously
added to the ancient law at a time when the
hierarchy was in the zenith of its power. But,
as we have already seen, the final rites were of a
kind fitted to direct public attention to the vow,
and may have had their use chiefly in preventing
any careless profession of Nazaritism, tending
to bring it into contempt.
One other question still demands considera-
tion: What was meant by the "sin ofifering "
which had to be presented by the Nazarite when
he had unintentionally incurred uncleanness, and
the sin ofifering which had to be ofifered at the
time of his discharge — what, in short, was the
idea of sin to which this oblation corresponded?
The case of the Nazarite is peculiarly instructive,
for the point to be considered is seen here en-
tirely free from complications. The Nazarite
does not undertake the obligation of his vow as
an acknowledgment of wrong he has done, nor
does he place himself under any moral disad-
vantage by assuming it. There is no reason why
in becoming a Nazarite or ceasing to be a Naza-
rite he should appear as a transgressor; rather is
he honouring God by what he does. Suppose he
has been present at a death which has unexpect-
edly taken place — that involves no moral fault by
which a man's conscience should be burdened.
Deliberately to touch a dead body might, under
the law, have brought the sense of wrongdoing;
but to be casually in a defiled house could not.
Yet an atonement was necessary (vi. 11). It is
expressly said that a sin offering and a burnt
offering must be presented to " make atonement
for him, for that he sinned by reason of the
dead." And again, when he has kept the terms
of his vow to the last, honouring Jehovah by his
devotion, commending morality by his absti-
nence, maintaining more rigidly than other
Israelites the idea of consecration to Jehovah, he
cannot be released from his obligation till a sin
offering is made for him. There is no moral
offence to be expiated. Rather, to judge in an
ordinary human way, he has carried obedience
farther than his fellow-Israelites.
The whole circumstances show that the sin-
offering' has no reference to moral pollution.
The idea is not that of removing a shadow from
the conscience, but taking away a taint of the
flesh, or, in certain cases, of the mind which has
become aware of some occult injury. A clear
division was made between the moral and the
immoral; and it was assumed that all Israelites
were keeping the moral commandments of the
law. Then moral persons were divided into
those who were clean and those who were un-
clean; and the ceremonial law alone determined
the conditions of undefiled and acceptable life.
If the law decfared that a sin offering was neces-
sary, it meant not that there had been immo-
rality, but that some specified or unspecified
taint lay upon a man. No doubt there were
principles according to which the law was
framed. But they might not be apparent; and
no man could claim to have them explained.
Now with regard to Nazaritism, the idea was that
of a vivid and pure form of life to which a man
might attain if he would discipline himself. And
it seems to have been understood that in return-
ing from this to the common life of the race an
apology, so to speak, had to be made to Jehovah
and to religion. The higher range of life dur-
ing the term of separation was peculiarly sensi-
tive to invasions of earthly circumstance, and
especially of the defilement caused by death; and
for anything of this sort there was needed more
than apology, more than trespass offering. The
Nazarite going back to ordinary life was re-
garded in more senses than one as a sinner.
The conditions of his vow had been difficult to
keep, and, presumably, had been broken. He
was all the more under the suspicion of defile-
ment that he had undertaken special obligations
of purity. A peculiar form of mysticism is in-
volved here, an effort of humanity to reach trans-
cendental holiness. And the law seemed to give
up each experiment with a sigh. In the story of
Samson we have only the popular pictorial ele-
ments of Nazaritism. The statutes convey hints
of deeper thought and feeling.
Generally speaking the whole system of puri-
fication enjoined by the ceremonial law, the con-
stant succession of cleansings and sacrifices,
must have appeared to be arbitrary. But it
would be a mistake to suppose that there was no
esoteric meaning, no purpose beyond that of
keeping up the sense of religious duty and the
need of mediation. Some intangible defilement
seems to have been associated with everything
mundane, everything human. The aim was to
represent sanctity of a transcendent kind, the
nature of which no words could express, for
which the shedding of blood alone supplied a
sufficiently impressive symbol.
2. The blessing which the priests were com-
missioned to pronounce on the people (vi. 24-
26) was in the following terms:
" Jehovah bless thee, and keep thee :
Jehovah make His face to shine upon thee, and be gra-
cious unto thee :
Jehovah lift up His countenance up«n thee, and give
thee peace."
By means of this threefold benediction the name
of Jehovah was to be put upon the children of
402
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
Israel — that is to say, their consecration to Him
as His accepted flock and their enjoyment of His
covenant grace were to be signified. In a sense
the invocation of this blessing was the highest
function of the priest: he became the channel
of spiritual endowment in which the whole nation
shared.
It is a striking fact that the distinctive ideas
conveyed in the three portions of the blessing —
Preservation, Enlightenment, Peace — bear a re-
lation, by no means fanciful, to the work of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. First are
invoked the providential care and favour of God,
as Ruler of the universe. Arbiter among the
nations. Source of creaturely life, Upholder of
human existence. Israel as a whole, and each
individual Israelite as a member of the sacred
community, should in terms of the covenant en-
joy the guardianship of the Almighty. The idea
is expanded in Psalm cxxi.:
'•Jehovah is thy keeper :
Jehovah is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
Jehovah shall keep thee from all evil ;
He shall keep thy soul.
Jehovah shall keep thy going out and thy coming in.
From this time forth and for evermore."
And in almost every Psalm the theme of Divine
preservation is touched on either in thanksgiv-
ing, prayer, or exultant hope.
"For God will save Zion, and build the cities of Judah ;
And they .shall abide there, and have it in possession.
The seed also of His servants shall inherit it ;
And they that love His name shall dwell therein."
Often sorely pressed by the nations around, their
land made the battle-field of empires, the He-
brews could comfort themselves with the assur-
ance that Jehovah of Hosts was with them, that
the God of Jacob was their refuge. And each
son of Abraham had his own portion in the
blessing.
" I will say of Jehovah, He is my refuge and ray fortress,
My God in whom I trust."
The keynote of joyful confidence in the unseen
King was struck in the benediction which, pro-
nounced by Aaron and by the high-priests after
him, associated Israel's safety with obedience to
all the laws and forms of religion.
The second member of the blessing indicates
under the figure of the shining of Jehovah's face
the revelation of enlightening truth. Here are
implied the unfolding of God's character, the
kindly disclosure of His will in promise and
prophecy, the opening to the minds of men of
those high and abiding laws that govern their
destiny. There is a forth-shining of the Divine
countenance which troubles and dismays the
human heart: "The face of the Lord is against
them that do evil." But here is denoted that
gracious radiance which came to its fulness in
Christ. And of this Divine shining Jacob
Boehme writes: " As the sun in the visible world
ruleth over evil and good, and with its light and
power and all whatsoever itself is, is present
everywhere, and penetrates every being, and yet
in its image-like [symbolic] form doth not with-
draw again to itself with its efflux, but wholly
giveth itself into every being, and yet ever re-
maineth whole, and nothing of its being goeth
away therewith: thus also it is to be understood
concerning Christ's power and office which
ruleth in the inward spiritual world visibly, and
in the outward world invisibly, and thoroughly
penetrateth the faithful man's soul, spirit, and
heart. . . And as the sun worketh through and
through an herb so that the herb becometh solar
(or filled with the virtue of the sun, and as it
were so converted by the sun that it becometh
wholly of the nature of the sun) : so Christ ruleth
in the resigned will in soul and body over all
evil inclinations, over Satan's introduced lust,
and generateth the man to be a new heavenly
creature and wholly floweth into him." ^
For the Hebrew people that shining of the
face of God became spiritual and potent for sal-
vation less through the law, the priesthood, and
the ritual, than through psalm and prophecy.
Of the revelation of the law Paul says, " The
ministration of death written and engraven on
stones came with glory, so that the children of
Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face
of Moses, for the glory of his face." With such
holy and awful brightness did God appear in the
law, that Moses had to cover his face from which
the splendour was reflected. But the psalmist,
pressing towards the light with fine spiritual
boldness and humility, could say, " When Thou
saidst. Seek ye My face; my heart said unto
Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek " (Psalm xxvii.
8) ; and again, " Turn us again, O God of hosts,
and cause Thy face to shine; and we shall be
saved " (Psalm Ixxx. 7). And in an oracle of
Isaiah (liv. 8), Jehovah says, " In overflowing
wrath I hid My face from thee for a moment:
but with everlasting kindness shall I have mercy
on thee."
In the third clause of the benediction the peace
of God, that calm of mind, conscience, and life
which accompanies salvation, is invoked. From
the trouble and sorrow and tumult of existence,
from the fear of hostile power, from evil influ-
ences seen and unseen, the Divine hand will give
salvation. It seems indeed to be the meaning
that the gracious regard of God is enough. Are
His people in affliction and anxiety? Jehovah's
look will deliver them. They will feel calmly
safe as if a shield were interposed between them
and the keen arrows of jealousy and hatred.
" In covert of Thy presence shalt Thou hide
them from the plottings of man: Thou shalt keep
them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of
tongues." Their tranquillity is described by
Isaiah: " In righteousness shalt thou be estab-
lished: thou shalt be far from oppression, for
thou shalt not fear; and from terror, for it shall
not come near thee ... no weapon that is
formed against thee shall prosper; and every
tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment
thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the
servants of the Lord, and their righteousness
which is of Me, saith the Lord."
The peace of the human soul is not, however,
entirely provided for by the assurance of Divine
protection from hostile force. A man is not in
perfect tranquillity because he belongs to a nation
or a church defended by omnipotence. His own
troubles and fears are the main causes of unrest.
And the Spirit of God, who cleanses and renews
the soul, is the true Peace-giver. " To win
true peace a man needs to feel himself directed,
pardoned, and sustained by a supreme power, to
feel himself in the right road, at the point where
God would have him to be — in order with God
and the universe." In his heart the note of har-
mony must be struck deep and true, in profound
* " Concerning the Holy Baptism," chap. i.
Numbers vii.J
SANCTUARY AND PASSOVER.
403
reconciliation and unity with God. With this in
view the oracles of Ezekiel connect renewal and
peace. " I will put My Spirit in you, and ye
shall live ... I will make a covenant of peace
with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant
with them . . . and I will set My sanctuary in
the midst of them for evermore."
The protection of God the Father, the grace
and truth of the Son, the comfort and peace
of the Spirit — were these, then, implied in Israel's
religion and included in this blessing of Aaron?
Germinally, at least, they were. The strain of
unity running through the Old and New Testa-
ments is heard here and in the innumerable
passages that may be grouped along with the
threefold benediction. The work of Christ, as
Revealer and Saviour, did not begin when He
appeared in the flesh. As the Divine Word He
spoke by every prophet and through the priest
to the silent congregations age after age. Nor
did the dispensation of the Spirit arise on the
world like a new light on that day of Pentecost
when the disciples of Christ were gathered in
their upper chamber and the tongues of lire were
seen. There were those even in the old Hebrew
days on whom the Spirit was poured from on
high, with whom " judgment dwelt in the wilder-
ness, and righteousness in the fruitful field: and
the work of righteousness was peace, and the
efFect of righteousness quietness and assurance
for ever." He who is our peace came in the ap-
pointed time to fill with eternal meaning the old
benedictions, and set our assurance on the im-
movable rock of His own sacrifice and power.
CHAPTER VI.
SANCTUARY AND PASSOVER.
I. The Offerings of the Princes.
Numbers vii.
The opening verses of the chapter seem to
imply that immediately after the erection of the
tabernacle the gifts of the princes were brought
by way of thank offering. The note of time,
" on the day that Moses had made an end of set-
ting up the tabernacle," appears very precise. It
has been made a difificulty that, according to the
narrative of Exodus, a considerable time had
elapsed since the work was finished. But this
account of the oblations of the princes, like
a good many other ancient records incorporated
in the present book, has a place given it from
the desire to include everything that seemed to
belong to the time of the wilderness. All inci-
dents could not be arranged in consecutive order,
because, let us suppose, the Book of Exodus to
which this and others properly belonged was
already complete. Numbers is the more frag-
mentary book. The expression. " on the day,"
must apparently be taken in a general sense as
in Gen. ii. 4: " These are the generations of the
heavens and of the earth in the day that the
Lord God made earth and heaven." In Numb,
ix. IS the same note of time. " on the day that
the tabernacle was reared up," marks the begin-
ning of another reminiscence or tradition. The
setting up of the tabernacle and consecration of
the altar gave occasion presumably for this mani-
festation of generosity. But the offerings de-
scribed could not be provided immediately; they
must have taken time to prepare. Golden spoons
of ten shekels' weight were not to be found
ready-made in the camp; nor were the oil and
fine flour to be had at a day's notice. Of course
the gifts might have been prepared in anticipa-
tion.
The account of the bringing of the offerings
by the princes on twelve successive days, one
Sabbath at least included, gives the impression of
a festival display. The narrator dwells with
some pride on the exhibition of religious zeal
and liberality, a fine example set to the people
by men in high position. The gifts had not been
asked by Moses; they were purely voluntary.
Considering the value of precious metals at the
time, and the poverty of the Israelites, they were
handsome, though not extravagant. It is esti-
mated that the gold and silver of each prince
would equal in value about seven hundred and
thirty of our shillings, and so the whole amount
contributed, without regarding the changed value
of the metals, would be equivalent to some four
hundred and thirty-eight pounds sterling. In
addition there were the fine flour and oil, and
the bullocks, rams, lambs, and kids for sacrifice.
It is an obvious remark here that spontaneous
liberality has in the very fqrm of the narrative
the very highest commendation. Nothing could
be more fitted to create in the minds of the
people respect for the sanctuary and the worship
associated with it than this hearty dedication of
their wealth by the heads of the tribes. As the
people saw the slow processions moving day by
day from the different parts of the camp, and
joined in raising their hallelujahs of joy and
praise, a spirit of generous devotion would be
kindled in many hearts. It appears a singular
agreement that each prince of a tribe gave pre-
cisely the same as his neighbour. But by this
arrangement one was not put to shame by the
greater liberality of another. Often, as we
know, there is in giving, quite as much of hu-
man rivalry as of holy generosity. One must
not be outdone by his neighbour, would rather
surpass his neighbour. Here all appears to be
done in the brotherly spirit.
Does the author of Numbers present an ideal
for us to keep in view in our dedication of riches
to the service of the Gospel? It was in full ac-
cord with the symbolic nature of Hebrew re-
ligion that believers should enrich the tabernacle
and give its services an air of splendour. Al-
most the only way for the Israelites to honour
God in harmony with their separation from
others as His people, was that of making glori-
ous the house in which He set His name, the
whole arrangements for sacrifice and festival and
priestly ministration. In the temple of Solomon
that idea culminated which on this occasion
fixed the value and use of the princes' gifts.
But under Christianity the service of God is the
service of mankind. When the thought and
labour of the disciples of Christ are devoted to
the needs of men there is a tribute to the glory
of God. " It has been said— it is true — that a
better and more honourable offering is made to
our Master in ministry to the poor, in extend-
ing the knowledge of His name, in the practice
of the virtues by which that name is hallowed,
than in material gifts to His temple. Assuredly
it is so: woe to all who think that any other
kind or manner of offering may in any way take
the place of these." * The decoration of the
♦ Ruskin, " Seven Lamps of Architecture."
404
THE BOOK- OF NUMBERS.
house used for worship, its stateliness and charm,
are secondary to the upbuilding of that temple of
which believing men and women are the eternal
stones, for basement, pillar, and wall. In the
development of Judaism the temple with its
costly sacrifices and ministries swallowed up the
means and enthusiasm of the people. Israel
recognised no duty to the outside world. Even
its prophets, because they were not identified
with the temple worship, were in the main neg-
lected and left to penury. It is a mistaken use
of the teaching of the Old Testament to take
across its love of splendour in sanctuary and
worship, while the spread of Christian truth
abroad and among the poor is scantily provided
for.
But the liberality of the leaders of the tribes,
and of all who in the times of the old covenant
gave freely to the support of religion, stands be-
fore us to-day as a noble example. In greater
gratitude for a purer faith, a larger hope, we
should be more generous. Devoting ourselves
first as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to
God, we should count it an honour to give in
proportion to our ability. One after another,
every prince, every father of a family, every
servant of the Lord, to the poorest widow,
should bring a becoming gift.
The chapter closes with a verse apparently
quite detached from the narrative as well as from
what follows, which, however, has a singular im-
portance as embodying the law of the oracle.
" And when Moses went into the tent of meet-
ing to speak with Him, then he heard the Voice
speaking unto him from above the mercy-seat
that was upon the ark of the testimony, from be-
tween the two cherubim: and he spake unto
Him." At first this may seem exceedingly an-
thropomorphic. It is a human voice that is
heard by Moses speaking in response to his in-
quiries. One is there, in the darkness behind
the veil, who converses with the prophet as
friend communicates with friend. Yet, on re-
flection, it will be felt that the statement is
marked by a grave idealism and has an air of
mystery befitting the circumstances. There is no
form or visible manifestation, no angel or being
in human likeness, representing God. It is only
a Voice that is heard. And that Voice, as pro-
ceeding from above the mercy-seat which cov-
ered the law, is a revelation of what is in har-
mony with the righteousness and truth, as well
as the compassion, of the Unseen God. The
separateness of Jehovah is very strikingly sug-
gested. Here only, in this tent of meeting, apart
from the common life of humanity, can the one
prophet-mediator receive th>i sacred oracles.
And the v^" still separates even Moses from the
mystic Voice. Yet God is so akin to men that
He can use their words, make His message intel-
ligible through Moses to those who are not holy
enough to hear for themselves, but are capable
of responding in obedient faith.
Whatever is elsewhere said in regard to the
Divine communications that were given through
Moses must be interpreted by this general state-
ment. The revelations to Israel came in the
silence and mystery of this place of audience,
when the leader of the people had withdrawn
from the bustle and strain of his common tasks.
He must be in the exalted mood this highest of
all offices requires. With patient, earnest soul
he must wait for the Word of God. There is
nothing sudden, no violent flash of light on the
ecstatic mind. All is calm and grave.
2. The Candelabrum.
Numbers viii. 1-4.
The seven-branched candlestick with its lamps
stood in the outer chamber of the tabernacle into
which the priests had frequently to go. When
the curtain at the entrance of the tent was drawn
aside during the day there was abundance of
light in the Holy Place, and then the lamps were
not required. It may indeed appear from Exod.
xxvii. 20, that one lamp of the seven fixed on the
candelabrum was to be kept burning by day as
well as by night. Doubt, however, is thrown on
this by the command, repeated in Lev. xxiv. 1-4,
that Aaron shall order it " from evening to
morning;" and Rabbi Kimchi's statement that
the " western lamp " was always found burning
cannot be accepted as conclusive. In the wilder-
ness, at all events, no lamp could be kept always
alight; and from i Sam. iii. 3 we learn that the
Divine voice was heard by the child-prophet
when Eli was laid down in his place, " and the
lamp of God was not yet gone out " in the temple
where the ark of God was. The candelabrum
therefore seems to have been designed not
specially as a symbol, but for use. And here
direction is given, " When thou lightest the
lamps, the seven lamps shall give light in front
of the candlestick." All were to be so placed
upon the supports that they might shine across
the Holy Place, and illuminate the altar of in-
cense and the table of shewbread.
The text goes on to state that the candlestick
was all of beaten work of gold; "unto the base
thereof and unto the flowers thereof, it was
beaten work," and the pattern was that which
Jehovah had showed Moses. The material, the
workmanship, and the form, not particularly im-
portant in themselves, are anew referred to be-
cause of the special sacredness belonging to all
the furniture of the tabernacle.
The attempt to fasten typical meanings to the
seven lights of the candelabrum, to the orna-
ments and position, and especially to project
those meanings into the Christian Church, has
little warrant even from the Book of Revelation,
where Christ speaks as " He that walketh in the
midst of the seven golden candlesticks." There
can be no doubt, however, that symbolic refer-
ences may be found, illustrating in various ways
the subjects of revelation and the Christian life.
The " tent of meeting " may represent to us
that chamber or temple of reverent inquiry
where the voice of the Eternal is heard, and His
glory and holiness are realised by the seeker after
God. It is a chamber silent, solemn, and dark,
curtained in such gloom, indeed, that some have
maintained there is no revelation to be had. no
glimpse of Divine life or love. But as the morn-
ing sunshine flowed into the Holy Place when
the hangings were drawn aside, so from the
natural world light may enter the chamber in
which fellowship with God is sought. " The in-
visible things of Him since the creation of the
world are clearly seen, being perceived through
the things that are made, even His everlasting
power and divinity." The world is not God, its
forces are not in the true sense elemental — do
not belong to the being of the Supreme. But it
Numbers viii. 1-4.]
SANCTUARY AND PASSOVER.
405
bears witness to the infinite mind, the omnipotent
will it cannot fitly represent. In the silence of
the tent of meeting, when the light of nature
shines through the door that opens to the sun-
rise, we realise that the inner mystery must be
in profound accord with the outer revelation —
that He who makes the light of the natural world
must be in Himself the light of the spiritual
world; that He who maintains order in the great
movements and cycles of the material universe,
maintains a like order in the changes and evolu-
tions of the immaterial creation.
Yet the light of the natural world shining thus
into the sacred chamber, while it aids the seeker
after God in no small degree, fails at a certain
point. It is too hard and glaring for the hour
of most intimate communion. By night, as it
were, when the world is veiled and silent, when
the soul is shut alone in earnest desire and
thought, then it is that the highest possibilities
of intercourse with the unseen life are realised.
And then, as the seven-branched candlestick with
its lamps illuminated the Holy Place, a radiance
which belongs to the sanctuary of life must
supply the soul's need. On the curtained walls,
on the altar, on the veil whose heavy folds guard
the most holy mysteries, this light must shine.
Nature does not reveal the life of the Ever-Liv-
ing, the love of the All-Loving, the will of the
All-Holy. In the conscious life and love of the
soul, created anew after the plan and likeness of
God in Christ, — here is the light. The unseen
God is the Father of our spirits. The lamps of
purified reason, Christ-born faith and love, holy
aspiration, are those which dispel the darkness
on our side the veil. The Word and the Spirit
give the oil by which those lamps are fed.
Must we say that with the Father, Christ also,
who once lived on earth, is in the inner cham-
ber which our gaze cannot penetrate? Even so.
A thick curtain is interposed between the earthly
and the heavenly. Yet while by the light which
shines in his own soul the seeker after God re-
gards the outer chamber — its altar, its shewbread,
its walls, and canopy — his thought passes beyond
the veil. The altar is fashioned according to a
pattern and used according to a law which God
has given. It points to prayer, thanksgiving,
devotion, that have their place in human life be-
cause facts exist out of which they arise — the
beneficence, the care, the claims of God. The
table of shewbread represents the spiritual pro-
vision made for the soul which cannot live but
by every word that cometh out of the mouth of
God. The continuity of the outer chamber with
the inner suggests the close union there is be-
tween the living soul and the living God — and
the veil itself, though it separates, is no jealous
and impenetrable wall of division. Every sound
on this side can be heard within; and the Voice
from the mercy seat, declaring the will of the
Father through the enthroned Word, easily
reaches the waiting worshipper to guide, com-
fort, and instruct. By the light of the lamps
kindled in our spiritual nature the things of God
are seen; and the lamps themselves are witnesses
to God. They burn and shine by laws He has
ordained, in virtue of powers that /re not for-
tuitous nor of the earth. The illumination they
give on this side the veil proves clearly that
within it the Parent Light, glorious, never-
fading, shines — transcendent reason, pure and
almighty will, unchanging love — the life which
animates the universe.
Again, the symbolism of the candlestick has an
application suggested by Rev. i. 20. Now, the
outer chamber of the tabernacle in which the
lamps shine represents the whole world of hu-
man life. The temple is vast; it is the temple of
the universe. Still the veil exists; it separates
the life of men on earth from the life in heaven,
with God. Isaiah in his oracles of redemption
spoke of a coming revolution which should open
the world to Divine light. " He will destroy in
this mountain the face of the covering that is
cast over all people, and the veil that is spread
over all nations." And the light itself, still as
proceeding from a Hebrew centre, is described
in the second book of the Isaian prophecies:
" For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace, and
for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her
righteousness go forth as brightness and her
salvation as a lamp that burneth. And the
nations shall see thy righteousness and all kings
thy glory." But the prediction was not fulfilled
until the Hebrew merged in the human and He
came who, as the Son of Man, is the true light
which lighteth every man coming into the world.
Dark was the outer chamber of the great
temple when the Light of life first shone, and
the darkness comprehended it not. When the
Church was organised, and the apostles of our
Lord, bearing the gospel of Divine grace, went
through the lands, they addressed a world still
under the veil of which Isaiah spoke. But the
spiritual enlightenment of mankind proceeded;
the lamps of the candlestick, set in their places,
showed the new altar, the new table of heavenly
bread, a feast spread for all nations, and made
the ignorant and earthly aware that they stood
within a temple consecrated by the ofifering of
Christ. St. John saw in Asia, amid the gross
darkness of its seven great cities, seven lamp-
stands with their lights, some increasing, some
waning in brightness. The sacred flame was
carried from country to country, and in every
centre of population a lamp was kindled. There
was no seven-branched candelabrum merely, but
one of a hundred, of a thousand arms. And all
drew their oil from the one sacred source, cast
more or less bravely the same Divine illumina-
tion on the dark eye of earth.
True, the world had its philosophy and poetry,
using, often with no little power, the themes of
natural religion. In the outer chamber of the
temple the light of nature gleamed on the altar,
on the shewbread, on the veil. But interpreta-
tion failed, faith in the unseen was mixed with
dreams, no real knowledge was gained of what
the folds of the curtain hid — the mercy-seat, the
holy law that called for pure worship and love of
one Living and True God. And then the dark-
ness that fell when the Saviour hung on the
cross, the darkness of universal sin and condem-
nation, was made so deeply felt that in the
shadow of it the true light might be seen, and the
lamp of every church might glow, a beacon of
Divine mercy shining across the troubled life of
man. And the world has responded, will re-
spond, with greater comprehension and joy, as
the Gospel is proclaimed with finer spirit, em-
bodied with greater zeal in lives of faith and love.
Christ in the truth, Christ in the sacraments,
Christ in the- words and deeds, of those who
compose His Church — this is the light. The
candlestick of every life, of every body of be-
lievers, should be as of beaten gold, no base
metal mixed with that which is precious. He
4o6
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
who fashions his character as a Christian is to
have the Divine idea before him and re-think it;
those who build the Church are to seek its purity,
strength, and grace. But still the light must
come from God, not from man, the light that
burned on the altar of the Divine sacrifice and
.•chines from the glorious personality of the risen
Lord.
3. The Passover.
Numbers ix. 1-14.*
The day fixed by statute for the feast which
commemorated the deliverance from Egypt was
the fourteenth of the first month — the year be-
ginning with the month of the exodus. Chap.
ix. opens by reiterating this statute, already
recorded in Exod. xii. and Lev. xxiii., and pro-
ceeds to narrate the observance of the Passover
in the second year. A supplementary provision
follows which met the case of those excluded
from the feast through ceremonial uncleanness.
In one passage it is assumed that the statutes and
ordinances of the celebration are already known.
The feast proper, ordered to be kept between the
two evenings of the fourteenth day, is, however,
alone spoken of; there is no mention of the
week of unleavened bread (Exod. xii. 15; Lev.
xxiii. 6), nor of the holy convocations with which
that week was to open and close. It is almost
impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Pass-
over in the wilderness was a simple family festi-
val at which every head of a household officiated
in a priestly capacity. The supplementary Pass-
over of this chapter was, according to the rabbis,
distinguished from the great feast by the rites
lasting only one day instead of seven, and by
other variations. There is, however, no trace of
such a difference between the one observance and
the other. What was done by the congregation
on the fourteenth of Abib was apparently to be
done at the " Little Passover " of the following
month.
On every male Israelite old enough to under-
stand the meaning of the Passover, the observ-
ance of it was imperative. Lest the supplement-
ary feast should be made an excuse for failure to
keep the fourteenth day of the first month, it is
enacted (ix. 13) that he who wilfully neglects
shall be " cut off from his people." For stran-
gers who sojourn among the Israelites provision
is made that if they wish to keep the feast they
may do so under the regulations applied to the
Hebrews; these, of course, including the indis-
pensable rite of circumcision, which had to pre-
cede any observance of a feast in honour of C^od.
Noticeable are the terms with which this statute
concludes: " Ye shall have one statute, both for
the stranger and for him that is born in the
land." The settlement in Canaan is assumed.
Regarding the Passover in the wilderness, diffi-
culties have been raised on the ground that a
sufificient number of lambs, males of the first
year, could scarcely have been provided, and that
the sacrificing of the lambs by Aaron and his two
sons within the prescribed time would have been
impossible. The second point of difificulty dis-
appears if this Passover was, as we have seen
reason to believe, a family festival like that ob-
served on the occasion of the exodus. Again,
the number of yearling male lambs required
• For chap. viii. 5-26 see p. 392.
would depend on the number who partook of the
feast. Calculations made on the basis that one
lamb sufficed for about fifteen, and that men
alone ate the Passover, leave the matter in ap-
parent doubt. Some fifty thousand lambs would
still be needed. Keeping by the enumeration of
the Israelites given in the muster-roll of Num-
bers, some writers explain that the desert tribes
might supply large numbers of lambs, and that
kids also were available. The difificulty, how-
ever, remains, and it is one of those which point
to the conclusion that the numbers given have
somehow been increased in the transcription of
the ancient records century after century.
The case of certain men who could not par-
take of the Passover in the first month, because
they were unclean through the dead, was brought
before Moses and Aaron. The men felt it to be
a great loss of privilege, especially as the march
was about to begin, and they might not have
another opportunity of observing the feast.
Who indeed could tell whether in the first con-
flict it might not be his lot to fall by the sword?
" We are unclean by the nephesh of a man," they
said: " wherefore are we kept back, that we may
not offer the oblation of the Lord in its ap-
pointed season among the children of Israel?"
The result of the appeal was the new law provid-
ing that two disabilities, and two only, should be
acknowledged. The supplementary Passover of
the second month was appointed for those un-
clean by the dead, and those on a journey who
found themselves too far off to reach in time
the precincts of the sanctuary. Those unclean
would be in a month presumably free from de-
filement; those on a journey would probably
have returned. The concession is a note of the
gracious reasonableness that in many ways dis-
tinguished the Hebrew religion; and the Pass-
over observances of Jews at the present day are
based on the conviction that what is practicable
is accepted by God, though statute and form
cannot be kept.
The question presents itself, why keeping of
the Passover should be necessary to covenant
union with Jehovah. And the reply bears on
Christian duty with regard to the analogous
sacrament of the Lord's Supper, for it rests on
the historical sanction and continuity of faith.
If God was to be trusted as a Saviour by the He-
brew, certain facts in the nation's history had to
be known, believed, and kept in clear remem-
brance; otherwise no reality could be found in
the covenant. And under the new covenant the
same holds good. The historical fact of Christ's
crucifixion must be kept in view, and constant!}
revived by the Lord's Supper. In either case re-
demption is the main idea presented by the com-
memorative ordinance. The Hebrew festival is
not to be held on the anniversary of the giving
of the law; it recalls the great deliverance con-
nected with the death of the first-born in Egypt.
So the Christian festival points to the deliver-
ance of humanity through the death of Christ.
Remarkable is the congruity between the view
of the law presented by Paul and the fact that
the great commemorative feast of Hebraism is
attached, not to the legislation of Sinai, but to
the rescue from Egyptian bondage. The law
kept the Hebrew nation in ward (Gal. iii. 23);
" it was added because of transgressions, till the
seed should come to whom the promise had been
made " (Gal. iii. 19); it " came in beside, that the
trespass might abound " (Rom. v. 20). The He-
Numbers ix. 15-23.J
THE CLOUD AND THE MARCH.
407
brews were not required to commemorate that
ordinance which laid on them a heavy burden
and was found, as time went on, to be " unto
death " (Rom. vii. 10). And, in like manner,
the feast of Christianity does not recall the
nativity of our Lord, nor that agony in the
garden which showed Him in the depths of
human sorrow, but that triumphant act of His
soul which carried Him, and humanity with
Him, through the shadow of death into the free
life of spiritual energy and peace. The Sacra-
ment of the Lord's Supper is the commemora-
tion of a victory by which we are enfranchised.
Partaking of it in faith, we realise our rescue
from the Egypt of slavery and fear, our unity
with Christ and with one another as " an elect
race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
for God's own possession." The wilderness
journey lies before us still; but in liberty we
press on as the ransomed of the Lord.
Mr. Morley has said, not without reason, that
" the modern argument in favour of the super-
natural origin of the Christian religion, drawn
from its suitableness to our needs and its Divine
response to our aspirations," is insufficient to
prove it the absolute religion. " The argument,"
he says, " can never carry us beyond the rela-
tivity of religious truth." * Christians may not
assume that " their aspirations are the absolute
measure of those of humanity in every stage."
To dispense with faith in the historical facts of
the life of Christ, His claims, and the significance
of His cross, to leave these in the haze of the
past as doubtful, incapable of satisfactory proof,
and to rest all on the subjective experience which
any one may reckon sufficient, is to obliterate the
covenant and destroy the unity of the Church.
Hence, as the Hebrews had their Passover, and
the observance of it gave them coherence as a
people and as a religious body, so we have the
Supper. No local centre, indeed, is appointed at
■which alone our symbolic feast can be observed.
Wherever a few renew their covenant with God
in proclaiming the Lord's death till He come,
there the souls of the faithful are nourished and
inspired through fellowship with Him who
brought spiritual life and liberty to our world.
CHAPTER VH.
THE CLOUD AND THE MARCH.
I. The Guiding Cloud.
Numbers ix. 15-23.
The pillar of cloud, the ensign of Jehovah's
royalty among the Hebrews, and for us one of
the most ancient symbols of His grace, is first
mentioned in the account of the departure from
Egypt. " Jehovah went before them by day in
a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by
night in a pillar of fire, to give them light." At
the passage of the Red Sea this murky cloud re-
moved and came between the host of Israel and
their pursuers. In the morning watch " Jehovah
looked unto the host of the Egyptians through
the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled
the host of the Egyptians." On that occasion it
followed or represented " the angel of God."
There is nowhere any attempt to give a com-
plete account of the symbol. We read of its
* " Voltaire," by John Morley, ed. 1891, pp. js^, 255.
glory filling the inner shrine and even the holy
place. At other times it only hovers above the
western end of the tabernacle, marking the situa-
tion of the ark. Now and again it moves from
that position, and covers the door of the tent of
meeting into which Moses has entered. The tar-
gums use the term Shechinah to indicate what it
was conceived to be — a luminous cloud, the visi-
ble manifestation of the Divine presence; and
Philo speaks of the fiery appearance of the Deity
shining forth from a cloud. But these are
glosses on the original descriptions and cannot
be altogether harmonised. In one passage only
(Isa. iv. 5) do we find a reference which appears
to throw any light on the real nature of the
symbol. Evidently recalling it, the prophet
says, " Jehovah will create over the whole habi-
tation of Mount Zion, and over her assemblies,
a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a
flaming fire by night." To him the cloud is one
of smoke rising from a fire which at night sends
up tongues of flame; and the reflection of the
bright fire on the overhanging cloud resembles
a canopy of glory.
Ewald's view is that the smoke of the altar
which went up in a thick column, visible at a
great distance by day, ruddy with flame by night,
was the origin of the conception. There are
various objections to this theory, which the
author of it himself finds difficult to reconcile
with many of the statements. At the same time
the pillar of cloud does not need to be thought
of as in any respect a more Divine symbol than
others which were associated with the tabernacle.
Certainly the ark of the covenant which Bezaleel
made according to the instructions of Moses was,
far beyond anything else, the sacred centre
around which the whole of the worship gathered,
the mysterious emblem of Jehovah's character,
the guarantee of His presence with Israel. It
was from the space above the mercy-seat, as we
have seen, that the Voice proceeded, not from
the pillar of cloud. The sanctity of the ark was
so great that it was never exposed to the view of
the people, nor even of the Levites who were set
apart to carry it. The cloud, on the other hand,
was seen by all, and had its principal function in
showing where the ark was in the camp or on
the march.
Now assuming, in harmony with the reference
in Isaiah, that the cloud was one of smoke, some
may be disposed to think that, like the ark of the
covenant, the holiest symbol of all, this was pro-
duced by human intervention, yet in a way not
incompatible with its sacredness, its mystery, and
value as a sign of Jehovah's presence. Where
Moses was as leader, law-giver, prophet, media-
tor, there God was for this people: what Moses
did in the spirit of Divine zeal and wisdom was
done for Israel by God. Through his inspiration
the ritual and its elaborate symbolism had their
origin. And is it not possible that after the man-
ner of the emblem of Jehovah which appeared in
the desert of Horeb the fire and cloud were now
realised? While some may adopt this explana-
tion, others again will steadily believe that the
appearance and movements of the cloud were
quite apart from human device or agency.
Scarcely any difficulty greater than that con-
nected with the pillar of cloud presents itself to
thoughtful modern readers of the Pentateuch.
The traditional view, apparently involved in the
narrative, is that in this cloud and in this alone
Jehovah revealed Himself in the interval be-
4o8
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
tween His appearance to Jacob and, long after-
wards, to Joshua in angelic form. Many will
maintain that unless the cloud was of super-
natural origin the whole relation of the Israelites
to their Divine King must fall into shadow.
Was not this one of the miracles which made
Hebrew history different in kind from that of
every other nation? Is it not one of the revela-
tions of the Unseen God on which we rnust build
if we are to have sure faith in the Old Testament
economy, and indeed in Christianity itself, as of
superhuman revelation? If we are not to inter-
pret literally what is said in Exodus — " The Lord
went before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to
lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire,
to give them light " — shall we not practically
abandon the whole Divine element in the his-
tory of Israel's deliverance and education? Thus
the difificulty stands.
Yet, it may be argued, since we have now the
revelation of God in the human life of Christ
and the gospel of salvation through the ministry
of men, what need is there to doubt that, for the
guidance of a people from place to place in the
wilderness, the wisdom, foresight, and faithful-
ness of an inspired man were the appointed
means? It is admitted that in many things
Moses acted for Jehovah, that his mind received
in idea, and his intellectual skill expressed in
verbal form, the laws and statutes which were to
maintain Israel's relation to God as a covenant
people. We follow our Lord Himself in saying
that Moses gave Israel the law. But the legisla-
tion of the Decalogue was far more of the nature
of a disclosure of God, and had far higher aims
and issues than could be involved in the guidance
through the desert. The law was for the spiritual
nature of the Hebrews. It brought them into
relation with God as just, pure, true, the sole
source of moral life and progress. As the nu-
cleus of the covenant it was symbolic in a sense
that fire could never be. It may be asked, then,
What need is there to doubt that Moses had his
part in this symbol which has so long appeared,
more than the other, important as a nexus be-
tween heaven and earth? To interpret the words
" whenever the cloud was taken up from over the
tent," as meaning that it was self-moved, would
imply that Moses, though he is called the leader,
did not lead but was led like the rest. And this
would reduce his office to a point to which no
prophet's work is reduced throughout the entire
Old Testament. Was he unable to direct the
march from Moseroth to Bene-jaakan? An in-
spired man, on whom, according to the will of
God, lay the whole responsibility for Israel's
national development, was he unable to deter-
mine when the pastures in one region were ex-
hausted and others had to be sought? Then in-
deed the mediation of his genius would be so
minimised that our whole idea of him must be
changed. Especially would we have to set aside
that prediction applied to Christ: " A prophet
shall the Lord raise up unto you, from your
brethren, like unto me."
And further, it may be said, the pillar of cloud
and fire retains the whole of its value as a sym-
bol when the intervention of Moses is admitted;
and this may be proved by the analogy of other
emblems. Almost parallel to the cloud, for in-
stance, is the serpent of brass, which became a
sign of Jehovah's healing power, and conveyed
new life to those who looked towards it in faith.
The fact that this rude image of a serpent was
made by human hands did not in the least im-
pair its value as an instrument of deliverance,
and the efificacy of that particular symbol was
selected by Christ as an illustration of His own
redeeming energy which was to be gained
through the cross: "As Moses lifted up the ser-
pent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of
man be lifted up." For certain occasions and
needs of a people one symbol avails; in other
circumstances there must be other signs. The
smoke-cloud was not enough when the serpents
terrified the host. Elijah in this same desert saw
a flashing fire; but Jehovah was not in the fire.
Natural symbols, however impressive, do not
avail by themselves; and when God by His
prophet says, " This cloud, this fire, symbolise
My presence," and the people believe, is it not
sufficient? The Divine Friend is assuredly there.
The symbol is not God; it represents a fact, im-
presses a fact which altogether apart from the
symbol would still hold good.
In the course of the passage (ix. 17-23) the
manner of the guidance given by means of the
cloud is carefully detailed. Sometimes the tribes
remained encamped for many days, sometimes
only from evening to morning. " Whether it
were two days, or a month, or a year, that the
cloud tarried on the tabernacle, abiding thereon,
the children of Israel remained encamped, and
journeyed not: but when it was taken up, they
journeyed." Here is emphasised the authority
which lay in " the commandment of the Lord by
the hand of Moses" (ver. 23). For Israel, as for
every nation that is not lost in the desert of the
centuries, and every society that is not on the
way to confusion, there must be wise guidance
and cordial submission thereto. We are not,
however, saved now, as the Israelites were, by a
great movement of society, or even of the
Church. Individually we must see the signal of
the Divine will, and march where it points the
way. And in a sense there are no rests of many
days. Each morning the cloud moves forward;
each morning we must strike our tents. Our
march is in the way of thought, of moral and
spiritual progress; and if we live in any real
sense, we shall press on along that way. The in-
dication of duty, the guidance in thought which
we are to follow, impose a Divine obligation
none the less that they are communicated
through the instrumentality of men. For every
group of travellers, associated in worship, duty,
and aim, there is some spiritual authority point-
ing the direction to be followed. As individuals
we have our separate calling, our responsibility
to Christ, with which nothing is to interfere.
But the unity of Christians in the faith and work
of the kingdom of God must be kept; and for
this one like Moses is needed, or at least a con-
sensus of judgment, a clear expression of the
corporate wisdom. The standard must be
carried forward, and where it moves on to quiet
pasturage or grim conflict the faithful are to ad-
vance.
" Ye armies of the living God,
His sacramental host.
Where hallowed footsteps never trod •
Take j'our appointed post.
" Follow the cross ; the ark of peace
Accompany j-our path."
Thus, we may say, the general direction runs;
and in the changing circumstances of the Church
submission is given by its members to those who
Numbers x. iio.]
THE CLOUD AND THE MARCH.
409
hold command at once from the Lord Himself
and from His people. But in the details of duty
each must follow the guidance of a cloud that
marks his own path to his own eye.
2. The Silver Trumpets.
Numbers x. i-io.
An air of antique simplicity is felt in the legis-
lation regarding the two trumpets of silver, yet
we are not in any way hindered from connecting
the statute with the idea of claiming human art
for Divine service. Instrumental music was of
course rudimentary in the wilderness; but, such
as it was, Jehovah was to control the use of it
through the priests; and the developed idea is
found in the account of the dedication of the
temple of Solomon, as recorded in 2 Chron. v.,
where we are told that besides the Levites, who
had cymbals, psalteries, and harps, a hundred
and twenty priests sounding with trumpets took
part in the music.
There is no need to question the early use of
these instruments; nevertheless, the legislation in
our passage assumes the settlement in Canaan,
and times when defensive war became necessary
and the observance of the sacred feasts fell into
a fixed order. The statute is instructive as to the
meaning of the formula " The Lord spake unto
Moses," and not less as to the gradual accretion
of particulars around an ancient nucleus. We
cannot set aside the sincere record, though it
may seem to make Jehovah speak on matters of
small importance. But interpretation must
spring from a right understanding of the purpose
suggested to the mind of Moses. Uses found for
the trumpets in the course of years are simply
extensions of the germinal idea of reserving for
sacred use those instruments and the art they
r-^presented. It was well that whatever fear or
exhilaration the sounding of them caused should
be controlled by those who were responsible to
Cfod for the moral inspiration of the people.
According to the statute, the two trumpets,
which were of very simple make, and capable of
only a few notes, had their use first in calling
assemblies. A long peal blown on one trumpet
summoned the princes who were the heads of the
thousands of Israel: a long peal on both trumpets
called the whole congregation to the " tent of
meeting." There were occasions when these
assemblies were required not for deliberation,
but to hear in detail the instructions and orders
of the leader. At other times the convocations
were for prayer or thanksgiving; or, again, the
people had to hear solemn reproofs and sen-
tences of punishment. We may imagine that
with varying sound, joyful or mournful, the
trumpets were made to convey some indication
of the purpose for which the assembly was called.
A sacred obligation lay on the Israelites- to
obey the summons, whether for joy or sorrow.
They heard in the trumpet-blast the very voice
of God. And upon us, bound to His service by
a more solemn and gracious covenant, rests an
obligation even more commanding. The unity
of the tribes of Israel, and their fellowship in
the obedience and worship of Jehovah, could
never be of half so much importance as the unity
of Christians in declaring their faith and fulfill-
ing their vocation. To come together at the call
of recurring opportunity, that we may confess
Christ and hear His word anew, is essential to
our spiritual life. Those who hear the call
should know its urgency and promptly respond,
lest in the midst of the holiest light there come
to be a shadow of deep darkness, the midnight
gloom of paganism and death.
Again, in the wilderness, the trumpets gave
the signal for striking the camp and setting out
on a new stage of the journey. Blown sharply
by way of alarm, the peals conveyed now to one,
now to another part of the host the order to ad-
vance. The movement of the pillar of cloud, we
may assume, could not be seen everywhere, and
this was another means of direction, not only of
a general kind, but with some detail.
Taking vv. 5, 6, along with the passage begin-
ning at ver. 14, we have an ideal picture of the
order of movement. One peal, sharply rung out
from the trumpets, would signify that the eastern
camp, embracing the tribes of Judah, Issachar,
and Zebulun, should advance. Then the taber-
nacle was to be taken down, and the Levites of
the families of Gershon and Merari were to set
forward with the various parts of the tent and its
enclosure. Next two alarms gave the signal to
the southern camp, that of Reuben, Simeon, and.
Gad. The Levites of the family of Kohath fol-
lowed, bearing the ark, the altar of incense, the
great altar, the table of shewbread, and other
furniture of the sanctuary. The third and fourth
camps, of which Ephraim and Benjamin were
the heads, brought up the rear. In these move-
ments the trumpets would be of much use. But
it is quite clear that the real difificulty was not to
set the divisions in motion each at a fit time.
The camps were not composed only of men
under military discipline. The women and chil-
dren, the old and feeble, had to be cared for.
The flocks and herds also had to be kept in hand.
We cannot suppose that there was any orderly
procession; rather was each camp a straggling
multitude, with its own delays and interruptions.
And so it is in the case of every social and re-
ligious movement. Clear enough may be the
command to advance, the trumpet of Providence,
the clarion of the Gospel. But men and women
are undisciplined in obedience and faith. They
have many burdens of a personal kind to bear,
many private dififerences and quarrels. How very
seldom can the great Leader find prompt re-
sponse to His will, though the terms of it are dis-
tinctly conveyed and the demand is urgent!
God makes a plan for us, opens our way, shows
us our need, proclaims the fit hours; but our un-
belief and fear and incapacity impede the march.
Nevertheless, through the grace of His provi-
dence, as Israel slowly made its way across the
desert and reached Canaan at last, the Church
moves, and will continue to move, towards the
holy future, the millennial age.
Turning now to the uses of the silver trumpets
after the settlement in Canaan, there is first that
connected with war. The people are presumed
to be living peaceably in their country; but some
neighbouring power has attacked them. The
sounding of the trumpets then is to be of the
nature of a prayer to the Divine Protector of the
nation. The cry of the dependent tribes will be
gathered up, as it were, into the shrill blast which
carries the alarm to the throne of the Lord of
Hosts. To the army and to the nation assurance
is given that the old promise of Jehovah's favour
remains in force, and that the promise, claimed
by the priests according to the covenant, will be
4IO
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
fulfilled. And this will make the trumpet-blast
exhilarating, a presage of victory. The claim
and hope of the nation rise heavenward. The
men of war stand together in faith, and put to
flight the armies of the aliens.
For the battles we have to fight, the conflicts
of faith with unbelief, and righteousness with
aggressive iniquity, an inspiration is needed like
that conveyed to Israel in the peal of the silver
trumpets. Have we any means of assurance re-
sembling that which was to animate the Hebrews
when the enemy came upon them? Even the
need is often unrecognised. Many take for
granted that religion is safe, that the truth re-
quires no valour of theirs in maintaining it, and
the Gospel of Christ no spirited defence. The
trumpet is not heard because the duty to which
all Christians are called as helpers of the Gospel
is never considered. Messages are accepted as
oracles of God only when they tell the trustful
of safety and confirm them in easy enjoyment of
spiritual privilege and hope. One kind of
trumpet peal alone is liked — that which sounds
an alarm to the unconverted, and bids them pre-
pare for the coming of the Judge.
But there are for all Christians frequent calls
to a service in which they need the courage of
faith and every hope the covenant can give. At
the present time no greater mistake is possible
than to sit in comfort under the shadow of an-
cient forms and creeds. We cannot realise the
value of the promise given to genuine faith un-
less we abandon the crumbling walls and meet
our assailants in the open ground, where we can
see them face to face, and know the spirit with
which they fight, the ensigns of their war.
There is no brave thinking now in those old
shelters, no room to use the armour of light.
Christianity is one of the free forces of human
life. Its true inspiration is found only when
those who stand by it are bent on securing and
extending the liberties of men. The trumpets
that lift to heaven the prayers of the faithful and
fill the soldiers of the Cross with the hope of
victory can never be in the hands of those who
claim exclusive spiritual authority, nor will they
ever again sound the old Hebrew note. They
inspire those who are generous, who feel that
the more they give the more they are blessed,
who would impart to others their own life that
God's love to the world may be known. They
call us not to defend our own privileges, but to
keep the way of salvation open to all, to prevent
the Pharisee and the unbeliever from closing
against men the door of heavenly grace.
Once more; in the days of gladness and
solemn feasting the trumpets were t-o be blown
over the burnt offerings and peace offerings.
The joy of the Passover, the hope of the new-
moon festival, especially in the beginning of the
seventh month, were to be sent up to heaven with
the sound of these instruments, not as if Jehovah
had forgotten His people and His covenant, but
for the assurance and comfort of the wor-
shippers. He was a Friend before whom they
could rejoice, a King whose forgiveness was
abundant, who showed mercy unto the thousands
who loved Him and kept His commandments.
The music, loud, and clear, and bold, was to
carry to all who heard it the conviction that God
had been sought in the way of His holy law, and
would cause blessing to descend upon Israel.
We claim with gentler sounds, those of lowly
prayer and pleading, the help of the Most High.
Even in the secret chamber when the door is:
shut we can address our Father, knowing that
our claim will be answered for the sake of
Christ. Yet there are times when the loud and
clear hallelujahs, borne heavenward by human
voices and pealing organ, seem alone to express
our exultation. Then the instruments and
methods of modern art may be said to bind the
old Hebrew times, the ancient faith of the wil-
derness and of Zion, to our own. We carry out
ideas that lie at the heart of the race; we realise
that human skill, human discovery, find their
highest use and delight when they make beauti-
ful and inspiring the service of God.
3. The Order of March.
Numbers x. 11-28.
The difficulties connected with the order of
march prescribed in this passage have been often
and fully rehearsed. According to the enumera-
tion given in chap, ii., the van of the host formed
by the division of Judah, men, women, and chil-
dren, must have reached some six hundred thou-
sand at least. The second division, headed by
Reuben, would number five hundred thousand.
The Levites, with their wives and children, ac-
cording to the same computation would be alto-
gether about seventy thousand. Then came the
two remaining camps, about nine hundred thou-
sand souls. At the first signal six hundred thou-
sand would have to get into marching order and
move off across the desert. There could be no
absolute separation of the fighting men from
their families and flocks, and even if there were
no narrow passes to confine the vast multitude,
it woul 1 occupy miles of road. We must not put
a day's journey at more than ten miles. The
foremost groups would therefore have reached
the camping ground, let us say, when the last
ranks of the second division were only beginning
to move; and the rear would still be on its way
when night had long fallen upon the desert.
Whatever obstacles were removed for the Israel-
ites, the actual distance to be traversed could not
be made less; and the journey is always repre-
sented as a stern and serious discipline. When
we take into account the innumerable hindrances
which so vast a company would certainly have
to contend with, it seems impossible that the
order of march as detailed in this passage could
have been followed for two days together.
Suppose we receive the explanation that the
numbers have been accidentally increased in the
transcription of records. This would relieve the
narrative, not only here but at many points, of a
burden it can hardly carry. And we remember
that according to the Book of Nchemiah less
than fifty thousand Jews, returning from Babylon
at the close of the captivity, reconstructed the
nation, so that it soon showed considerable spirit
and energy. If the numbers as they stand in the
Pentateuch were reduced, divided by ten, as
some propose, the desert journey would appear
less of a mere marvel. It would remain one of
the most striking and important migrations
known to history; it would lose none of its re-
ligious significance. No religious idea is af-
fected by the numbers who receive it; nor do
the great purposes of God depend on multitudes
for their fulfilment. We can view with com-
posure the criticism which touches the record on
Numbers x. 29-36.]
HOBAB THE KENITE.
411
its numerical side, because we know the pro-
phetic work of Moses and the providential edu-
cation of Israel to be incontrovertible facts.
It has been suggested that the order of march
as described did not continue to be kept through-
out the whole of the wilderness journey; that in
point of fact it may have been followed only so
far as Kadesh. Whether this was so or not it
must be taken into account that for the greater
part of the forty years there was absolutely no
travelling: the tribes were settled in the wilder-
ness of Paran. The proofs are incidental but
conclusive. From a central point, where the
cloud rested (Numb. x. 12), the people spread
themselves, we may suppose, in various direc-
tions, seeking grass for their cattle, and living
for the most part like the other inhabitants of
the district. Even if there were but three years
of travelling in all, before and after the sojourn
in the neighbourhood of Kadesh, there would
be ample time for the movement from one place
to another mentioned in the records.
CHAPTER VIII.
HOBAB THE KENITE.
Numbers x. 29-36.
The Kenites, an Arab tribe belonging to the
region of Midian, and sometimes called Midian-
ites, sometimes Amalekites, were already in close
and friendly relation with Israel. Moses, when
he went first to Midian, had married a daughter
of their chief Jethro, and, as we learn from
Exod. xviii., this patriarch, with his daughter
Zipporah and the two sons she had borne to
Moses, came to the camp of Israel at the mount
of God. The meeting was an occasion of great
rejoicing; and Jethro, as priest of his tribe, hav-
ing congratulated the Hebrews on the deliver-
ance Jehovah had wrought for them, " took a
burnt offering and sacrifices for God," and was
joined by Moses, Aaron, and all the elders of
Israel in the sacrificial feast. A union was thus
established between Kenites and Israelites of the
most solemn and binding kind. The peoples
were sworn to continual friendship.
While Jethro remained in the camp his counsel
was given in regard to the manner of administer-
ing justice. In accordance with it rulers of
thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens were
chosen, "able men, such as feared God, men of
truth, hating covetousness "; and to them
matters of minor importance were referred for
judgment, the hard causes only being brought
before Moses. The sagacity of one long experi-
enced in the details of government came in to
supplement the intellectual power and the in-
spiration of the Hebrew leader.
It docs not appear that any attempt was made
to attach Jethro and the whole of his tribe to
the fortunes of Israel. The small company of
the Kenites could travel far more swiftly than a
great host, and, if they desired, could easily
overtake the march. Moses, we are told, let his
father-in-law depart, and he went to his own
place. But now that the long stay of the Israel-
ites at Sinai is over and they are about to ad-
vance to Canaan, the visit of a portion of the
Kenite tribe is made the occasion of an appeal to
their leader to cast in his lot with the people of
God. There is some confusion in regard to the
relationship of Hobab with Jethro or Raguel.
Whether Hobab was a son or grandson of the
chief cannot be made out. The word translated
father-in-law (Numb. x. 29), means a relation by
marriage. Whatever was the tie between Ho-
bab and Moses, it was at all events so close, and
the Kenite had so much sympathy with Israel,
that it was natural to make the appeal to him:
" Come thou with us, and we will do thee good."
Himself assured of the result of the enterprise,
anticipating with enthusiasm the high destiny of
the tribes of Israel, Moses endeavours to per-
suade these children of the desert to take the way
to Canaan.
There was a fascination in the movement of
that people who, rescued from bondage by their
Heavenly Friend, were on their journey to the
land of His promise. This fascination Hobab
and his followers appear to have felt; and Moses
counted upon it. The Kenites, used to the wan-
dering life, accustomed to strike their tents any
day as occasion required, no doubt recoiled from
the thought of settling even in a fertile country,
still more from dwelling in any walled town.
But the south of Canaan was practically a wil-
derness, and there, keeping to a great extent
their ancestral habits, they might have had the
liberty they loved, yet kept in touch with their
friends of Israel. Some aversion from the He-
brews, who still bore certain marks of slavery,
would have to be overcome. Yet, with the bond
already established, there needed only some
understanding of the law of Jehovah, and some
hope in His promise to bring the company of
Hobab to decision.
And Moses had right in saying, " Come with
us, and we will do thee good; for Jehovah hath
spoken good concerning Israel." The outlook
to a future was something which the Kenites as
a people had not, never could have in their des-
ultory life. Unprogressive, out of the way of
the great movements of humanity, gaining noth-
ing as generations went by, but simply reproduc-
ing the habits and treasuring the beliefs of their
fathers, the Arab tribe might maintain itself,
might occasionally strike for righteousness in
some conflict, but otherwise had no prospect,
could have no enthusiasm. They would live
their hard life, they would enjoy freedom, they
would die — such would be their history. Com-
pared with that poor outlook, how good it would
be to share the noble task of establishing on the
soil of Canaan a nation devoted to truth and
righteousness, in league with the living God, des-
tined to extend His kingdom and make His faith
the means of blessing to all. It was the great
opportunity of these nomads. As yet, indeed,
there was no courage of religion, no brightness
of enthusiasm among the Israelites. But there
was the ark of the covenant, there were the sacri-
fices, the law; and Jehovah Himself, always
present with His people, was revealing His will
and His glory by oracle, by discipline and de-
liverance.
Now these Kenites may be takeli as represent-
ing a class, in the present day to a certain ex-
tent attracted, even fascinated, by the Church,
who standing irresolute are appealed to in terms
like those addressed by Moses to Hobab. They
feel a certain charm, for in the wide organisation
and vast activity of the Christian Church, quite
apart from the creed on which it is based, there
are signs of vigour and purpose which contrast
favourably with endeavours directed to mere
412
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
material gain. In idea and in much of its effort
the Church is splendidly humane, and it provides
interests, enjoyments, both of an intellectual and
artistic kind, in which all can share. Not so
much its universality nor its mission of convert-
ing the world, nor its spiritual worship, but
rather the social advantages and the culture it
offers draw towards it those minds and lives.
And to them it extends, too often without avail,
the invitation to join its march.
Is it asked why many, partly fascinated, re-
main proof against its appeals? why an increas-
ing number prefer, like Hobab, the liberty of the
desert, their own unattached, desultory, hope-
less way of life? The answer must partly be
that, as it is, the Church does not fully commend
itself by its temper, its enthusiasm, its sincerity
and Christianity. It attracts but is unable to
command, because with all its culture of art it
does not appear beautiful, with all its claims of
spirituality it is not unworldly; because, profess-
ing to exist for the redemption of society, its
methods and standards are too often human
rather than Divine. It is not that the outsider
shrinks from the religiousness of the Church as
overdone; rather does he detect a lack of that
very quality. He could believe in the Divine
calling and join the enterprise of the Church if
he saw it journeying steadily towards a better
country, that is a heavenly. Its earnestness
would then command him; faith would, compel
faith. But social status and temporal aims are
not subordinated by the members of the Church,
nor even by its leaders. And whatever is done
in the way of providing attractions for the
pleasure-loving, and schemes of a social kind,
these, so far from gaining the undecided, rather
make them less disposed to believe. More ex-
citing enjoyments can be found elsewhere. The
Church offering pleasures and social reconstruc-
tion is attempting to catch those outside by what,
from their point of view, must appear to be chaff.
It is a "question which every body of Christians
has need to ask itself — Can we honestly say to
those without. Come with us, and we will do you
good? In order that there may be certainty on
this point, should not every member of the
Church be able to testify that the faith he has
gives joy and peace, that his fellowship with God
is making life pure and strong and free? Should
there not be a clear movement of the whole body,
year by year, towards finer spirituality, broader
and more generous love? The gates of member-
ship are in some cases opened to such only as
make very clear and ample profession. It does
not, however, appear that those already within
have always the Christian spirit corresponding
to that high profession. And yet as Moses
could invite Hobab and his company without
misgiving because Jehovah was the Friend and
Guide of Israel and had spoken good concern-
ing her, so because Christ is the Head of the
Church, and Captain of her salvation, those out-
side may well be urged to join her fellowship. If
all depended on the earnestness of our faith and
the steadfastness of our virtue we should not
dare to invite others to join the march. But it
is with Christ we ask them to unite. Imperfect
in many ways, the Church is His, exists to show
His death, to proclaim His Gospel and extend
His power. In the whole range of human
knowledge and experience there is but one life
that is free, pure, hopeful, energetic in every
noble sense, and at the same time calm. In the
whole range of human existence there is but
one region in which the mind and the soul find
satisfaction and enlargement, in which men of all
sorts and conditions find true harmony. That
life and that region of existence are revealed by
Christ; into them He only is the Way. The
Church, maintaining this, demonstrating this, is
to invite all who stand aloof. They who join
Christ and follow Him will come to a good land,
a heavenly heritage.
The first invitation given to Hobab was set
aside. " Nay," he said, " I will not go; but I
will depart to my own land and to my kindred."
The old ties of country and people were strong
for him. The true Arab loves his country pas-
sionately. The desert is his home, the moun-
tains are his friends. His hard life is a life of
liberty. He is strongly attached to his tribe,
which has its own traditions, its own glories.
There have been feuds, the memory of which
must be cherished. There are heirlooms that
give dignity to those who possess them. The
people of the clan are brothers and sisters. Very
little of the commercial mingles with the life of
the desert; so perhaps family feeling has the
more power. These influences Hobab felt, and
this besides deterred him, that if he joined the
Israelites he would be under the command of
Moses. Hobab was prospective head of his
tribe, already in partial authority at least. To
obey the word of command instead of giving it
was a thing he could not brook. No doubt the
leader of Israel had proved himself brave, reso-
lute, wise. He was a man of ardent soul and
fitted for royal power. But Hobab preferred the
chieftainship of his own small clan to service
under Moses; and, brought to the point of de-
ciding, he would not agree.
Freedom, habit, the hopes that have become
part of life — these in like manner interpose be-
tween many and a call which is known to be
from God. There is restraint within the circle of
faith; old ideas, traditional conceptions of life,
and many personal ambitions have to be relin-
quished by those who enter it. Accustomed to
that Midian where every man does according to
the bent of his own will, where life is hard but
uncontrolled, where all they have learned to care
for and desire may be found, many are unwilling
to choose the way of religion, subjection to the
law of Christ, the life of spiritual conflict and
trial, however much may be gained at once and
in the eternal future. Yet the liberty of their
Midian is illusory. It is simply freedom to
spend strength in vain, to roam from place to
place where all alike are barren, to climb moun-
tains lightning-riven, swept by interminable
storms. And the true liberty is with Christ, who
opens the prospect of the soul, and redeems the
life from evil, vanity, and fear. The heavenward
march appears to involve privation and conflict,
which men do not care to face. But is the
worldly life free from enemies, hardships, disap-
pointments? The choice is, for many, between
a bare life over which death triumphs, and a life
moving on over obstacles, through tribulations,
to victory and glory. The attractions of land
and people, set against those of Christian hope,
have no claim. " Every one," says the Lord,
" that hath left houses, or brethren, or sisters,
or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for
My sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall
inherit eternal life."
Passing on, the narrative informs us that
Numbers x. 29 3:..]
HOBAB THE KENITE.
413
Moses used another plea: " Leave us not, I pray
thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to
encamp in the wilderness, and thou shalt be to us
instead of eyes." Hobab did not respond to the
promise of advantage to himself; he might be
moved by the hope of being useful. Knowing
that he had to deal with a man who was proud,
and in his way magnanimous, Moses wisely
used this appeal. And he used it frankly,
without pretence. Hobab might do real and
valuable service to the tribes on their march
to Canaan. Accustomed to the desert, over
which he had often travelled, acquainted with
the best methods of disposing a camp in any
given position, with the quick eye and habit of
observation which the Arab life gives, Hobab
would be the very adjutant to whom Moses
might commit many details. If he joins the
tribes on this footing it will be without pretence.
He professes no greater faith either in Israel's
destiny or in Jehovah's sole Godhead than he
really feels. Wishing Israel well, interested in
the great experiment, yet not bound up in it, he
may give his counsel and service heartily so far
a-i they avail.
We are here introduced to another phase of
tlie relation between the Church and those who
do not altogether accept its creed, or acknowl-
edge its mission to be supernatural. Divine.
Confessing unwillingness to receive the Chris-
tian system as a whole, perhaps openly express-
ing doubts of the miraculous, for example, many
in our day have still so much sympathy with the
ethics and culture of Christianity that they would
willingly associate themselves with the Church,
and render it all the service in their power.
Their tastes have led them to subjects of study
and modes of self-development not in the proper
sense religious. Some are scientific, some have
literary talent, some artistic, some financial. The
question may be, whether the Church should in-
vite these to join her ranks in any capacity,
whether room may be made for them, tasks
assigned to them. On the one hand, would it be
dangerous to Christian faith? on the other hand,
would it involve them in self-deception? Let it
be assumed that they are men of honour and in-
tegrity, men who aim at a high moral standard
and have some belief in the spiritual dignity man
may attain. On this footing may their help be
sought and cordially accepted by the Church?
We cannot say that the example of Moses
should be taken as a rule for Christians. It was
one thing to invite the co-operation with Israel
for a certain specified purpose of an Arab chief
who differed somewhat in respect of faith; it
would be quite another thing to invite one whose
faith, if he has any, is only a vague theism, to
give his support to Christianity. Yet the cases
are so far parallel that the one illustrates the
other. And one point appears to be this, that
the Church may show itself at least as sympa-
thetic as Israel. Is there but a single note of
unison between a soul and Christianity? Let
ihat be recognised, struck again and again till it
)s clearly heard. Our Lord rewarded the faith
of a Syrophoenician woman, of a Roman cen-
turion. His religion cannot be injured by gen-
♦•rosity. Attachment to Himself personally, dis-
position to hear His words and accept His
morality, should be hailed as the possible dawn
of faith, not frowned upon as a splendid sin.
Every one who helps sound knowledge helps the
Church. The enthusiast for true liberty has a
27— Vol. L
point of contact with Him whose truth gives
freedom. The Church is a spiritual city with
gates that stand wide open day and night to-
wards every region and condition of human life,
towards the north and south, the east and west.
If the wealthy are disposed to help, let them
bring their treasures; if the learned devote them-
selves reverently and patiently to her literature,
let their toil be acknowledged. Science has a
tribute that should be highly valued, for it is
gathered from the works of God; and art of
every kind — of the poet, the musician, the sculp-
tor, the painter — may assist the cause of Divine
religion. The powers men have are given by
Him who claims all as His own. The vision of
Isaiah in which he saw Tarshish and the isles^
Sheba and Seba offering gifts to the temple of
God, did not assume that the tribute was in all
cases that of covenant love. And the Church of
Christ has broader human sympathy and better
right to the service of the world than Isaiah
knew. For the Church's good, and for the good
of those who may be willing in any way to aid
her work and development, all gifts should be
gladly received, and those who stand hesitating
should be invited to serve.
But the analogy of the invitation to Hobab in-
volves another point which must always be kept
in view. It is this, that the Church is not to
slacken her march, not divert her march in any
degree because men not fully in sympathy with
her join the company and contribute their
service. The Kenite may cast in his lot with the
Israelites and aid them with his experience. But
Moses will not cease to lead the tribes towards
Canaan, will not delay their progress a single
day for Hobab's sake. Nor will he less earnestly
claim sole Godhead for Jehovah, and insist that
every sacrifice shall be made to Him and every
life kept holy in His way, for His service. Per-
haps the Kenite faith differed little in its elements
from that which the Israelites inherited. It may
have been monotheistic; and we know that part
of the worship was by way of sacrifice not unlike
that appointed by the Mosaic law. But it had
neither the wide ethical basis nor the spiritual
aim and intensity which Moses had been the
means of imparting to Israel's religion. And
from the ideas revealed to him and embodied in
the moral and ceremonial law he could not for
the sake of Hobab resile in the least. There
should be no adjustment of creed or ritual to
meet the views of the new ally. Onward to Ca-
naan, onward also along the lines of religioiji':,"
duty and development, the tribes would I10I8
their way as before.
In modern alliances with the Church a danger
is involved, sufificiently apparent to all who re-
gard the state of religion. History is full of in-
stances in which, to one company of helpers and
another, too much has been conceded; and the
march of spiritual Christianity is still greatly
impeded by the same thing. Money contributed,
by whomsoever, is held to give the donors a
right to take their place in councils of the
Church, or at least to sway decision now in one
direction, now in another. Prestige is offered
with the tacit understanding that it shall bo re-
paid with deference. The artist uses his skill,
but not in subordination to the ideas of spiritual
religion. He assumes the right to give them his
own colour, and may even, while professing to
serve Christianity, sensualise its teaching.
Scholarship offers help, but is not content to
414
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
submit to Christ. Having been allowed to join
itself with the Church, it proceeds, not infre-
quently, to play the traitor's part, assailing the
faith it was invoked to serve. Those who care
more for pleasure than for religion may within a
certain range find gratification in Christian wor-
ship; they are apt to claim more and still more of
the element that meets their taste. And those
who are bent on social reconstruction would
often, without any thought of doing wrong, di-
vert the Church entirely from its spiritual mis-
sion. When all these influences are taken into
account, it will be seen that Christianity has to
go its way amid perils. It must not be unsym-
pathetic. But those to whom its camp is opened,
instead of helping the advance, may neutralise
the whole enterprise.
Every Church has great need at present to
consider whether that clear spiritual aim which
ought to be the constant guide is not forgotten,
at least occasionally, for the sake of this or that
alliance supposed to be advantageous. It is diffi-
cult to find the mean, difficult to say who serve
the Church, who hinder its success. More diffi-
cult still is it to distinguish those who are
heartily with Christianity from those who are
only so in appearance, having some nostrum of
their own to promote. Hobab may decide to go
with Israel; but the invitation he accepts, per-
haps with an air of superiority, of one conferring
a favour, is really extended to him for his good,
for the saving of his life. Let there be no blow-
ing of the silver trumpets to announce that a
prince of the Kenites henceforth journeys with
Israel; they were not made for that! Let there
be no flaunting of a gay ensign over his tent.
We shall find that a day comes when the men
who stand by true religion have — perhaps
through Kenite influence — the whole congrega-
tion to face. So it is in Churches. On the other
hand, Pharisaism is a great danger, equally tend-
ing to destroy the value of religion; and Provi-
dence ever mingles the elements that enter into
the counsels of Christianity, challenging the
highest wisdom, courage, and charity of the
faithful.
The closing verses of chap. x. (33-6), belong-
ing, like the passage just considered, to the pro-
phetic narrative, affirm that the ark was borne
from Sinai three days' journey before the host to
find a halting-place. The reconciliation between
this statement and the order which places the ark
'n the centre of the march, may be that the ideal
plan was at the outset not observed, for some
sufficient reason. The absolute sincerity of the
compilers of the Book of Numbers is shown in
their placing almost side by side the two state-
ments without any attempt to harmonise. Both
were found in the ancient documents, and both
were set down in good faith. The scribes into
whose hands the old records came did not
assume the role of critics.
At the beginning of every march Moses is re-
ported to have used the chant: " Rise up, O
Jehovah, and let Thine enemies be scattered;
and let them that hate Thee flee before Thee."
Wh^n the ark rested he said: " Return, O Je-
hovah, unto the ten thousands of the thousands
of Israel." The former is the opening strain of
Psalm Ixviii., and its magnificent strophes move
towards the idea of that rest which Israel finds
in the protection of her God. Part of the ode
returns upon the desert journey, adding some
features and incidents, omitted in the narrations
of the Pentateuch — such as the plentiful rain
which refreshed the weary tribes, the publishing
by women of some Divine oracle. But on the
whole the psalm agrees with the history, mak-
ing Sinai the scene of the great revelation of
God, and indicating the guidance He gave
through the wilderness by means of the cloudy
pillar. The chants of Moses would be echoed
by the people, and would help to maintain the
sense of constant relation between the tribes
and their unseen Defender.
Through the wilderness Israel went, not know-
ing from what quarter the sudden raid of a
desert people might be made. Swiftly, silently,
as if springing out of the very sand, the Arab
raiders might bear down upon the travellers.
They were assured of the guardianship of Him
whose eye never slumbered, when they kept His
way and held themselves at His command.
Here the resemblance to our case in the journey
of life is clear; and we are reminded of our need
of defence and the only terms on which we may
expect it. We may look for protection against
those who are the enemies of God. But we have
no warrant for assuming that on whatever errand
we are bound we have but to invoke the Divine
arm in order to be secure. The dreams of those
who think their personal claim on God may
always be urged have no countenance in the
prayer, " Rise up, O Jehovah, and let Thine ene-
mies be scattered." And as Israel settling tc
rest after some weary march could enjoy the
sense of Jehovah's presence only if the duties of
the day had been patiently done, and the thought
of God's will had made peace in every tribe, and
His promise had given courage and hope — so
for us, each day will close with the Divine bene-
diction when we have " fought a good fight and
kept the faith." Fidelity there must be; or, if it
has failed, the deep repentance that subdues wan-
dering desire and rebellious will, bringing the
whole of life anew into the way of lowly service.
CHAPTER IX
THE STRAIN OF THE DEStRT JOURNEY.
Numbers xi.
The narrative has accompanied the march of
Israel but a short way froni che mount of God to
some spot marked for an encampment by the ark
of the covenant, and alrtady complaining has to
be told of, and the swift judgment of those who
complained. The Israelites have made a reserva-
tion in their covenant with God, that though obe-
dience and trust are solemnly promised, yet leave
shall be taken to murmur against His providence.
They will have Gud for their Protector, they will
worship Him: but let Him make their life srnooth.
Much has had to be borne which they did not
anticipate; and they grumble and speak evil.
Generally men do not realise that their mur-
muring is against God. They have no intention
to accuse His providence. It is of other men
they complain, who come in their way; of acci-
dents, so called, for which no one seems to be
responsible; of regulations, well enough meant,
which at some point prove vexatious: the ob-
tusenebs and carelessness of those who undertake
but do not perform. And there does seem to
be a great difference between displeasure with.
Numbers xi.]
THE STRAIN OF THE DESERT JOURNEY.
415
human agents whose follies and failures provoke
us, and discontent with our own lot and its trials.
At the same time, this has to be kept in view,
that while we carefully refrain from criticising
Providence, there may be, underlying our com-
plaints, a tacit opinion that the world is not well
made nor well ordered. To a certain extent the
persons who irritate us are responsible for their
mistakes; but just among those who are prone
to err our discipline has been appointed. To
gird at them is as much a revolt against the
Creator as to complain of the heat of summer or
the winter cold. With our knowledge of what the
world is, of what our fellow-creatures are, should
go the perception that God rules everywhere
and stands against us when we resent what, in
His world, we have to do or to sufifer. He is
against those who fail in duty also. Yet it is not
for us to be angry. Our due will not be with-
held. Even when we sufifer most it is still of-
fered, still given. While we endeavour to rem-
edy the evils we feel, it must be without a thought
that the order appointed by the Great King fails
us at any point.
The punishment of those who complained is
spoken of as swift and terrible. "' The fire of the
Lord burnt among them, and devoured in the
uttermost part of the camp." This judgment
fails under a principle assumed throughout the
whole book, that disaster must overtake trans-
gressors, and conversely that death by pestilence,
earthquake, or lightning is invariably a result
of sin. For the Israelites this was one of the
convictions that maintained a sense of moral
duty and of the danger of offending God. Again
and again in the wilderness, where thunderstorms
were common and plagues spread rapidly, the
impression was strongly confirmed that the Most
High observed everything that was done against
His will. The journey to Canaan brought in
this way a new experience of God to those
who had been accustomed to the equable con-
ditions of climate and the comparative health en-
joyed in Egypt. The moral education of the
people advanced by the quickening of conscience
in regard to all that befell Israel.
From the disaster at Taberah the narrative
passes to another phase of complaint in which the
whole camp was involved. The dissatisfaction
began amongst the " mixed multitude " — that
somewhat lawless crowd of low-caste Egyptians
and people of the Delta and the wilderness who
attached themselves to the host. Among them
first, because they had absolutely no interest in
Israel's hope, a disposition to quarrel with their
circumstances would naturally arise. But the
spirit of dissatisfaction grew apace, and the
burden of the new complaint was: "We have
nought but this manna to look to." The part of
the desert into which the travellers had now
penetrated was even more sterile than Midian.
Hitherto the food had been varied somewhat by
occasional fruits and the abundant milk of kine
and goats. But pasturage for the cattle was
scanty in the wilderness of Paran, and there were
no trees of any kind. Appetite found nothing
that was refreshing. Their soul was dried away.
It was a common belief in our Lord's time
that the manna, falling from heaven, very food of
the angels, had been so satisfying, so delicious,
that no people could have been more favoured
than those who ate of it. When Christ spoke
of the meat which endureth unto eternal life, the
thought of His hearers immediately turned to
the manna as the special gift of God to their
fathers, and they conceived an expectation that
Jesus would give them that bread of heaven, and
so prove Himself worthy of their faith. But He
replied, " Moses gave you not that bread out of
heaven, but My Father giveth you the true bread
out of heaven. I am the Bread of Life."
In the course of time the manna had been, so
to speak, glorified. It appeared to the later
generations one of the most wonderful and im-
pressive things recorded in the whole history
of their nation, this provision made for the wan-
dering host. There was the water from the
rock, and there was the manna. What a benig-
nant Providence had watched over the tribes!
How bountiful God had been to the people in
the old days! They longed for a sign of the
same kind. To enjoy it would restore their faith
and put them again in the high position which
had been denied for ages.
But these notions are not borne out by the
history as we have it in the passage under notice.
Nothing is said about angels' food — that is a
poetical expression which a psalmist used in his
fervour. Here we read, as to the coming of the
rnanna, that when the dew fell upon the camp at
night the manna fell upon it, or with it. And so
far from the people being satisfied, they com-
plained that instead of the fish and onions, cu-
cumbers and melons of Egypt, they had nothing
but manna to eat. The taste of it is described
as like that of fresh oil. In Exodus it is said to
have resembled wafers mixed with honey. It
was not the privilege of the Israelites in the wil-
derness but their necessity to live on this some-
what cloying food. In no sense can it be called
ideal. Nevertheless, complaining about it, they
were in serious fault, betraying the foolish ex-
pectation that on the way to liberty they should
have no privations. And their discontent with
the manna soon became alarming to Moses. A
sort of hysteria spread through the camp. Not
the women only, but the men at the doors of their
tents bewailed their hard lot. There was a tem-
pest of tears and cries.
God, through His providence, determining for
men. carrying out His rwn designs for their
good, does not allow them to keep in the region
of the usual and of mere comfort. Something
is brought into their life which stirs the soul.
In new hope they begin an enterprise the course
and end of which they cannot foresee. The con-
ventional, the pleasant, the peace and abundance
of Egypt, can be no longer enjoyed if the soul
is to have its own. By Moses Jehovah sum-
moned the Israelites from the land of plenty to
fulfil a high mission and when they responded,
it was so far a proof that there was in them spirit
enough for an uncommon destiny. But for the
accomplishment of it they had to be nerved and
braced by trial. Their ordeal was that mortify-
ing of the flesh and of sensuous desire which
must be undergone if the hopes through which
the mind becomes conscious of the will of God
are to be fulfilled.
In our personal history God, reaching us by
His word, enlightening us with regard to the
true ends of our being, calls us to begin a journey
which has no earthly terminus and promises no
earthly reward. We may be quite sure that we
have not yet responded to His call if there is
nothing of the wilderness in our life, no hard-
ship, no adventure, no giving up of what is good
in a temporal sense for what is good in a spirit-
4i6
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
ual sense. The very essence of the design of God
concerning a man is that he leave the lower and
seek the higher, that he deny himself that which
according to the popular view is his life, in order
to seek a remote and lofty goal. There will be
duty that calls for faith, that needs hope and
courage. In doing it he will have recurring
trials of his spirit, necessities of self-discipline,
stern difficulties of choice and action. Every
one of these he must face.
What is wrong with many lives is that they
have no strain in them as of a desert journey
towards a heavenly Canaan, the realisation of
spiritual life. Adventure, when it is undertaken,
is often for the sake of getting fish and melons
and cucumbers by-and-by in greater abundance
and of better kinds. Many live hardly just now,
not because they are on the way to spiritual free-
dom and the high destiny of life in God, but
because they believe themselves to be on the
way to better social position, to wealth or hon-
our. But take the life that has begun its high
enterprise at the urgency of a Divine vocation,
and that life will find hardness, deprivations,
perils, of its own. It is not given to us to be
absolutely certain in decision and endeavour.
Out in the wilderness, even when manna is pro-
vided, and the pillar of cloud seems to show the
-way, the people of God are in danger of doubting
-whether they have done wisely, whether they
have not taken too much upon themselves or
laid too much upon the Lord. The Israelites
might have said, We have obeyed God: why,
then, should the sun smite us with burning heat,
and the dust-storms sweep down upon our
march, and the night fall with so bitter a chill?
Interminable toil, in travelling, in attending to
cattle and domestic duties, in pitching tents and
striking them, gathering fuel, searching far and
wide through the camp for food, helping the chil-
dren, carrying the sick and aged, toil that did
not cease till far into the night and had to be re-
sumed with early morning — such, no doubt, were
the things that made life in the wilderness irk-
some. And although many now have a lighter
burden, yet our social life, adding new difficulties
with every improvement, our domestic affairs,
the continual struggle necessary in labour and
business, furnish not a few causes of irritation
and of bitterness. God does not remove an-
noyances out of the way even of His devoted
servants. We remember how Paul was vexed
and burdened while carrying the world's thought
on into a new day. We remember what a weight
the infirmities and treacheries of men laid upon
the heart of Christ.
Let us thank God if we feel sometimes across
the wilderness a breeze from the hills of the
heavenly Canaan, and now and then catch
glimpses of them far away. But the manna may
seem flat and tasteless, nevertheless; the road
may seem long; the sun may scorch. Tempted
to despond, we need afresh to assure ourselves
that God is faithful who has given us His prom-
ise. And although we seem to be led not to-
wards the heavenly frontier, but often aside
through close defiles into some region more
barren and dismal than we have yet crossed,
doubt is not for us. He knoweth the way that
we take; when He has tried us, we shall come
forth where He appoints.
From the people we turn to Moses and the
strain he had to bear as leader. Partly it was
due to his sense of the wrath of God against
Israel. To a certain extent he was responsible
for those he led, for nothing he had done was
apart from his own will. The enterprise was
laid on him as a dlity certainly; yet he undertook
it freely. Such as the Israelites were, with that
mixed multitude among them, a dangerous ele-
ment enough, Moses had personally accepted the
leadership of them. And now the murmuring,
the lusting, the childish weeping, fall upon him.
He feels that he must stand between the people
and Jehovah. The behaviour of the multitude
vexes him to the soul; yet he must take their
part, and avert, if possible, their condemnation.
The position is one in which a leader of men
often finds himself. Things are done which
affront him personally, yet he cannot turn against
the wayward and unbelieving, for, if he did, the
cause would be lost. The Divine judgment of
the transgressors falls on him all the more be-
cause they themselves are unaware of it. The
burden such an one has to sustain points directly
to the sin-bearing of Christ. Wounded to the
soul by the wrong-doing of men. He had to
interpose between them and the stroke of the
law, the judgment of God. And may not Moses
be said to be a type of Christ? The parallel may
well be drawn; yet the imperfect mediation of
Moses fell far short of the perfect mediation of
our Lord. The narrative here reflects that par-
tial knowledge of the Divine character which
made the mediation of Moses human and erring
for all its greatness.
For one thing Moses exaggerated his own
responsibility. He asked of God: " Why hast
Thou evil entreated Thy servant? Why dost
Thou lay the burden of all this people upon me?
Am I their father? Am I to carry the whole
multitude as a father carries his young child in
his bosom?" These are ignorant words, foolish
words. Moses is responsible, but not to that
extent. It is fit that he should be grieved when
the Israelites do wrong, but not proper that he
should charge God with laying on him the duty
of keeping and carrying them like children. He
speaks unadvisedly with his lips.
Responsibility of those who endeavour to lead
others has its limits; and the range of duty is
bounded in two ways — on the one hand by the
responsibility of men for themselves, on the
other hand by God's responsibility for them,
God's care of them. Moses should see that no
law or ordinance makes him chargeable with the
childish lamentations of those who know they
should not complain, who ought to be manly
and endure with stout hearts. If persons who can
go on their own feet want to be carried, no one
is responsible for carrying them. It is their own
fault when they are left behind. If those who
can think and discover duty for themselves, de-
sire constantly to have it pointed out to them,
crave daily encouragement in doing their duty,
and complain because they are not sufficiently
considered, the leader, like Moses, is not respon-
sible. Every man must bear his own burden —
that is, must bear the burden of duty, of thought,
of effort, so far as his ability goes.
Then, on the other side, the power of God is
beneath all, His care extends over all. Moses
ought not for a moment to doubt Jehovah's
mindfulness of His people. Men who hold office
in society or the Church are never to think that
their effort is commensurate with God's. Proud
indeed he would be who said: "The care of all
these souls lies on me: if they are to be saved,
Numbers xi.]
THE STRAIN OF THE DESERT JOURNEY.
417
I must save them; if they perish, I shall be
chargeable with their blood." Speaking igno-
rantly and in haste, Moses went almost that
length; but his error is not to be repeated. The
charge of the Church and of the world is God's;
and He never fails to do for all and for each
what is right. The teacher of men, the leader
of affairs, with full sympathy and indefatigable
love, is to do all he can, yet never trench on the
responsibility of men for their own life, or as-
sume to himself the part of Providence.
Moses made one mistake and went on to an-
other. He was on the whole a man of rare pa-
tience and meekness; yet on this occasion he
spoke to Jehovah in terms of daring resentment.
His cry was to get rid of the whole enterprise:
" If Thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray
Thee, out of hand, and let me not see my wretch-
edness." He seemed to himself to have this
work to do and no other, apparently imagining
that if he was not competent for this, he could be
of no use in the world. But even if he had failed
as a leader, highest in office, he might have been
fit enough for a secondary place, under Joshua
or some other whom God might inspire: this he
failed to see. And although he was bound up
in Israel's well-being, so that if the expedition
did not prosper he had no wish to live, and was
so far sincerely patriotic, yet what good end
could his death serve? The desire to die shows
wounded pride. Better live on and turn shep-
herd again. No man is to despise his life, what-
ever it is, however it may seem to come short of
the high ambition he has cherished as a servant
of God and men. Discovering that in one line
of endeavour he cannot do all he would, let him
make trial of others, not pray for death.
The narrative represents God as dealing gra-
ciously with his erring servant. Help was pro-
vided for him by the appointment of seventy
elders, who were to share the task of guiding and
controlling the tribes. These seventy were to
have a portion of the leader's spirit — zeal and
enthusiasm like his own. Their influence in the
camp would prevent the faithlessness and dejec-
tion which threatened to wreck the Hebrew en-
terprise. Further, the murmuring of the people
was to be efifectually silenced. Flesh was to be
given them till they loathed it. They should
learn that the satisfaction of ignorant desire
meant punishment rather than pleasure.
The promise of flesh was speedily fulfilled by
an extraordinary flight of quails, brought up,
according to the seventy-eighth Psalm, by a wind
which blew from the south and east — that is, from
the Elanitic Gulf. These quails cannot sustain
themselves long on the wing, and after crossing
the desert some thirty or forty miles they would
scarcely be able to fly. The enormous numbers
of them which fluttered around the camp are not
beyond ordinary possibility. Fowls of this kind
migrate at certain seasons in such enormous
multitudes that in the small island of Capri, near
Naples, one hundred and sixty thousand have
been netted in one season. When exhausted,
they would easily be taken as they flew at a
height of about two cubits above the ground.
The whole camp was engaged in capturing quails
from one morning to the evening of the following
day; and the quantity was so great that he who
gathered least had ten homers, probably a heap
estimated to be of that measure. To keep them
for further use the birds were prepared and
spread on the ground to dry in the sun.
When the epidemic of weepmg broke out
through the camp, the doubt occurred to Moses
whether there was any spiritual quality in the
people, any fitness for duty or destiny of a relig-
ious kind. They seemed to be all unbelievers on
whom the goodness of God and the sacred in-
struction had been wasted. They were earthly
and sensual. How could they ever trust God
enough to reach Canaan? — or if they reached it,
how would their occupation of it be justified?
They would but form another heathen nation, all
the worse that they had once known the true God
and had abandoned Him. But a different view
of things was presented to Moses when the
chosen elders, men of worth, were gathered at
the tent of meeting, and on a sudden impulse of
the Spirit began to prophesy. As these men in
loud and ecstatic language proclaimed their faith,
Moses found his confidence in Jehovah's power
and in the destiny of Israel re-established. His
mind was relieved at once of the burden of re-
sponsibility and the dread of an extinction of the
heavenly light he had been the means of kindling
among the tribes. If there were seventy men
capable of receiving the Spirit of God, there
might be hundreds, even thousands. A spring
of new enthusiasm is opened, and Israel's future
is again possible.
Now there were two men, Edad and Medad,
who were of the seventy, but had not come to the
tent of meeting, where the prophetic spirit fell
upon the rest. They had not heard the sum-
mons, we may suppose. Unaware of what was
taking place at the tabernacle, yet realising the
honour conferred upon them, they were perhaps
engaged in ordinary duties, or, having found
some need for their interference, they may have
been rebuking murmurers and endeavouring to
restore order among the unruly. And suddenly
they also, under the same influence as the other
sixty-eight, began to prophesy. The spirit of
earnestness caught them. With the same ec-
stasy they declared their faith and praised the
God of Israel.
There was in one sense a limitation of the spirit
of prophecy, whatever it was. Of all the host
only the seventy received it. Other good men
and true in Israel that day might have seemed
as capable of the heavenly endowment as those
who prophesied. It was, however, in harmony
with a known principle that the men designated
to special office alone received the gift. The
sense of a choice felt to be that of God does un-
questionably exalt the mind and spirit of those
chosen. They realise that they stand higher and
must do more for God and men than others, that
they are inspired to say what otherwise they
could not dare to say. The limitation of the
Spirit in this sense is not invariable, is not strict.
At no time in the world's history has the call to
office been indispensable to prophetic fervour and
courage. Yet the sequence is sufficiently com-
mon to be called a law.
But while in a sense there is restriction of
the spiritual influence, in another sense there is
no restraint. The Divine afflatus is not con-
fined to those who have gathered at the taber-
nacle. It is not place or occasion that makes
the prophets; it is the Spirit, the power from on
high entering into life; and out in the camp the
two have their portion of the new energy and
zeal. Spiritual influence, then, is not confined to
any particular place. Neither was the neighbour-
hood of the tabernacle so holy that there alone
4i8
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
the elders could receive their gift; nor is any
place of meeting, any church, capable of such
consecration and singular identification with the
service of God that there alone the power of the
Divine Spirit can be manifested or received. Let
there be a man chosen of God, ready for the
duties of a holy calling, and on that man the
Spirit will come, wherever he is, in whatever he
is engaged. He may be employed in common
work, but in doing it he will be moved to earnest
service and testimony. He may be labouring,
under great difficulties, to restore the justice that
has been impaired by social errors and political
chicanery — and his words will be prophetic; he
will be a witness for God to those who are with-
out faith, without holy fear.
While Eldad and Medad prophesied in the
camp, a young man who heard them ran offi-
ciously to inform Moses. To this young man as
to others — for no doubt there were many who
loved and revered the Usual — the two elders
were presumptuous fools. The camp was, as we
say, secular: was it not? People in the camp
looked after ordinary affairs, tended their cattle,
chafifered and bargained, quarrelled about trifles,
murmured against Moses and against God. Was
it right to prophesy there, carrying religious
words and ideas into the midst of common life?
If Eldad and Medad could prophesy, let them go
to the tabernacle. And besides, what right had
they to speak for Jehovah, in Jehovah's name?
Was not Moses the prophet, the only prophet?
Israel was accustomed to think him so, would
keep to that opinion. It would be confusing if
at any one's tent door a prophet might begin to
speak without warning. So the young man
thought it his duty to run and tell Moses what
was taking place. And Joshua, when he heard,
was alarmed, and desired Moses to put an end to
the irregular ministry. " My lord Moses, forbid
them," he said. He was jealous not for himself
.Tud the other elders, but for Moses' sake. So
far the leader alone held communication with
Jehovah and spoke in His name; and there was
perhaps some reason for the alarm of Joshua,
more than was apparent at the time. To have
one central authority was better and safer than
to have many persons using the right to speak in
any sense for God. Who could be sure that
these new voices would agree with Moses in
every respect? Even if they did, might there not
be divisions in the camp, new priesthoods as well
as new oracles? Prophets might not be always
wise, always truly inspired. And there might be
false prophets by-and-by, even if Eldad and
Medad were not false.
In like manner it might be argued now that
there is danger when one here and another there
assume authority as revealers of the truth of
things. Some, full of their own wisdom, take
high ground as critics and teachers of religion.
Others imagine that with the right to wear a cer-
tain dress there has come to them the full equip-
ment of the prophet. And others still, remem-
bering how Elijah and John the Baptist arrayed
themselves in coarse cloth and leathern girdle,
assume that garb, or what corresponds to it, and
claim to have the prophetic gift because they
exoress the voice of the people. So in our day?
there is a question whether Eldad or Medad,
prophesying in the camp, ought to be trusted or
even allowed to speak. But who is to decide?
Who is to take upon him to silence the voices?
The old way was rou<?h and ready. All who
were in office in a certain Church were com-
missioned to interpret Divine mysteries; the rest
were ordered to be silent on pain of imprison-
ment. Those who did not teach as the Church
taught, under her direction, were made offenders
against the public well-being. That way, how-
ever, has been found wanting, and " liberty of
prophesying " is fully allowed. With the free-
dom there have come ditficulties and dangers
enough. Yet to " try the spirits whether they
are of God " is our discipline on the way to life.
The reply of Moses to Joshua's request antici-
pates, in no small degree, the doctrine of liberty.
" Art thou jealous for my sake? Would God
that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that
the Lord would put His Spirit upon them." His
answer is that of a broad and magnanimous toler-
ation. Moses cannot indeed have believed that
great religious truths were in the reach of every
man, and that any earnest soul might receive and
communicate those truths. But his conception
of a people of God is like that in the prophecy
of Joel, where he speaks of all flesh being en-
dued with the Spirit, the old men and young
men, the sons and daughters, alike made able to
testify of what they have seen and heard. The
truly great man entertains no jealousy of others.
He delights to see in other eyes the flash of
heavenly intelligence, to find other souls made
channels of Divine revelation. He would have
no monopoly in knowledge and sacred prophecy.
Moses had instituted an exclusive priesthood;
but here he sets the gate of the prophetical office
wide open. All whom God endows are declared
free in Israel to use that office.
We can only wonder that sfill any order of
men should try in the name of the Church to
shut the mouths of those who approve them-
selves reverent students of the Divine Word. At
the same time let it not be forgotten that the
power of prophesying is no chance gift, no easy
faculty. He who is to speak on God's behalf
must indeed know the mind of God. How can
one claim the right to instruct others who has
never opened his mind to the Divine voice, who
has not reverently compared Scripture with
Providence and all the phases of revelation that
are unfolded in conscience and human life? Men
who draw a narrow circle and keep their
thoughts within it can never become prophets.
The closing verses of the chapter tell of the
plague that fell on the lustful, and the burial of
those who died of it, in a place thence called
Kibroth-hattaavah. The people had their desire,
and it brought judgment upon them. Here in
Israel's history a needful warning is written; but
how many read without understanding! And
so, every day the same plague is claiming its
victims, and " graves of lust " are dug. The
preacher still finds in this portion of Scripture
a subject that never ceases to claim treatment,
let social conditions be what they may.
CHAPTER X.
THE JEALOUSY OF MIRIAM AND AARON.
Numbers xii.
It may be confidently said that no representa-
tive writer of the post-exilic age would have in-
vented or even cared to revive the episode of
this chapter. From the point of view of Ezra
Numbers xii.]
THE JEALOUSY OF MIRIAM AND AARON.
419
and his fellow-reformers, it would certainly ap-
pear a blot on the character of Moses that he
passed by the women of his own people and
took a Cushite or Ethiopian wife. The idea of
the " holy seed," on which the zealous leaders of
new Judaism insisted after the return from Baby-
lon, was exclusive. It appeared an abomination
for Israelites to intermarry either with the orig-
inal inhabitants of Canaan, or even with Mo-
abites, Ammonites, and Egyptians. At an
earlier date any disposition to seek alliance with
Egypt or hold intercourse with it was denounced
as profane. Isaiah and Jeremiah alike declare
that Israel, whom Jehovah led forth from Egypt,
should never think of returning to drink of its
waters or trust in its shadow. As the necessity
of separateness from other peoples became
strongly felt, revulsion from Ethiopia would be
greater than from Egypt itself. Jeremiah's in-
quiry, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?"
made the dark colour of that race a symbol of
moral taint.
To be sure, the prophets did not all adopt this
view. Amos, especially, in one of his striking
passages, claims for the Ethiopians the same
relation to God as Israel had: " Are ye not as the
children of the Ethiopians unto Me, O children
of Israel, saith the Lord? " No reproach to the
Israelites is intended; they are only reminded
that all nations have the same origin and are
under the same Divine providence. And the
Psalms in their evangelical anticipations look
once and again to that dark land in the remote
south: " Princes shall come out of Egypt;
Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto
God"; "I will make mention of Rahab and
Babylon to them that know Me: behold Philistia,
and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born
there." The zeal of the period immediately after
the captivity carried separateness far beyond that
of any earlier time, surpassing the letter of the
statute in Exod. xxxiv. 11 and Deut. vii. 2. And
we may safely assert that if the Pentateuch did
not come into existence till after the new ideas
of exclusion were established, and if it was writ-
ten then for the purpose of exalting Moses and
his law, the reference to his Cushite wife would
certainly have been suppressed.
All the more may this be maintained when we
take into account the likelihood that it was not
entirely without reason Aaron and Miriam felt
some jealousy of the woman. The story is usu-
ally taken to mean that there was no cause what-
ever for the feeling entertained; and if Miram
alone had been involved, we might have re-
garded the matter as without significance. But
Aaron had hitherto acted cordially with the
brother to whom he owed his high position.
Not a single disloyal word or deed had as yet
separated him in the least, personally, from
Moses. They wrought together in the promul-
gation of law, they were together in transgression
and judgment. Aaron had every reason for re-
maining faithful; and if he was now moved to a
feeling that the character and reputation of the
lawgiver were imperilled, it must have been be-
cause he saw reason. He could approach Moses
quietly on this subject without any thought of
challenging his authority as leader. We see that
while he accompanied Miriam he kept in the
background, unwilling, himself, to appear as an
accuser, though persuaded that the unpleasant
duty must be done.
So far as Moses is concerned these thoughts.
which naturally arise, go to support the genuine-
ness of the history. And in like manner the con-
demnation of Aaron bears out the view that the
episode is not of legendary growth. If priestly
influence had determined to any extent the form
of the narrative, the fault of Aaron would have
been suppressed. He agrees with Miriam in
making a claim the rejection of which involves
him and the priesthood in shame. And yet,
again, the theory that here we have prophetic
narrative, critical of the priesthood, will not
stand; for Miriam is a prophetess, and language
is used which seems to deny to all but Moses a
clear and intimate knowledge of the Divine will.
Miriam was the spokeswoman. She it was, as
the Hebrew implies, who " spake against Moses
because of the Cushite woman whom he had
married." It would seem that hitherto in right
of her prophetical gift she was to some extent
an adviser of her brother, or had otherwise a
measure of influence. It appeared to her not
only a bad thing for Moses himself but absolutely
wrong that a woman of alien race, who probably
came out of Egypt with the tribes, one among the
mixed multitude, should have anything to say
to him in private, or should be in his confidence.
Miriam maintained, apparently, that her brother
had committed a serious mistake in marrying
this wife, and still more in denying to Aaron and
to herself that right of advising which they had
hitherto used. Was not Moses forgetting that
Miriam had her share in the zeal and inspiration
which had made the guidance of the tribes so
far successful? If Moses stands aloof, consults
only with his alien wife, will he not forfeit posi-
tion and authority and be deprived of help with
which he has no right to dispense?
Miriam's is an instance, the first instance we
may say, of the woman's claim to take her place
side by side with the man in the direction of af-
fairs. It would be absurd to say that the modern
desire has its origin in a spirit of jealousy like
that which Miriam showed; yet, parallel to her
demand, " Hath the Lord indeed spoken only
by Moses? Hath he not also spoken by
us? " is the recent cry, " Has man a monopoly
either of wisdom or of the moral qualities? Are
not women at least equally endowed with ethical
insight and sagacity in counsel?" Long ex-
cluded from affairs by custom and law, women
have become weary of using their influence in an
unrecognised, indirect way. and many would now
claim an absolute parity with men, convinced
that if in any respect they are weak as yet they
will soon become capable. The claim is to a cer-
tain extent based on the Christian doctrine of
equality between male and female, but also on
the acknowledged success of women who. engag-
ing in public duties side by side with men, have
proved their aptitude and won high distinction.
At the same time, those who have had ex-
perience of the world and the many phases of
human life must always have a position which the
inexperienced may not claim; and women, as
compared with men. must continue to be at a
certain disadvantage for this reason. It may be
supposed that intuition can be placed against
experience, that the woman's quick insight may
serve her better than the man's slowly acquired
knowledge. And most will allow this, but only
to a certain point. The woman's intuition is a
fact of her nature — to be trusted often and along
many ways. It is, indeed, her experience, gained
half unconsciously. But the modern claim is as-
420
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
suming far more than this. We are told that
the moral sense of the race comes down through
women. They conserve the moral sense. This
is no Christian claim, or Christian only in out-
doing Romanism and setting Mary far above her
Son. Seriously put forward by women, this will
throw back their whole claim into the middle
ages again. That a finer moral sense often forms
part of their intuition is admitted: that as a sex
they lead the race must be proved where, as yet,
they do not prove it. Nevertheless, the world
is advancing by the advance of women. There
is no need any longer for that jealous intriguing
which has often wrecked governments and
homes. Christianity, ruling the questions of sex,
means a very stable form of society, a continuous
and calm development, the principle of charity
and mutual service.
Miriam claimed the position of a prophet or
nabi for herself, and endeavoured to make her
gift and Aaron's as revealers of truth appear
equal to that of Moses. At the Red Sea she led
the chorus " Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath
triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider
hath He thrown into the sea." That, so far as we
know, was her title to count herself a prophetess.
As for Aaron, we often find his name associated
with his brother's in the formula, " The Lord
spake unto Moses and Aaron." He had also
been the nabi of Moses when the two went to
Pharaoh with their demand on behalf of Israel.
But the claim of equality with Moses was vain.
Poor Miriam had her one flash of high enthu-
siasm, and may have now and again risen to
some courage and zeal in professing her faith.
But she does not seem to have had the ability to
distinguish between her fitful glimpses of truth
and Moses' Divine intelligence. Aaron, again,
must have been half ashamed when he was
placed beside his brother. He had no genius,
none of the elevation of soul that betokens an
inspired man. He obeyed well, served the sanct-
uary well; he was a good priest, but no prophet.
The little knowledge, the small gifts, appear
great to those who have them, so great as often
to eclipse those of nobler men. We magnify
what we have, — our power of vision, though we
cannot see far; our spiritual intelligence, though
we have learned the first principles only of Divine
faith. In the religious controversies of to-day,
as in those of the past, men whose claims are of
the slightest have pushed to the front with the
demand. Hath not the Lord spoken by us? But
there is no Moses to be challenged. The age of
the revealers is gone. He who seems to be a
great prophet may be taken for one because he
stands on the past and invokes voluminous au-
thority for all he says and does. In truth, our
disputations are between the modern Eliphaz,
Bildad, and Job — all of them to-day men of
limited view and meagre inspiration, who repeat
old hearsays with wearisome pertinacity, or in-
veigh against the old interpretations with infinite
assurance. Jehovah speaks from the storm; but
there is no heed paid to His voice. By some the
Word is declared unintelligible; others deny it
to be His.
While Moses kept silence, ruling his spirit in
the meekness of a man of God, suddenly the com-
mand was given, " Come out, ye three, unto the
tent of meeting." Possibly the interview had
been at Moses' own tent in the near portion of
the camp. Now judgment was to be solemnly
given; and the circumstances were made the
more impressive by the removal of the cloud-
pillar from above the tabernacle to the door of
the tent, where it seems to have intervened be-
tween Moses on the one side and Miriam and
Aaron on the other; then the Voice spoke, re-
quiring these two to approach, and the oracle
was heard. The subject of it was the position of
Moses as the interpreter of Jehovah's will. He
was distinguished from any other prophet of the
time.
We are here at a point where more knowledge
is needful to a full understanding of the revela-
tion: we can only conjecture. Not long is it
since the seventy elders belonging to different
tribes were endowed with the spirit of prophecy.
Already there may have been some abuse of their
new power; for though God bestows His gifts
on men, they have practical liberty, and may not
always be wise or humble in exercising the gifts.
So the need of a distinction between Moses and
the others would be clear. As to Miriam and
Aaron, their jealousy may have been not only
of Moses, but also of the seventy. Miriam and
Aaron were prophets of older standing, and
would be disposed to claim that the Lord spoke
by them rather in the way He spoke by Moses
than after the manner of His communications
through the seventy. Were members of the
sacred family to be on a level henceforth with
any persons who spoke ecstatically in praise of
Jehovah? Thus claim asserted itself over claim.
The seventy had to be informed as to the limits
of their office, prevented from taking a place
higher than they had been assigned: Miriam and
Aaron also had to be instructed that their posi-
tion differed entirely from their brother's, that
they must be content so far as prophecy was con-
cerned to stand with the rest whose inspiration
they may have despised. With this view the
general terms of the deliverance appear to corre-
spond.
The Voice from the tent of meeting was
heard through the cloud; and on the one hand
the function of the prophet or nabi was defined,
on the other the high honour and prerogative of
Moses were announced. The prophet, said the
Voice, shall have Jehovah made known to him
" in vision, or in dream," — in his waking hours,
when the mind is on the alert, receiving impres-
sions from nature and the events of life; when
memory is occupied with the past and hope with
the future, the vision shall be given. Or again,
in sleep, when the mind is withdrawn from ex-
ternal objects and appears entirely passive, a
dream shall open glimpses of the great work of
Providence, the purposes of judgment or of
grace. In these ways the prophet shall receive
his knowledge; and of necessity the revelation
will be to some extent shadowed, difficult to in-
terpret. Now the name prophet, nabi, is continu-
ally applied throughout the Old Testament, not
only to the seventy and others who like them
spoke in ecstatic language, and those who after-
wards used musical instruments to help the rap-
ture with which the Divine utterance came, but
also to men like Amos and Isaiah. And it has
been made a question whether the inspiration
of these prophets is to come under the general
law of the oracle we are considering. The an-
swer in one sense is clear. So far as the word
nabi designates all, they are all of one order.
But it is equally certain, as Kuenen has pointed
out, that the later prophets were not always
in a state of ecstasy when they gave their oracles.
Numbers xii.]
THE JEALOUSY OF MIRIAM AND AARON.
421
nor simply reproducing thoughts of which they
first became conscious in that state. They had
an exahing consciousness of the presence and en-
lightening Spirit of Jehovah bestowed on them,
or the burden of Jehovah laid on them. The
visions were often flashes of thought; at other
times the prophet seemed to look on a new earth
and heaven filled with moving symbols and
powers. But the whole development of national
faith and knowledge affected their flashes of
thought and visions, lifting prophetic energy into
a higher range.
Now, returning to the oracle, we find that
Moses is not a prophet or nabi in this sense. The
words that relate to him carefully distinguish be-
tween his illumination and that of the nabi.
" My servant Moses is not so; he is faithful in
all Mine house: with him will I speak mouth
to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark
speeches; and the form of Jehovah shall he be-
hold." Every word here is chosen to exclude
the idea of ecstasy, the idea of vision or dream,
which leaves some shadow of uncertainty upon
the mind, and the idea of any intermediate in-
fluence between the human intelligence and the
disclosure of God's will. And when we try to
interpret this in terms of our own mental opera-
tions, and our consciousness of the way in which
truth reaches our minds, we recognise for one
thing an impression made distinctly word by
word of the message to be conveyed. There is
given to Moses not only a general idea of the
truth or principle to be embodied in his words,
but he receives the very terms. They come to
him in concrete form. He has but to repeat or
write what Jehovah communicates. Along with
this there is given to Moses a power of ap-
prehending the form or similitude of God. His
mind is made capable of singular precision in re-
ceiving and transmitting the oracle or statute.
There is complete calmness and what we may
call self-possession when he is in the tent of
meeting face to face with the Eternal. And yet
he has this spiritual, transcendent symbol of the
Divine Majesty before him. He is no poet, but
he enjoys some revelation higher and more ex-
alting to mind and soul than poet ever had.
The paradox is not inconceivable. There is a
way to this converse with God " mouth to
mouth " along which the patient, earnest soul can
partly travel. Without rhapsody, with full effort
of the mind that has gathered from every source
and is ready for the Divine synthesis of ideas, the
Divine illumination, the Divine dictation, if we
may so speak, the humble intelligence may arrive
where, for the guidance of the personal life at
least, the very words of God are to be heard.
Beyond, along the same way, lies the chamber of
audience which Moses knew. We think it an
amazing thing to be sure of God and of His will
to the very words. Our state is so often that
of doubt, or of self-absorption, or of entangle-
ment with the affairs of others, that we are gen-
erally incapable of receiving the direct message.
Yet of whom should we be sure if not of God?
Of what words should we be more certain than
those pure, clear words that come from His
mouth? Moses heard on great themes, national
and moral — he heard for the ages, for the world:
there lay his unique dignity. We may hear only
for our own guidance in the next duty that is to
be done. But the Spirit of God directs those
who trust Him. It is ours to seek and to re-
ceive the very truth.
With regard to the similitude of Jehovah which
Moses saw, we notice that there is no suggestion
of human form; rather would this seem to be
carefully avoided. The statement does not take
us back to the appearance of the angel Jehovah
to Abraham, nor does it point to any manifesta-
tion like that of which we read in the history of
Joshua or of Gideon. Nothing is here said of
an angel. We are led to think of an exaltation
of the spiritual perception of Moses, so that he
knew the reality of the Divine life, and was made
sure of an originative wisdom, a transcendent
source of ideas and m'oral energy. He with
whom Moses holds communion is One whose
might and holiness and glory are seen with the
spiritual eye, whose will is made known by a
voice entering into the soul. And the distinction
intended between Moses and all other prophets
corresponds to a fact which the history of Israel's
religion brings to light. The account of the way
in which Jehovah communicated with Moses re-
mains subject to the condition that the expres-
sions used, such as " mouth to mouth," are still
only symbols of the truth. They mean that in
the very highest sense possible to man Moses
entered into the purposes of God regarding His
people. Now Isaiah certainly approached this
intimate knowledge of the Divine counsel when
long afterwards he said in Jehovah's name: " Be-
hold My Servant, whom I uphold; Mine Elect,
in whom My soul delighteth; I have put My
Spirit upon Him: He shall bring forth judgment
unto the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up>
nor cause His voice to be heard in the street."
Yet between Moses and Isaiah there is a differ-
ence. For Moses is the means of giving to Israel
pure morality and true religion. By the inspira-
tion of God he brings into existence that which
is not. Isaiah foresees; Moses, in a sense,
creates. And the one parallel with Moses, ac-
cording to Scripture, is to be found in Christ,
who is the creator of the new humanity.
When the oracle had spoken, there was a
movement of the cloud from the door of the tent
of meeting, and apparently from the tabernacle — ■
a sign of the displeasure of God. Following the
idea that the cloud was connected with the altar,
this withdrawal has been interpreted by Lange
as a rebuke to Aaron. " He was inwardly
crushed; the fire on his altar went out; the pillar
of smoke no longer mounted up as a token of
grace; the cultus was for a moment at a stand-
still, and it was as if an interdict of Jehovah lay
on the cultus of the sanctuary." But the cloud-
pillar is not, as this interpretation would imply,
associated with Aaron personally; it is always
the symbol of the Divine will " by the hand of
Moses." We must suppose therefore that the
movement of the cloud conveyed in some new
and unexpected way a sense of the Divine sup-
port which Moses enjoyed. He was justified in
all he had done: condemnation was brought
home to his accusers.
And Miriam, who had offended most, was pun-
ished with more than a rebuke. Suddenly she
was found to be covered with leprosy. Aaron,
looking upon her, saw that morbid pallor which
was regarded as the invariable sign of the disease.
It was seen as a proof of her sin and of the
anger of Jehovah. Himself trembling as one
who had barely escaped, Aaron could not but
confess his share in the transgression. Address-
ing Moses with the deepest reverence, he said,
" Oh my lord, lay not, I pray thee, sin upon us,
42 2
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS
for that we have done foolishly, and for that we
have sinned." The leprosy is the mark of sin.
Let it not be stamped on her indelibly, nor on
me. Let not the disease run its course to the
horrible end. With no small presumption the
two had ventured to challenge their brother's
conduct and position. They knew indeed, yet
from their intimacy with him did not rightly
apprehend, the " divinity that hedged " him.
Now for the first time its terror is disclosed to
themselves; and they shrink before the man of
God, pleading with him as if he were omnip-
otent.
Moses needs no second appeal to his com-
passion. He is a truly inspired man, and can
forgive. He has seen the great God merciful
and gracious, longsuffering, slow to anger, and
he has caught something of the Divine magna-
nimity. This temper was not always shown
throughout Israel's history by those who had
the position of prophets. And we find that men
who claim to be religious, even to be interpreters
of the Divine will, are not invariably above re-
taliation. They are seen to hate those who
criticise them, who throw doubt upon their argu-
ments. A man's claim to fellowship with God,
his professed knowledge of the Divine truth and
religion, may be tested by his conduct when he
is under challenge. If he cannot plead with
God on behalf of those who have assailed him,
he has not the Spirit; he is as " sounding brass,
or a clanging cymbal."
Even in response to the prayer of Moses,
Miriam could not be cured at once. She must
go aside bearing her reproach. Shame for her
offence, apart from the taint of leprosy, would
make it fitting that she should withdraw seven
days from camp and sanctuary. A personal in-
dignity, not affecting her character in the least,
would have been felt to that extent. Her trans-
gression is to be realised and brooded over for
her spiritual good. The law is one that needs to
be kept in mind. To escape detection and leave
adverse judgment behind is all that some offend-
ers against moral law seem to desire. They dread
the shame and nothing besides. Let that be
avoided, or, after continuing for a time, let the
sense of it pass, and they feel themselves free.
But true shame is towards God; and from the
mind sincerely penitent that does not quickly
pass away. Those only who are ignorant of the
nature of sin can soon overcome the conscious-
ness of God's displeasure. As for men, no doubt
they should forgive; but their forgiveness is often
too lightly granted, too complacently assumed,
and we see the easy self-recovery of one who
should be sitting in sackcloth and ashes. God
forgives with infinite depth of tenderness and
grace of pardon. But His very generosity will
atTect the truly contrite with poignant sorrow
when His name has by their act been brought
into dishonour.
The offence of Miriam was only jealousy and
presumption. She may scarcely seem so great
a sinner that an attack of leprosy should have
been her punishment, though it lasted for no
more than seven days. We make so much of
bodily malrvdies. so little of diseases of the soul,
ihat we wonld think it stransre if any one for his
pride should be struck with paralysis, or for
envy should be laid down with fever. Yet be-
side the S'liritual »^i"order thst of the body is of
small mor;ie!'!t. V'hy do we tnink so little of the
tncral taint, the falsehood, malice, impurity, and
so much of the ills our liesa is heir to? The
bad heart is the great disease.
Miriam's exclusion from the camp becomes a
lesson to all the people. They do not journey
while she is separated as unclean. There may
have been other lepers in the outlying tents; but
her sin has been of such a kind that the public
conscience is especially directed to it. And the
lesson had particular point with reference to
those who had the prophetic gift.
Modern society, making much of sanitation
and all kinds of improvements and precautions
intended to prevent the spread of epidemics and
mitigate their effects, has also some thought of
moral disease. Persons guilty of certain crimes
are confined in prisons or " cut off from the
people." But of the greater number of moral
maladies no account is taken. And there is no
widespread gloom over the nation, no ar-
rest of affairs, when some hideous case of
social immorality or business depravity has come
to light. It is but a few who pray for those
who have the evil heart, and wait sympathetically
for their cleansing. Ought not the reorganisa-
tion of society to be on a moral rather than an
economic basis? We should be nearer the
general well-being if it were reckoned a disaster
when any employer oppressed those under him,
or workmen were found indifferent to their
brothers, or a grave crime disclosed a low state
of morality in some class or circle. It is the
defeat of armies and navies, the overthrow of
measures and governments, that occupy our at-
tention as a people, and seem often to obscure
every moral and religious thought. Or if injus-
tice is the topic, we find the point of it in this:
that one class is rich while another is poor; that
money, not character, is lost in shameful conten-
tion.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SPIES AND THEIR REPORT.
Numbers xiii. ; xiv. i-io.
Two narratives at least appear to be united in
the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters. From
xiii. 17, 22, 22,. we learn that the spies were
despatched by way of the south, and that they
went to Hebron and a little beyond, as far as the
valley of Eshcol. But ver. 21 states that they
spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin,
south of the Dead Sea, to the entering in of
Hamath. The latter statement implies that they
traversed what were afterwards called Judaea,
Samaria, and Galilee, and penetrated as far as the
valley of the Leontes, between the southern
ranges of Libanus and Antilibanus. The one ac-
count taken by itself would make the journey of
the spies northward about a hundred miles; the
other, three times as long.
A further difference is this: According to one
of the narratives Caleb alone encourages the
people (xiii. 30: xiv. 24). But according to the
other (xiii. 8, 16: xiv. 6. 7), Joshua, as well as
Caleb, is among the twelve, and reports favour-
ably as to the possibility of conquering and
pc^sci^sing Canaan.
Without deciding on the critical points in-
volved, we may find a way of harmonising the
apparent differences. It is quite possible, for in-
Numbers xiii.-xiv. I lo.] THE SPIES AND THEIR REPORT.
423
stance, that while some of the twelve were in-
structed to keep in the south of Canaan, others
were sent to the middle district and a third com-
pany to the north. Caleb might be among those
who explored the south; while Joshua, having
gone to the far north, might return somewhat
later and join his testimony to that which Caleb
had given. There is no inconsistency between
the portions ascribed to the one narrative and
those referred to the other; and the account, as
we have it, may give what was the gist of several
co-ordinate documents. As to any variance in
the reports of the spies, v.'e can easily understand
how those who looked for smiling valleys and
fruitful fields would find them, while others saw
only the difficulties and dangers that would have
to be faced.
The questions occur, why and at whose in-
stance the survey was undertaken. From Deu-
teronomy we learn that a demand for it arose
among the people. Moses says (i. 22) : " Ye
came near unto me every one of you, and said.
Let us send men before us, that they may search
the land for us, and bring us word again of the
way by which we must go up, and the cities unto
which we shall come." In Numbers the expedi-
tion is undertaken at the order of Jehovah con-
veyed through Moses. The opposition here is
only on the surface. The people might desire,
but decision did not lie with them. It was quite
natural when the tribes had at length approached
the frontier of Canaan that they should seek
information as to the state of the country. And
the wish was one which could be sanctioned,
which had even been anticipated. The land of
Canaan was already known to the children of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the praise of it
as a land flowing with milk and honey mingled
with their traditions. In one sense there was no
need to send spies, either to report on the fertility
of the land or on the peoples dwelling in it. Yet
Divine Providence, on which men are to rely,
does not supersede their prudence and the duty
that rests with them of considering the way they
go. The destiny of life or of a nation is to be
wrought out in faith; still we are to use all avail-
able means in order to ensure success. So per-
sonality grows through providence, and God
raises men for Himself.
To the band of pioneers each tribe contributes
a man, and all the twelve are headmen, whose
intelligence and good faith may presumably be
trusted. They know the strength of Israel; they
should also be able to count upon the great
source of courage and power — the unseen Friend
of the nation. Remembering what Egypt is,
they know also the ways of the desert; and they
have seen war. If they possess enthusiasm and
hope, they will not be dismayed by the sight of a
few walled towns or even of some Anakim.
They will say, " The Lord of hosts is with us,
the God of Jacob is our refuge." Yet there is
danger that old doubts and new fears may col-
our their report. God appoints men to duty;
but their personal character and tendencies re-
main. And the very best men Israel can choose
for a task like this will need all their faithfulness
and more than all their faith to do it well.
The spies were to climb the heights visible in
the north, and look forth towards the Great Sea
and away to Moriah and Carmel. They were
also to make their way cautiously into the land
itself and examine it. Moses anticipates that all
he has said in praise of Canaan will be made good
by the report, and the people will be encouraged
to enter at once on the final struggle. When
the desert was around them, unfruitful, seem-
ingly interminable, the Israelites might have
been disposed to fear that journeying from
Egypt they were leaving the fertility of the world
farther and farther behind. Some may have
thought that the Divine promise had misled and
deceived them, and that Canaan was a dream.
Even although they had now overpassed that
dreary region covered with coarse gravel, black
flints, and drifting sand, " the great and terrible
wilderness," what hope was there that north-
ward they should reach a land of olives, vine-
yards, and flowing streams? The report of the
spies would answer this question.
Now in like manner the future state of ex-
istence may seem dim and unreal, scarcely credi-
ble, to many. Our life is like a series of marches
hither and thither through the desert. Neither
as individuals nor as communities do we seem to
approach any state of blessedness and rest.
Rather, as years go by, does the region become
more inhospitable. Hopes once cherished are
one after another disappointed. The stern
mountains that overhung the track by which our
forefathers went still frown upon us. It seems
impossible to get beyond their shadow. And in
a kind of despair some may be ready to say:
There is no promised land. This waste, with its
sere grass, its burning sand, its rugged hills,
makes the whole of life. We shall die here in the
wilderness like those who have been before us;
and when our graves are dug and our bodies
laid in them, our existence will have an end. But
it is a thoughtless habit to doubt that of which we
have no full experience. Here we have but be-
gun to learn the possibilities of life and find a
clew to its Divine mysteries. And even as to the
Israelites in the wilderness there were not want-
ing signs that pointed to the fruitful and pleasant
country beyond, so for us, even now, there are
previsions of the higher world. Some shrubs
and straggling vines grew in sheltered hollows
among the hills. Here and there a scanty crop
of maize was reared, and in the rainy season
streams flowed down the wastes. From what
was known the Israelites might reason hopefully
to that which as yet was beyond their sight.
And are there not fore-signs for the soul, springs
opened to the seekers after God in the desert,
some verdure of righteousness, some strength
and peace in believing?
Science and business and the cares of life
absorb many and bewilder them. Immersed in
the work of their world, men are apt to forget
that deeper draughts of life may be drunk than
they obtain in the laboratory or the counting-
house. But he who knows what love and wor-
ship are. who finds in all things the food of
religious thought and devotion, makes no such
mistake. To him a future in the spiritual world
is far more within the range of hopeful anticipa-
tion than Canaan was to one who remembered
Egypt and had bathed in the waters of the Nile.
Is the heavenly future real? It is: as thought
and faith and love are real, as the fellowship of
souls and the joy of communion with God are
realities. Those who are in doubt as to im-
mortality may find the cause of that doubt in
their own earthliness. Let them be less occupied
with the material, care more for the spiritual
possessions, truth, righteousness, religion, and
they will begin to feel an end of doubt. Heaven
424
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
is no fable. Even now we have our foretaste of
its refreshing waters and the fruits that are for
the heahng of the nations.
The spies were to climb the hills which com-
manded a view of the promised land. And there
are heights which must be scaled if we are to
have previsions of the heavenly life. Men under-
take to forecast the future of the human race
who have never sought those heights. They
may have gone out from camp a few miles or
even some days' journey, but they have kept in
the plain. One is devoted to science, and he sees
as the land of promise a region in which science
shall achieve triumphs hitherto only dreamt of,
when the ultimate atoms shall disclose their
secrets and the subtle principle of life shall be
no longer a mystery. The social reformer sees
his own schemes in operation, some new ad-
justment of human relations, some new econ-
omy or system of government, the establishment
of an order that shall make the affairs of the
world run smoothly, and banish want and care
and possibly disease from the earth. But these
and similar previsions are not from the heights.
We have to climb quite above the earthly and
temporal, above economics and scientific theo-
ries. Where the way of faith rises, where the
love of men becomes perfect in the love of God,
not in theory but in the practical endeavour of
earnest life, there we ascend, we advance. We
shall see the coming kingdom of God only if we
are heartily with God in the ardour of the re-
deemed soul, if we follow in the footsteps of
Christ to the summits of Sacrifice.
The spies went forth from among tribes which
had so far made a good journey under the Di-
vine guidance. So well had the expedition sped
that a few days' march would have brought the
travellers into Canaan. But Israel was not a
hopeful people nor a united people. The
thoughts of many turned back; all were not
faithful to God nor loyal to Moses. And as the
people were, so were the spies. Some may have
professed to be enthusiastic who had their doubts
regarding Canaan and the possibility of conquer-
ing it. Others may have even wished to find
difficulties that would furnish an excuse for re-
turning even to Egypt. Most were ready to be
disenchanted at least and to find cause for
alarm. In the south of Canaan a pastoral dis-
trict, rocky and uninviting towards the shore of
the Dead Sea, was found to be sparsely occupied
by wandering companies of Amalekites, Bedawin
of the time, probably with a look of poverty and
hardship that gave little promise for any who
should attempt to settle where they roamed.
Towards Hebron the aspect of the country im-
proved; but the ancient city, or at all events its
stronghold, was in the hands of a class of bandits
whose names inspired terror throughout the dis-
trict— Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, sons of
Anak. The great stature of these men, exagger-
ated by common report, together with stories of
their ferocity, seem to have impressed the timid
Hebrews beyond measure. And round Hebron
the Amorites, a hardy highland race, were found
in occupation. The report agreed on was that the
people were men of great stature; that the land
was one which ate up its inhabitants — that is to
say, yielded but a precarious existence. Just be-
yond Hebron vineyards and olive-groves were
found; and from the valley of Eschol one fine
cluster of grapes was brought, hung upon a rod
to preserve the fruit from injury, an evidence of
capabilities that might be developed. Still the
report was an evil one on the whole.
Those who went farther north had to tell of
strong peoples — the Jebusites and Amorites of
the central region, the Hittites of the north, the
Canaanites of the seaboard, where afterwanis
Sisera had his headquarters. The cities, too,
were great and walled. These spies had nothing
to say of the fruitful plains of Esdraelon ai-d
Jezreel, nothing to tell of the flowery meadows,
the " murmuring of innumerable bees," the
terraced vineyards, the herds of cattle and flocks
of sheep and goats. They had seen the strong,
resolute holders of the soil, the fortresses, the
difficulties; and of these they brought back an ac-
count which caused abundant alarm. Joshua and
Caleb alone had the confidence of faith, and were
assured that Jehovah, if He delighted in His
people, would give them Canaan as an inherit-
ance.
The report of the majority of the spies was one
of exaggeration and a certain untruthfulness.
They must have spoken altogether witho\it
knowledge, or else allowed themselves to mag-
nify what they saw, when they said of the chil-
dren of Anak, " We were in our own sight as
grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight,"
Possibly the Hebrews were at this time some-
what ill-developed as a race, bearing the mark of
their slavery. But we can hardly suppose that
the Amorites, much less the Hittites, were of
overpassing stature. Nor could many cities have
been so large and strongly fortified as was repre-
sented, though Lachish, Hebron, Shalim, and a
few others were formidable. On the other hand,
the picture had none of the attractiveness it
should have borne. These exaggerations and
defects, however, are the common faults of mis-
believing and therefore ignorant representation.
Are any disposed to leave the wilderness of the
world and possess the better country? A hun-
dred voices of the baser kind will be heard giving
warning and presage. Nothing is said about its
spiritual fruit, its joy, hope, and peace. But its
hardships are detailed, the renunciations, the
obligations, the conflicts necessary before it can
be possessed. Who would enter on the hopeless
task of trying to cast out the strong man armed,
who sits entrenched — of holding at bay the thou-
sand forces that oppose the Christian life? Each
position must be taken after a sore struggle atd
kept by constant watchfulness. Little know they
who think of becoming religious how hard it rs
to be Christians. It is a life of gloom, of con-
stant penitence for failures that cannot be helped,
a life of continual trembling and terror. So the
reports go that profess to be those of experience
and knowledge of men and women who under-
stand life.
Observe also that the account given by those
who reconnoitred the land of promise sprang from
an error which has its parallel now. The spies
went supposing that the Israelites were to con-
quer Canaan and dwell there purely for their own
sake, for their own happiness and comfort. Had
not the wilderness journey been undertaken for
that end? It did not enter into the consideration
either of the people as a whole or of their
representatives that they were bound for Canaan
in order to fulfil the Divine purpose of making
Israel a means of blessing to the world. Here,
indeed, a spirituality of view was needful which
the spies could not be expected to have. Breadth
of foresight, too, would have been required which
Numbers xiii.-xiv. i-io.] THE SPIES AND THEIR REPORT.
425
in the circumstances scarcely lay within human
power. If any of them had taken account of
Israel's spiritual destiny as a witness for Jehovah
in the midst of the heathen, could they have told
whether this land of Syria or some other would
be a fit theatre for the fulfilment of that high
destiny?
And in ignorance like theirs lies the source of
mistakes often made in judging the circumstances
of life, in deciding what v/ill be wisest and best
to undertake. We, too, look at things from the
point of view of our own happiness and comfort,
and, in a higher range, of our religious enjoy-
ment. If we see that these are to be had in a
certain sphere, by a certain movement or change,
we decide on that change, we choose that
sphere. But if neither temporal well-being nor
enjoyment of religious privilege appears to be
certain, our common practice is to turn in an-
other direction. Yet the truth is that we are not
here, and we shall never be anywhere, either in
this world or another, simply to enjoy, to have
the milk and honey of a smiling land, to fulfil
our own desires and live to ourselves. The
question regarding the fit place or state for us
depends for its answer on what God means to do
through us for our fellow-men, for the truth, for
His kingdom and glory. The future which we
with greater or less success attempt to conquer
and secure will, as the Divine hand leads us on,
prove different from our dream in proportion
as our lives are capable of high endeavour and
spiritual service. We shall have our hope, but
not as we painted it.
Who are the Calebs and Joshuas of our time?
Not those who, forecasting the movements of
society, see what they think shall be for their
people a region of comfort and earthly pros-
ferity, to be maintained by shutting out as far
as possible the agitation of other lands; but those
who realise that a nation, especially a Christian
nation, has a duty under God to the whole
human race. Those are our true guides and
come with inspiration who bid us not be afraid
in undertaking the world-wide task of commend-
ing truth, establishing righteousness, seeking
the enfranchisement and Christianisation of all
hmds.
Notwithstanding the efforts of Caleb and after-
wards of Joshua to controvert the disheartening
reports spread by their companions, the people
were filled with dismay; and night fell upon
a weeping camp. The pictures of those Anakim
and of the tall Amorites, rendered more terrible
by imagination, appear to have had most to do
with the panic. But it was the general impres-
sion also that Canaan offered no attractions as
a home. There was murmuring against Moses
and Aaron. Disaffection spread rapidly, and is-
sued in the proposal to take another leader and
return to Egypt. Why had Jehovah brought
them across the desert to put them under the
sword at last? The tumult increased, and the
danger of a revolt became so great that Moses
and Aaron fell on their faces before the assembly.
Always and everywhere faithless means foolish,
■friihless means cowardly. By this is explained
the dejection and panic into which the Israelites
feJl, into which men often fall. Our life and his-
tcry are not confided to the Divine care; our
hope is not in God. Nothing can save a man or
a nation from vacillation, despondency, and de-
feat but the conviction that Providence opens the
way and never fails those who press on. No
doubt there are considerations which might have
made Israel doubtful whether the conquest of
Canaan lay in the way of duty. Some modern
moralists would call it a great crime — would say
that the tribes could look for no success in en-
deavouring to dispossess the inhabitants of Ca-
naan, or even to fand a place among them. But
this thought did not enter into the question.
Panic fell on the host, because doubt of Jehovah
and His purpose overcame the partial faith which
had as yet been maintained with no small diffi-
culty.
Now it was by the mouth of Moses Israel had
been assured of the promise of God. Broadly
speaking, faith in Jehovah was faith in Moses,
who was their moralist, their prophet, their
guide. Men here and there, the seventy who
prophesied for instance, had their personal con-
sciousness of the Divine power; but the great
mass of the people had the covenant, and trusted
it through the mediation of Moses. Had Moses
then, as the Israelites could judge, a right to
command unquestionable authority as a revealer
of the will of the unseen God? Take away from
the history every incident, every feature, that
may appear doubtful, and there remains a person-
ality, a man of distinguished unselfishness, of
admirable patience, of great sagacity, who cer-
tainly was a patriot, and as certainly had greater
conceptions, higher enthusiasms, than any other
man of Israel. It was perhaps difficult for those
who were gross in nature and very ignorant to
realise that Moses was indeed in communication
with an unseen, omnipotent Friend of the peo-
ple. Some might even have been disposed to
say: What if he is? What can God do for us?
If weare to get anything, we must seek and ob-
tain it for ourselves. Yet the Israelites as a
vifhole held the almost universal belief of those
times, the conviction that a Power above the
visible world does rule the affairs of earth. And
there was evidence enough that Moses was
guided and sustained by the Divine hand. The
sagacious mind, the brave, noble personality of
Moses, made for Israel, at least for every one in
Israel capable of appreciating character and wis-
dom, a bridge between the seen and the unseen,
between man and God.
We must not indeed deny that this conviction
was liable to challenge and revision. It must
always be so when a man speaks for God, repre-
sents God. Doubt of the wisdom of any com-
mand meant doubt whether God had really given
it by Moses. And when it seemed that the tribes
had been unwisely brought to Canaan, the re-
flection might be that Moses had failed as an
interpreter. Yet this was not the common con-
clusion. Rather, from all we learn, was it the
conclusion that Jehovah Himself had failed the
people or deceived them. And there lay the
error of unbelief which is constantly being com-
mitted still.
For us, whatever may be said as to the com-
position of the Bible, it is supremely, and as no
other sacred book can be, the Word of God.
As Moses was the one man in Israel who had
a right to speak in Jehovah's name, so the Bible
is the one book which can claim to instruct us
in faith, duty, and hope. Speaking to us in
human language, it may of course be challenged.
At one point and another, some even of those
who believe in Divine communication to men
may question whether the Bible writers have
always caught aright the sound of the heavenly
z;.26
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
Word. And some go so far as to say: There is
no Divine Voice; men have given as the Word
of God, in good faith, what arose in their own
mind, their own exalted imagination. Never-
theless, our faith, if faith we are to have at all.
must rest on this Book. We cannot get away
from human words. We must rely on spoken
or written language if we are to know anything
higher than our own thought. And what is
written in the Bible has the highest marks of
inspiration — wisdom, purity, truth, power to
convince and convert and to build up a life in
holiness and in hope.
It remains true accordingly that doubt of the
Bible means for us, must mean, not simply doubt
of the men who have been instrumental in giving
us the Book, but doubt of God Himself. If the
Bible did not speak in harmony with nature and
reason and the widest human experience when it
lays down moral law, prescribes the true rules
and unfolds the great principles of life, the af-
firmation just made would be absurd. But it is
a book of breadth, full of wisdom which every
age is verifying. It stands an absolute, the mani-
fest embodiment of knowledge drawn from the
highest sources available to men — from sources
not earthly nor temporary, but sublime and
eternal. Faith, therefore, must have its founda-
tion on the teaching of this Book as to " what
man is to believe concerning God and what duty
God requires of man." And on the other hand
infidelity is and must be the result of rejecting
the revelation of the Bible, denying that here
God speaks with supreme wisdom and authority
to our souls.
The Israelites doubting Jehovah who had
spoken through Moses, that is to say, doubting
the highest, most inspiring word it was possible
for them to hear, turning away from the Divine
reason that spoke, the heavenly purpose revealed
to them, had nothing to rely upon. Confused
inadequate counsels, chaotic fears, waited im-
mediately upon their revolt. They sank at once
to despondency and the most fatuous and im-
possible projects. The men who stood against
their despair were made offenders, almost sacri-
ficed to their fear. Joshya and Caleb, facing the
tumult, called for confidence. " Fear not ye the
people of the land," they said, " for they are
bread for us: their defence is removed from over
them, and Jehovah is with us: fear them not."
But all the congregation bade stone them with
stones; and it was only the bright glow of the
pillar of fire shining out at the moment that
prevented a dreadful catastrophe.
So the faithless generations fell back still into
panic, fatuity, and crime. Trusting in their re-
sources, men say, " No change need trouble us;
we have courage, wisdom, power, sufficient for
our needs." But have they unity, have they any
scheme of life for which it is worth while to be
courageous? The hope of bare continuance, of
ignoble safety and comfort will not animate, will
not inspire. Only some great vision of Duty
seen along the track of the eternally right will
kindle the heart of a people; the faith that goes
with that vision will alone sustain courage.
Without it, armies and battle-ships are but a
temporary and flimsy defence, the pretext of a
self-confidence, while the heart is clouded with
despair. Whether men say, We will return to
Egypt, refusing the call of Providence which
bids us fulfil a high destiny, or, still refusing to
fulfil it, We will maintain ourselves in the wilder-
ness— they have in secret the conviction that they
are failures, that their national organisation is a
hollow pretence. And the end, though it 'may
linger for a time, will be dismemberment and
disaster.
Modern nations, nominally Christian, are find-
ing it difficult to suppress disorder, and occa-
sionally we are almost thrown into a state of
panic by the activity of revolutionists. Does the
cause not lie in this, that the en avant of Provi-
dence and Christianity is not obeyed either in
the politics or social economy of the people?
Like Israel, a nation has been led so far through
the wilderness, but advance can only be into a new
order which faith perceives, to which the voice of
God calls. If it is becoming a general con-
clusion that there is no such country, or that the
conquest of it is impossible, if many are saying,
Let us settle in the wilderness, and others, Let
us return to Egypt, what can the issue be but
confusion? This is to encourage the anarchist,
the dynamiter. The enterprise of humanity, ac-
cording to such counsels, is so far a failure, and
for the future there is no inspiring hope. And to
make economic self-seeking the governing idea
of a nation's movement is simply to abandon the
true leader and to choose another of some igno-
minious order. Would it have been possible to
persuade Moses to hold the command of the
tribes, and yet remain in the desert or return to
Egypt? Neither is it possible to retain Christ
as our captain and also to make this world our
home, or return to a practical heathenism, re-
lieved by abundance of food, the Hellenic wor-
ship of beauty, the organisation of pleasure. For
the great enterprise of spiritual redemption alone
will Christ be our leader. We lose Him if we
turn to the hopes of this world and cease to press
the journey towards the city of God.
CHAPTER XII.
THE DOOM OF THE UNBELIEVING.
Numbers xiv.
The spirit of revolt which came to a head in
the proposal to put Joshua and Caleb to death
was quelled by the fiery splendour that flashed
out at the tent of meeting; but disaffection con-
tinued, and Moses realised with horror that im-
mediate destruction threatened the tribes. Je-
hovah would smite them with pestilence, disin-
herit them, and raise up a new nation greater and
mightier than they. Moses himself should be the
father of the destined race.
The thought was one at which an ambitious
man would have grasped; and to entertain it
might well seem a good man's duty. In what
better way could one of earnest and courageous
spirit serve the world and the Divine purpose of
grace? Moses stood as a representative of Abra-
ham, to whom the promise had been first given,
and of Jacob, to whom it had been renewed. If
the will of Heaven was that a fresh beginning in
the old succession should be made, the honour
was not lightly to be put aside. Moses now
saw, as Abraham saw, a great possibility. The
Divine purpose did not fail, though Israel proved
unfit to serve it: in the field of a more instructed
age that magnificent hope which made Abraham
great would blossom more generously and yield
Numbers xiv.]
THE DOOM OF THE UNBELIEVING.
427
its fruit of blessing. With the sense of this pos-
sible honour to himself, there came, however, to
Moses other and arresting thoughts. For Abra-
ham had become great by sacrifice, and only
one spiritually greater even than he could found
a worthier race. Did Moses not think of that
scene on Moriah, when the son of the promise
lay stretched on the altar, and feel himself in-
spired for a sacrifice of his own? Yet what could
it be? Nothing but the silent inward refusal of
that great honour which was being put in his
power, the honour of becoming even Jiigher
than Abraham in the line of originators. True,
it seemed that necessity was laid on him. Yet
might not Jehovah intervene on Israel's behalf
as once before on Isaac's when the moment of his
death had almost come? Not to sacrifice Israel
was the call Moees heard when he listened in
the silence, but to sacrifice his own hope, though
it seemed to be pressed on him by Providence.
And this began to prove itself the necessity. On
the one hand he could not hide the fear that even
if the Israelites were settled in Canaan a long
period of education would be required to fit them
for national life and power; after many genera-
tions they would be still incapable of any high
spiritual task. But if Israel perished, what
would happen? The faith of Jehovah, already
established as an influence in the world, would
fall into abeyance. When doom fell on Israel,
the Egyptians would hear of it, Canaan would
hear of it. The desert, the valley of the Nile,
the hills of the Promised Land, would ring with
the exultant cry that Jehovah had failed. And
then — how long would the world have to wait till
this seeming defeat could be retrieved? Century
after century had passed since Abraham left his
own land to fulfil the vocation of God. Century
after century would have to pass before the sons
of Moses could attain to any greatness, any
power to move the world. The instrument Je-
hovah had meanwhile to use was imperfect; the
tribes were not like a strong two-edged sword in
the hand of the King. Yet they existed; they
could be used, and Divine might. Divine grace,
could overcome their imperfection. Ere the
world grew older in ignorance and idolatry,
Moses would have the heavenly purpose
wrought. For this he will renounce, for this he
must renounce, the honour possible to himself.
Let Jehovah do all.
His choice made, Moses intercedes with God.
The prayer has an air of simple anthropomor-
phism. He appears to plead that Jehovah should
not imperil His own fame. The underlying
thought is partly concealed by the form of ex-
pression; but the meaning is clear. It is the
dawning power of the religion of God for which
Moses is concerned. He would not have that
lost to men which by the events of the exodus
and the wilderness journey has been so far se-
cured. Egypt is half persuaded; Canaan is be-
ginning to see that Jehovah is greater than
Anubis and Thoth, than Moloch and Baal. Was
that impression to fade and to be succeeded by
doubt, possibly contempt of Jehovah as Israel's
God? He had brought His people into the wilder-
ness, but He could not establish them in Canaan;
therefore He slew them: if that were said, would
rot the loss to mankind be incalculable? "Thou.
Jehovah, art seen face to face, and Thy cloud
standeth over them, and Thou goest before them
in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire
by night." The astonished lands have seen this;
let them not return with greater trust than ever
to their own poor idols.
In the report of Moses' intercession words are
quoted which were part of the revelation of the
Divine character at Sinai: "Jehovah slow to
anger, and plenteous in mercy, forgiving iniquity
and transgression, and that will by no means
clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children, upon the third and
fourth generation." The prayer quoting these
latter clauses is abundantly sincere; and it pro-
ceeds on the belief that mercy rather than judg-
ment is the delight of God. The gieatness of
the Divine compassion, already shown time after
time since the people left Egypt, is still relied
upon. And the desire of Moses is granted so far
as it is in harmony with the character and pur-
pose of God. " Thou wast a God that forgavest
them, though Thou tookest vengeance of their
doings " (Psalm xcix. 8).
Jehovah says, " I have pardoned according to
My word." The national sin is not to be
visited with destruction of the nation. No pesti-
lence shall exterminate the murmurers, nor shall
they be left without the guidance of Moses and
of the cloud to melt away in the plagues of the
wilderness. But yet the power of Jehovah shall
be shown in their punishment; the manner of it
shall be such that the earth shall be filled with
the glory of the Lord. The men who came out
of Egypt and have tempted Jehovah ten times
shall never see Canaan. Their carcases shall fall
in the desert. For forty years shall the Israelites
wander as shepherds till the evil generation shall
have disappeared.
Divine Providence judges the pusillanimity of
men. Their fear deprives them of that which is
ofifered and actually put within their grasp. They
prove themselves incapable when the time of
decisive endeavour comes, and a new generation
must arise before the ripeness of circumstance
again opens the way. The case of the Israelites
shows that rebuke and disappointment are neces-
sary in the Divine discipline of human life.
Defects of character, of faith, are not overborne
by a tour de force in order that the development
of a heavenly purpose may be hastened. It
would indeed cease to be a heavenly purpose, if
with easy forgiveness God gave miraculous suc-
cess. The result would be no gain in the long-
run to any good cause. If men fail, God can
wait for others who shall not fail. We are apt
to forget this; we think that we show proper
trust in the fulness of Divine pardon when we
insist that men who have erreo and been for-
given, who have faithlessly missed their oppor-
tunity and passed through penitence into new
zeal, shall be hurried on to the duties they re-
fused to face. But now, as in the times of Israel,
the law of adequate discipline forbids, the law of
punishment forbids. Humanity is not to be
cheated of its Divine instruction, nor shall any
pretext of generosity or necessity be urged in
order that certain men may enter a Canaan they
once refused to possess. We see a term set to a
probation.
Does it appear an inordinate punishment, this
denial of Canaan to the unl)elieving? There is
no need to think so. For the men and women
who held back in doubt of God, the wilderness,
quite as well as Canaan, would serve the main
end, to teach them trust. Life went on still
under the protection of the Almighty. The
desert was His, as well as the land flowing with
428
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
milk and honey. Yea, in the desert they had,
being such as they were, fewer temptations to
question the power of God and their own need
of Him than they would have found in the land
of promise. May we not say that men who had
been so ready to receive an evil report of the land
would have been confirmed in their doubt of
Jehovah if they had been allowed to cross the
frontier? Better for them to remain in the desert
that made no pretence to be anything else, than
to enter Canaan and find excuses for calling it a
desert. No individual was prevented from learn-
ing to know God and trust Him; of that we
may be sure. The way of instruction was that of
penitence and sorrow and continued hardships.
But there would have been no other way for
those unbelievers even if they had entered on the
promised inheritance. In Canaan, as well as in
the desert, they would have had to learn con-
trition, to advance in moral life by means of tem-
poral hardships and defeat.
And there was a limitation of the judgment.
Only those from twenty years old and upward
were included. The young men and young wo-
men, presumably because they had not bewailed
their lot and cried against Moses and God, hav-
ing too much of the hopeful spirit of youth, were
not condemned to die in the wilderness. A dif-
ference was there, and by the terms of the deliver-
ance was made clear, which often comes to light
in human history. The old, who should know
most of the goodness of God and His unfailing
power, draw back; the young and inexperienced
are ready to advance. Men who are occupied
with affairs tend to think that their wise manage-
ment brings success, and they place Divine Prov-
idence secondary to their own wisdom. Shall we
be able for this? they ask. Does this approve
itself to us as men of the world, responsible men?
If not, they think it would be folly to go forward
even at the call of God. But the young are not
so wise in their own experience; they are in the
mood to dare: the young and the trustful — men
like Joshua and Caleb, who have learned that
power and success are of God, and that His way
is always safe. To calculate and act on the basis
of expediency is not the failing of the young.
Let us pray for men who have faith in the future
of humanity and of the Church to stand forth and
rally about them the youths, not spoiled by over-
wise theories of life, who have still in their souls
the heavenly instinct' of hope.
Caleb has here and elsewhere in the history
peculiar honour, all the more remarkable that he
was, properly speaking, no Israelite. The narra-
tive at this point associates his family with the
tribe of Judah. But Caleb was a Kenizzite
(Numb, xxxii. 12); and Kenaz appears in Gen.
xxxvi. II, IS, as an Edomite or descendant of
Esau. At what time this particular Kenizzite
family joined the expedition of Israel we have
no hint. As yet, however, there was no inter-
marriage; and it should be noticed that the dis-
trict which in consideration of his fidelity Caleb
has for his inheritance in Canaan is the same
as was occupied by Kenizzites before the con-
quest. There is, of course, no improbability in
this; it may rather appear to give proof of the
genuineness of the narrative. Caleb joins the
Israelites, attaches himself to Judah in the camp
and on the march, proves himself a faithful serv-
ant of God and of the host, and has the promise
of his forefathers' inheritance when the distribu-
tion of Canaan shall be made. He reported
favourably of the region about Hebron; and
Hebron became his city, as we learn from Josh,
xiv.
In contrast to the special promise made to
Joshua and Caleb is the fate of the other ten
whose report brought " a slander upon the land."
These " died by the plague before Jehovah." It
would seem that before Moses appealed to God
on behalf of the people, the pestilence was
spreading which might have swept the Israelites
down like Sennacherib's army in after-times.
And the ten false spies had been among the first
to die. Little indeed know men how soon provi-
dence will convict them of their faithlessness and
rebellion. Let us save our lives, they say, by
holding back from duties that involve difficulty
and danger. Why advance where we are sure to
fall by the sword? But the sword finds them
nevertheless, or the plague lays hold of them;
and where then is the life they were so careful
to preserve? The men of Israel who said, " Let
us not go to Canaan, but return to Egypt,"
neither see Canaan nor Egypt. They gain noth-
ing they desire; they lose all they were so careful
to keep.
Suddenly at ver. 40 we are brought to a new
development. The people no sooner hear their
doom than they resolve to take the future into
their own hands. They acknowledge that they
have sinned, meaning, however, only that they
have fallen into a mistake the consequences of
which they had not foreseen; and with this inade-
quate confession of fault they decide to make the
advance into Canaan forthwith. They do not see
that instead of recovering their hope in God by
any such attempt they will really deepen the alien-
ation between themselves and Him. Submission
is indeed hard, but it is their one grace, their one
duty. If they press on into Canaan, they must
go without the Lord, as Moses warns them, and
they shall not prosper.
It is not enough when men have discovered an
evil heart of unbelief, and turned again in re-
pentance, that they take up the thread of life
which has become ravelled. Perverse faithless-
ness cannot be cured by a sudden decision to
resume the duty which was abandoned in fear.
The refusal was no superficial thing, but had its
source in the springs of will, the character and
habits of life. We are apt to judge otherwise,
and to suppose that we can alter the whole cur-
rent of our nature by a single act of choice. To-
day the trend is strongly in one direction, along
a channel which has been forming for many
years; to-morrow we think it possible to become
other men, strong where we were weak, deter-
mined upon that which we abhorred. But some-
thing must intervene; some change must take
place deeper than our impulse. We must have
the new heart and the right spirit; and in propor-
tion to the gravity of the situation and the im-
portance of the duty to be done must the time of
discipline be long. The wilderness wandering
had to be for many years because the temper of a
whole people was to be altered. For a single
person a far shorter ordeal may suffice. He may
pass through the stages of conviction, repent-
ance, and new creation in a few weeks or even
days. Nay, sometimes the regenerating Spirit
brings about the change apparently in a moment.
Yet the rule is that stability in faith must come
slowly, that the way of trial cannot be hastened.
A great task, therefore, the right doing of which
is necessary to the open vindication of religion,
Numbers xv.J
OFFERINGS: SABBATH-KEEPING: DRESS.
429
may not be gone about in a sudden change of
mind. We are not to take lightly, into untried
hands, the massive plough of the kingdom of
God.
In Canaan, the Amalekites and Canaanites,
Moses said, would dispute the advance of Israel,
— Amalekites skilled in desultory war, Canaanites
long trained in military art. These would fight
without any sense of the support of the true God.
But how would the Hebrews speed, meeting
them on the same footing? The contest would
be then between human skill and daring on
either side; and there could be no doubt as to the
issue. Bands of men acquainted with the coun-
try, disciplined in war as the tribes of Israel were
not, fighting for their fields and homes with a
defence of walled cities to fall back upon, would
certainly win. If the Hebrews went up, it would
be without the sign of Jehovah's presence; the
ark of the covenant could not be borne with
the army on such an expedition. Their attempt,
being presumptuous, must end in disaster.
Too often the conflicts in which the Church is
involved are of this very kind. There is profes-
sion of high moral design and Christian principle.
Ostensibly it is for the sake of true religion that
something is undertaken. But in reality the af-
fair is not one that belongs to the essence of
faith. It is perhaps a question of prestige, of ex-
clusive claim to certain rights or moneys, the
very last thing a Christian church should insist
upon. Then the contest is between human diplo-
macy and resolution, whether on the one side or
the other. It is idle to call a campaign like this
a holy war. The ark of the covenant does not
accompany the army that calls itself Jehovah's.
As Israel found that even Amalekites and Cana-
anites were too strong for her, so has the Church
often found that men whom she termed unbe-
lievers were superior to her in the arms she chose
to use. Again and again have her forces had to
retire smitten even unto Hormah. For those
who are called unbelievers and atheists have
their rights; and they will always be able to
maintain their rights against a presumptuous
church which " goes up into the mountain " with-
out the sanction of its living Head.
It was no general advance of the tribes that
on this occasion ended in defeat. The solid,
resolute march of the whole people was a very
different thing from the half-hearted sally of
some hundreds of fighting men. When the host
of the Israelites, men, women, and children,
moved together, the men of war had support in
the sympathy of those they defended, in the
prayers of the priest and of the people. They
were nerved to play the part of heroes by the
thought that all depended upon them, that if they
failed their wives and children would be put to
the sword. And again there is a parallel in the
advance of the Church against her adversaries.
If the ofificials only go out to fight, if it is their
affair, their expedition, if there is no strong on-
ward movement of the whole host, what is there
to give support to the enterprise? The fighting
men may seem to have heart enough for their
battle; but the underlying feeling that they are
i.ot engaged in the defence of the Gospel itself,
or in guarding any position on which the power
2nd success of the Gospel depend, must always,
and properly, weaken their arms. There is all
the difference in the world between an ecclesias-
tical battle and the contest for vital faith. And
it is a matter of regret that so much of the
28— Vol. I.
strength and ardour of good men should be
wasted in downright earthly fighting, when the
feeling of the Church as a whole is not with those
who claim to be her army. Let all the tribes,
that is to say all the churches of Christ that are
of one rnind as to vital truth, advance together,
without jealousy, without mutual contempt, and
the opposition to Christianity will practically
melt away.
From the twenty-first chapter, which appears
to open with a reminiscence of the first attack
on Canaan, we gather that one of those who op-
posed the expedition was the Canaanite King of
Arad. The advance appears therefore to have
been made by way of Hezron and Beersheba.
The mountains visible from the camp were likely
the chalk hills beyond the " Ascent of Akrab-
bim." These passed, probably near Hezron, a
valley opened, stretching away towards Hebron.
The Amalekites gathering from every wady, and
the Canaanites from the ridge to the right, where
Arad lay, seem to have fallen upon the Hebrews
with a sudden onset. While many escaped others
were slain or taken captive. A keen memory of
the defeat survived; but it was not till long after-
wards, in the days of the judges, that the strong-
holds of the region were reduced.
CHAPTER XIII.
OFFERINGS: SABBATH-KEEPING: DRESS.
Numbers xv.
The enactments of this chapter regarding meal
offerings and drink offerings, the heave offerings
of the first dough, and the atonement for un-
witting errors belong to the cultus of Canaan.
Nothing generic distinguishes the first and third
of these statutes from some that were presumably
to be observed in the desert; but the note is ex-
plicit, " When ye be come into the land of your
habitations which I give unto you," " When ye
be come into the land whither I bring you."
The whole chapter, with its instance of presump-
tuous sin introduced by the clause, " And while
the children of Israel were in the wilderness,"
marking a return to that time, and its command-
ment regarding the fringes or tassels of blue to
be attached to the dress as remembrances of
obligations, may appear at first sight without any
reference either to what has preceded or what
follows. The compilers, however, have a definite
purpose in view. The presumption of Korah and
his company, and of Dathan and Abiram, is in
contrast to the unwitting faults for which atone-
ment is provided, and it comes under the cate-
gory of what is " done with a high hand " — a
form of blasphemy which is to be punished with
death. The case of the Sabbath-breaker is an
instance of this unpardonable sin, and sends its
light on to the incidents that follow. Even the
memorial fringes or tassels, and the prophetic
sentences that accompany the command to wear
them, seem to be forewarnings of the doom of
sacrilegious men.
I. Meal and Drink Offerings. — The statute
regarding offerings " to make a sweet savour
unto Jehovah " is specially occupied with pre-
scribing the proportion of flour and oil and
wine to be presented along with the animal
brought for a burnt offering or sacrifice. Any
43°
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
one separating himself in terms of a vow, or
desiring to express gratitude for some Divine
favour, or again on the occasion of a sacred festi-
val when he had special cause of rejoicing before
God, might bring a lamb, a ram, or an ox as his
oblation; and the meal and drink offerings were
to vary with the value of the animal brought for
sacrifice. The law does not demand the same
offering of every person under similar circum-
stances. According to his means or his gratitude
he may give. But deciding first as to his burnt
or slain offering, he must add to it, for a lamb,
the tenth of an ephah of fine f^our mixed with a
quarter of a hin of oil, and also a quarter of a hin
of wine. For a bullock, the quantities were to be
three-tenths of an ephah of fine flour, with half
a hin of oil, and, as a drink offering, half a hin
of wine.
The provision is a singular one, based on
some sense of what was becoming which we can-
not pretend to revive. But it points to a rule
which the Apostle Paul may have recognised
in this and other Jewish statutes as belonging
to universal morality: "Take thought for things
honourable in the sight of all men." To make a
show of generosity by giving a bullock, while the
flour and oil and wine were withheld, was not
seemly. Neither is it seemly for a Christian to
be lavish in his gifts to the Church, but withhold
the meal offering and drink offering he owes to
the poor. Throughout the whole range of use
and expenditure, personal and of the family, a
proportion is to be found which it is one of the
Christian arts to determine, one of the Christian
duties to observe. And nothing is right unless
all is right. The penny saved here takes away
I the sweet savour of the pound given there. No
man is in this to be a law to himself. Public
justice and Divine are to be satisfied.
The presence or absence of oil in an oblation
marked its character. The sin offering and the
jealousy offering were without oil. The " oil of
joy " (Isa. Ixi. 3) accompanied festal and peace
offerings. All ordinances prescribing the obla-
tion of wine and oil necessarily belonged to the
cultus of Canaan, for in the wilderness neither of
the?e elements of the sacrifice could be always
hrul. The idea underlying the peace offerings,
with their accompanying meal and drink offer-
ings, was unquestionably that of feasting with
Jehovah, enjoying His bounty at His table. Ac-
knowledgment was made that the cattle on the
hills were His, that it was He who gave the
harvest, the vintage, and the fruit of the olive-
grove. Confession of man's indebtedness to Je-
hovah as Lord of nature was interwoven with
the whole sacrificial system.
In connection with this ordinance of meal and
drink offerings, and that of atonement for unin-
tentional failures in duty (ver. 22 ff.), it is very
carefully enacted that the law shall be the same
for the " homeborn " and the " stranger." " For
the assembly there shall be one statute for you
and for the stranger that sojourneth with you, a
statute for ever throughout your generations:
as ye are, so shall the stranger be before the
Lord." The design is to secure religious unity,
and by means of it gradually to incorporate
with Israel all dwellers in the land. While cer-
tain ordinances were intended to make Israel a
holy nation separated and consecrated to Je-
hovah, this admission of strangers to the privi-
leges of the covenant has another design. In the
Book of Deuteronomy (vii. 2) a statute occurs
that entirely excludes from citizenship and in-
corporation all Canaanites, Hittites, Jebusites,
Amorites, Hivites, Girgashites, and Perizzites.
There was to be no intermarriage with them, no
toleration of them, lest they led Israel away into
idolatry. The statute is enforced by the words,
" For thou art an holy people unto the Lord
thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to
be a peculiar people unto Himself, above all peo-
ples that are upon the face of the earth." With
this emphatic assertion of the severance of the
Hebrews from other races the strain of Numbers,
as well as Exodus and Leviticus, generally agrees.
When we endeavour to harmonise with it the ad-
mission of strangers to the right and joy of sacri-
ficial festivals, wc at once meet the difficulty that
no other races were fitter to be received into
religious confraternity than those of Canaan.
Neither Babylonians, Syrians, Phoenicians, nor
Philistines were free from the taint of idolatry;
and however degrading the rites of the Canaan-
ites were, some of the other nations followed
practices quite as revolting.
We know that for a long period of Israel's
history strangers were, according to the statute
presently under consideration, admitted to the
fellowship of religion, as well as to high office
in the state. " We have only to study the Book
of Joshua to discover that the Israelites, like the
Saxons in Britain, destroyed the cities and not
the population of the country, and that the
number of cities actually overthrown was not
very large. We have only to turn to the list of
the ' mighty men ' of David to learn how many
of them were foreigners, Hittites, Ammonites.
Zobahites, and even Philistines of Gath (2 Sam.
XV. 18, 19: vi. 10). Nor must it be forgotten that
David himself was partly a Moabite by descent."*
In accordance with this large tolerance we might
be disposed to include among the " strangers "
admitted to privilege men belonging to races
that inhabited Canaan before the conquest. Even
Deuteronomy seems in one passage to exclude
none but Ammonites and Moabites; and the
covenant law of Exod. xxiii. commands generous
treatment of the stranger. In contrast to
the " homeborn," strangers may appear to mean
those only who had come from other countries
and chosen to identify themselves with the faith
and fortunes of Israel; still this passage attempts
no such definition, and on the whole we must al-
low that' the Mosaic law in regulating the politi-
cal and social position of resident non-Israelites
showed " a spirit of great liberality." They had,
of course, to conform to many laws — those, for
instance, of marriage, and those which forbade
the eating of blood and the flesh of animals not
properly slaughtered. If uncircumcised, they
could not keep the Passover; but being circum-
cised, they had equal rights with the Hebrews.
The purpose evidently was to make an open way
to the benefits of Israel's government and re-
ligion.
The heave offering of the first dough is placed
(ver. 20) side by side with the heave offering
of the threshing-floor of the first sheaves. In
Leviticus (xxiii. i") a harvest oblation is
ordered — two wave-loaves of fine fiour baken
with leaven. Here the heave offering of
a cake made from the first dough is not
accompanied with sacrifices of animals, but
is of a simple kind, mainly a tribute to
* Sayce, " The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the
Monuments," p. 359.
Numbers xv.]
OFFERINGS: SABBATH-KEEPING: DRESS.
431
the priests. The Deuteronomic statute regard-
ing firstfruits, which were to be put in a basket
and set down before the altar, prescribed a form-
ula of dedication beginning, " An Aramean ready
to perish was my father, and he went down into
Egypt": and the offering of these firstfruits was
to be an occasion of joy — " Thou shaft rejoice
in all the good which the Lord thy God hath
given unto thee and unto thine house, thou and
the Levite, and the stranger that is in the midst
of thee." There can be no question that the
most developed statute regarding these harvest
offerings is that given in Leviticus, where the ex-
act time for the presentation of the loaves is
fixed, the fiftieth day after the Sabbath, from the
day when the sheaf was brought. The feast
accompanying the offering of the loaves came
to be known as that of Pentecost.
Passing now to the law of atonement for unin-
tentional omissions of duty, we notice that the
introductory sentences (vv. 22, 23) have a pecu-
liar retrospective cast. They seem to point back
to the time when the Lord gave commandment
by the hand of Moses. It would appear that in
course of years discovery was made that portions
of the law were neglected, and the provisions of
this statute were to relieve the nation and indi-
viduals of accumulating defilement. " When ye
shall err, and not observe all these command-
ments which the Lord hath spoken unto Moses,
even all that the Lord hath commanded you by
the hand of Moses, from the day that the Lord
gave commandment, and onward throughout
your generations; then it shall be, if it be done
unwittingly, without the knowledge of the con-
gregation " — so runs the preamble. A series of
statutes in Lev. iv. contemplates offences of a
like kind, when something has been done which
the Lord commanded not to be done. The en-
actment of Numbers appears to point to a " com-
plete falling away of the congregation from the
whole of the law," an unconscious apostasy.
Maimonides understands the provision as relat-
ing to guilt incurred by the people in adopting
customs and usages of the heathen that seemed
to be reconcilable with the law of Jehovah,
though they really led to contempt and neglect
of His commandments.*
For the nation as a whole, under these circum-
stances, atonement was to be made by the burnt
offering of a young bullock with its meal offering
and drink offering, and the sin offering of a he-
goat. In this purgation all strangers resident
with Israel are specially included. When any
person discovered that he had neglected a pre-
cept, he was to offer a she-goat of the first year
for a sin offering. The Israelite and the stranger
alike had in this way access to the sanctuary.
But in contrast to unintentional omission of
duty was set deliberate neglect of it. For this
there was no atonement. Whether the high-
handed transgressor was homeborn or a stranger,
he was to be utterly cut off as a blasphemer; his
iniquity rested upon him. The distinction is
morally sound: and the punishment of the rebel
against authority — apparently nothing less than
death, or perhaps, if he has fled the land, out-
lawry— is such as the theocratic idea obviously
required. It was Jehovah Himself who was de-
fied. A man who, as it were, shook his fist
in rebellion against God had no right to live in
His world, under the protection of His benefi-
cent laws.
♦ See Keil and Delitzsch ii. loco.
The distinction between unwitting neglect and
open rejection runs through the whole range of
duty, natural, Hebrew, Christian. What a man
knows to be right he has before him as a Divine
law of moral conduct. By the highest obliga-
tions, under which he lies to thi^ Lord of con-
science, to his fellow-men, and to himself, he
is bound to obey. Judaism added the authority
of revelation — the Mosaic law, the prophetic
word. Christianity still further adds the authority
of the word spoken by the Son of God, and the
obligation imposed by His death as the mani-
festation of eternal love. In proportion as the
Divine will is made clear, and the law enforced
by revelation and grace, the sin of rejection be-
comes greater and more blasphemous. But, on
the other hand, the unwitting transgressor, be
he heathen or imperfectly instructed Christian,
has under the new covenant, in which mercy and
justice go hand in hand, no less consideration
than the Hebrew who unintentionally erred.
There is no law that cuts him off from his people.
Wide as this principle may reach, it must be that
according to which men are judged. Many,
knowing the invisible things of God " through
the things that are made," are without excuse.
They " hold down the truth in unrighteous-
ness "; they are high-handed transgressors. But
others who have no knowledge of the Divine
law, and break it unwittingly, have their atone-
ment: God provides it. Nor are we to impeach
Divine Providence by judging before the time.
It may be asked. Why, since defiant rejection
of Christian law is more blasphemous than high-
handed breach of the old Hebrew law, the provi-
dence of God does not punish it? If any one
with Christ and His cross in view is guilty of
injustice, or of hatred which is murder, does he
not prove himself unworthy to live in God's
world? And why, then, does he not suffer at
once the doom of his rebellion? The theory
of some stern moralists has been that human
government should administer the justice of
Heaven and cut off the unbeliever. In many
a notable case this has been done, and has caused
a righteous horror which continues to be felt.
But although men cannot safely undertake the
punishment of such offenders, why does not
God? Christ boldly stated that here and now
this is not the method of the Divine government,
but that men enjoy the Father's mercy even when
they are unjust, unthankful, and evil. Yet He
spoke of judgment universal — judgment and ret-
ribution that shall not miss a single sinner, a
single secret sin. And His view of the theocracy
clearly is that meanwhile God by mercy to the
defiant desires to train men in mercy, by forbear-
ance towards the unthankful and evil commends
to us like patience and endurance. Transgressors
are to have their full opportunity of repentance,
to which the very goodness of God calls them.
But justice which delays is not unobservant.
Though He who reigns moves slowly to His end.
He will not fail to reach it. " He hath appointed
a day in the which He will judge the world in
righteousness." As for human law, its sphere is
fixed. Society must protect itself against crime,
and is to do so in the name of God, in con-
formity with the eternal principles of righteous-
ness. The Hebrew temper may seem to have
carried this principle into a range that was peril-
ous to enter, as in the instance immediately to be
considered; yet the protection of society was even
then the immediate inotive» not vain jealousy
432
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
for the honour of God. For ourselves, we have
a duty which must be done without assumption
or hypocrisy.
The various subjects of thought suggested here
should be followed out. For us, they are com-
plicated on the social as well as the religious
side by certain theories that are in vogue. The
duty of civil government, for example, is on
one side extended beyond its proper range by
the attempt to give it authority in the domain
of religious truth; on the other hand it is unduly
restricted by toleration of what is against the
well-being of society. The Christian moralist
has much to ponder in relation to popular opin-
ions and the trend of modern legislation.
2. The Sabbath-breaker. — If the actual se-
quence of events is followed in the narrative of
Numbers, it must have been after the condemna-
tion of the adult Israelites that judgment of the
man who was found infringing the Sabbath law
had to be executed; and some who were them-
selves under reprobation took part in convicting
and punishing this offender. There is a difficulty
here which on high moral grounds it is impos-
sible to explain away. Disaffection and revolt
had brought on the mass of the people the sen-
tence of destruction; and this had only been
exchanged on Moses' intercession for the forty
years of wandering. Should not sins that were
visited with this penalty have excluded all who
were guilty of them from any judicial act? But
the same objection would, if admitted, prevent all
of us from taking part in the execution of law.
Neither the judge nor the jury, neither those
who legislate nor those who administer law, are
free from moral fault. The whole system deal-
ing with crime has this defect; and Israel in the
wilderness was as much entitled as modern so-
ciety to take in hand the correction of offenders,
the maintenance of public well-being.
The law which had been broken was one spe-
cially connected with duty to God. Sabbath-
keeping might indeed seem to belong to worship
rather than to social morality. The seventh day
was the Sabbath of Jehovah. It was to be kept
holy to Him, made a delight for His sake. The
statute regarding it belonged to the first table of
the Decalogue. Still, the commandment had a
social as well as a religious side. In good will to
men Jehovah required the day to be kept holy to
Him. Had one and another like this offender
been allowed to set aside the fourth command-
ment, the interests of the whole congregation
would soon have suffered. It was for the good
of the race, physically as well as intellectually
and spiritually, the Sabbath was to be kept.
Those who guarded the sanctity of the Sabbath
were guarding not the honour of God alone,
though they may have thought that the chief
merit of their watchfulness, but the interests of
the people, a precious heritage of the nation.
It is not necessary to maintain that judgment
was given by Moses solely on the ground that the
man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath was an
offender against the public well-being. The
thought of Jehovah's " jealousy " was constantly
kept before the mind of Israel, for by that idea,
better than any other, beneficent legislation was
supported in a rude age; and judgment no doubt
rested mainly on this. Yet the interference of
the people and their share in the execution of
punishment are to be justified by the undoubted
fact that Israel could not afford to let the Sab-
bath be lost. Even those who were to a great
extent earthly could perceive this. And if the
punishment seems disproportionate, we must re-
member that it was the presumptuous temper of
the man rather than his actual fault that was
judged criminal. St. James said, no doubt from
this point of view, "' Whosoever shall keep the
whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is
become guilty of all." The criminal act was that
of breaking down, with daring hand, the safe-
guard of social and religious prosperity.
And there is a sense in which without Phari-
saism those who are concerned for the public
well-being may still insist on the strict enforce-
ment of the laws that guard the day of rest.
Though all days are alike sacred to spiritually
minded persons, yet bodily health and mental
soundness are bound up more than men in
general know with the Sabbatic interval between
labour and labour. The Puritanism often scoffed
at is far more philanthropic than the humanita-
rianism, so-called, which derides it. And when
any one enforces the duty of Sabbath-keeping
by insisting on God's claim to the seventh day,
his belief is no superstition. Convict him first
of advocating what is against the good of men,
irrational, absurd, before venturing to call him
superstitious. If what is advanced as a claim of
God can be proved to be really for the good
of men, it is a virtue to insist that for God's sake
as well as the sake of men it should be rendered.
There were persons in our Lord's time who made
Sabbath-keeping a superstition. Against them
He testifieth. But it is in His name who was
the great Friend of men the Sabbath law is now
insisted on; and the day of rest has all the higher
sanction that it commemorates His resurrection
from the dead. His promise of that new life which
relief from labour enables us to pursue.
The institution of the Sabbath and the scrupu-
lous observance of it were, for Israel, and are
still for all believers in Divine religion, most
important means of maintaining unity in the
faith. Now that many causes interfere with the
simultaneous exhibition of regard for other
symbols of Christian belief, the day of rest and
worship gives a universal opportunity which it
would be fatal to neglect. It has the advantage
of beginning to claim men on the ground where
religion first appeals to them, that of God's care
for their temporal well-being. Those with
whom religious feeling is quite elementary must
see that a boon of incalculable value is offered
in this recurring refreshment to the wearied body
and strained mind. And with progress in reli-
gious culture the benefit of the day of rest is
found to advance. The opportunities of worship,
of religious meditation and service, which it
brings, will be esteemed as the value of Christian
fellowship, the importance of Christian knowl-
edge, and the duty of Christian endeavour are
successively understood. On all these grounds
the Sabbath, or Lord's Day, is for modern re-
ligion, as for that of the old covenant, a great
declaration, a means of unity and development
which the spiritual will earnestly uphold. Let
it fail, and distinction between religious and
non-religious will be without a sign. No doubt
the reality is more by far than the symbol. Yet
fellowship, for which in many cases the Sabbath
alone gives opportunity, is far more than a sym-
bol: and unity requires an outward manifestation.
Nothing could be more perilous to the religious
Ufe of our people than the tendency, shown by
Numbers xvi, xvii] KORAH, DATHAN, AND ABIRAM.
433
many who profess Christianity and sanctioned by
some of its teachers, to make the Sabbath a day
of self-pleasing, of mere individualism, and in-
coherent secularity.
3. The Memorial Tassels. — The unique
sumptuary law with which the chapter closes may
be regarded as a sequence of the Sabbath-
breaker's conviction. That Israelites might
never be without a reminder of their duty, and of
the Divine laws they were scrupulously to ob-
serve, these tassels with a band of blue were to
be constantly worn. It appears to us singular
that men should be expected to pay heed to such
mementoes as these. We are apt to say. If the
laws of God were not in their hearts, the sizith
would scarcely make them more attentive; and
if they had the laws in their hearts, they would
need no memorials of obligation. But the orna-
ment was something more than a reminder of
duty. It was a badge of honour, and became
more so as the Israelites understood their high
position among the peoples. The zizith would
be like an order, a mark of rank; or like the uni-
form of his regiment, which to the good soldier
recalls its history. The Hebrew would have to
live up to his duty as signified by these attach-
ments of his dress.
And Israelites were to be distinguished by the
zizith from those who were of other races, not
under law to Jehovah. Every man who wore
this badge would be able to count on the sym-
pathy of every other Israelite. The symbol be-
came a means of rousing the esprit of the nation,
and binding it together in a zealous fraternity.
The nature of the badge appears to us peculiar;
but the value of it cannot be denied. The
modern peoples, far as they have travelled from
the old ways of the Hebrews, retain the use of
symbolic dress, the liking for ornaments, by
which a man's life may be known.
The name zizith is derived from a word mean-
ing blossom. The tassel was formed of twisted
threads bound by a cord or ribbon of blue to the
garment. It was the blossom of the robe, so to
speak, hanging by a blue stem. The ornament
is again mentioned in Deut. xxii. 12, where it
has another name, gedilim, enlargements. With
extraordinary pride the Jews of our own time
still wear the talith, which is a fantastical develop-
ment of the zizith of Numbers. " The rabbins
observe that each string consisted of eight
threads, which, with the number of knots and
the numerical value of the letters in the word,
make 613, which, according to them, is the ex-
act number of the precepts in the law." The
Pharisees in Christ's time enlarged their phylac-
teries, displaying superfluously the proofs of their
Hebrew orthodoxy and zeal. It is the danger
of all symbols. In the youth of a people they
have meaning; they express fact, they give
honour. The Israelite, wearing his, felt himself
reminded, put on his honour, not to go about
" according to his own heart and his own eyes
by which he used to go a-whoring." But after-
wards the zeal became that of pride, the symbol
a mere amulet or a token of self-sufficiency.
The Jew of to-day is partly kept separate by his
talith, and because he wears it, feels himself in
touch with the fathers and heroes and prophets
of his people. But he also feels, what is not al-
ways good, his remoteness from heathen and
Christian " dogs."
And Christian symbols, the few sanctioned by
Scripture, the others that have crept into use in
the course of history, bring with their use a simi-
lar danger. In many cases they are signs of
privilege rather than memorials of duty. They
minister to pride, rather than stimulate zeal in the
service of God and men. The crucifix itself, with
consummate superstition, is worn and kissed as
a talisman.
CHAPTER XIV.
KORAH, DATHAN, AND ABIRAM.
Numbers xvi.. xvii.
Behind what appears in the history, there must
have been many movements of thought and
causes of discontent which gradually led to the
events we nov/ consider. Of the revolts against
Moses which occurred in the wilderness, this was
the most widely organised and involved the most
serious danger. But we can only conjecture in
what way i. arose, how it was related to previous
incidents and tendencies of popular feeling. It
is difficult to understand the report, in which
Korah appears at one time closely associated
with Dathan and Abiram, at other times quite
apart from them as a leader of disaffection. Ac-
cording to Wellhausen and others, three narra-
tives are combined in the text. But without
going so far in the way of analysis we clearly
trace two lines of revolt: one against Moses as
leader; the other against the Aaronic priesthood.
The two risings may have been distinct; we shall
however deal with them as simultaneous and
more or less combined. A great deal is left un-
explained, and we must be guided by the belief
that the narrative of the whole book has a cer-
tain coherency, and that facts previously re-
corded must have had their bearing on those now
to be examined.
The principal leader of revolt was Korah, son
of Izhar, a Levite of the family of Kohath; and
with him were associated two hundred and
fifty " princes of the congregation, called to the
assembly, men of renown," some of them pre-
sumably belonging to each of the tribes as is
shown incidentally in xxvii. 3. The complaint
of this company — evidently representing an opin-
ion widely held — was that Moses and Aaron took
too much upon them in reserving to themselves
the whole arrangement and control of the ritual.
The two hundred and fifty, who according to the
law had no right to use censers, were so far in
opposition to the Aaronic priesthood that they
were provided with the means of offering in-
cense. They claimed for themselves on behalf
of the whole congregation, whom they declared
to be holy, the highest function of priests. With
Korah were specially identified a number of
Levites who, not content with being separated
to do the service of the tabernacle, demanded
the higher sacerdotal office. It might seem from
vv. 10, II, that all the two hundred and fifty
were Levites; but this is precluded by the earlier
statement that they were princes of the congre-
gation, called to the assembly. So far as we
can gather, the tribe of Levi did not supply
princes, " men of renown," in this sense. While
Moses deals with Korah and his company.
Dathan. Abiram, and On. who belong to the tribe
of Reuben, stand in the background with their
grievance. Invited to state it. th^y complain
434
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
that Moses has not only brought the congrega-
tion out of a land " flowing with milk and
honey," to kill them in the wilderness, failing to
give them the inheritance he promised; but he
has made himself a prince over the host, deter-
mining everything without consulting the heads
of the tribes. They ask if he means " to put out
the eyes of these men," — that is, to blind them
to the real purpose he has in view, whatever it is,
or to make them his slaves after the Babylonian
fashion, by actually boring out the eyes of each
tenth man, perhaps. The two hundred and fifty
are called by Moses to bring their censers and
the incense and fire they have been using, that Je-
hovah may signify whether He chooses to be
served by them as priests, or by Aaron. The
oflfering of incense over, the decree against the
whole host as concerned in this revolt is made
known, and Moses intercedes for the people.
Then the Voice commands that all the people
shall separate themselves from the " tabernacle "
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, apparently as
if some tent of worship had been erected in
rivalry of the true tabernacle. Dathan and
Abiram are not at the " tabernacle," but at some
little distance, in tents of their own. The peo-
ple remove from the " tabernacle of Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram," and on the terrible in-
vocation of judgment pronounced by Moses, the
ground cleaves asunder and all the men that ap-
pertain unto Korah go down alive into the pit.
Afterwards, it is said, " lire came forth from
the Lord and devoured the two hundred and
fifty men that oflfered the incense." " The men
that appertained unto Korah " may be the pre-
sumptuous Levites, most closely identified with
his revolt. But the two hundred and fifty con-
sumed by the fire are not said to have been
swallowed by the cleaving earth; their censers
are taken up " out of the burning," as devoted
or sacred, and beaten into plates for a covering
of the altar.
On the morrow the whole congregation, even
more disaffected than before, is in a state of
tumult. The cry is raised that Moses and Aaron
" have killed the people of Jehovah." Forthwith
a plague, the sign of Divine anger, breaks out.
Atonement is made by Aaron, who runs quickly
with his burning censer " into the midst of the
assembly," and " stands between the dead and
the living." But fourteen thousand seven hun-
dred die before the plague is stayed. And the
position of Aaron as the acknowledged priest of
Jehovah is still further confirmed. Rods or
twigs are taken, one for each tribe, all the tribes
having been implicated in the revolt; and these
rods are laid up in the tent of meeting. When
a day has passed, the rod of Aaron for the
tribe of Levi is found to have put forth buds and
borne almonds. The close of the whole series
of events is an exclamation of amazed anxiety
by all the people: " Behold, we perish, we are
undone, we are all undone. Every one that
Cometh near unto the tabernacle of Jehovah
dieth: shall we perish all of us? "
Now throughout the narrative, although other
issues are involved, there can be no question that
the main design is the confirmation of the
Aaronic priesthood. What happened conveyed
a warning of most extraordinary severity against
any attempt to interfere with the sacerdotal or-
der as established. And this we can understand.
But it becomes a question why a revolt of
Reubenites against Moses was connected with
that of Korah against the sole priesthood of the
Aaronic house. We have also to consider how
it came about that princes out of all the tribes
were to be found provided with censers, which
they were apparently in the habit of using to
burn incense to Jehovah. There is a Levitical
revolt; there is an assumption by men in each
tribe of priestly dignity; and there is a protest
by men representing the tribe of Reuben against
the dictatorship of Moses. In what way might
these different movements arise and combine
in a crisis that almost wrecked the fortunes of
Lrael?
The explanation supplied by Wellhausen on
the basis of his main theory is exceedingly
laboured, at some points improbable, at others
defective. According to the Jehovistic tradition,
he says,* the rebellion proceeds from the Reu-
benites, and is directed against Moses as leader
and judge of the people. The historical basis of
this is dimly discerned to be the fall of Reuben
from its old place at the head of the brother
tribes. Out of this story, says Wellhausen, at
some time or other not specified, " when the
people of the congregation, i. e., of the Church,
have once come on the scene," there arises a
second version. The author of the agitation is
now Korah, a prince of the tribe of Judah, and
he rebels not only against Moses but against
Moses and Aaron as representing the priesthood.
" The jealousy of the secular grandees is now
directed against the class of hereditary priests
instead of against the extraordinary influence on
the community of a heaven-sent hero." Then
there is a third addition which " belongs like-
wise to the Priestly Code, but not to its original
contents." In this, Korah the prince of the
tribe of Judah is replaced by another Korah,
head of a "post-exilic Levitical family"; and
" the contest between clergy and aristocracy is
transformed into a domestic strife between the
higher and inferior clergy which was no doubt
raging in the time of the narrator." All this is
supposed to be a natural and easy explanation of
what would otherwise be an " insoluble enigma."
We ask, however, at what period any family of
Judah would be likely to claim the priesthood,
and at what post-exilic period there was " no
doubt " a strife between the higher and inferior
clergy. Nor is there any account here of the two
hundred and fifty princes of the congregation,
with their partially developed ritual antagonistic
to that of the tabernacle.
We have seen that according to the narrative
of Numbers seventy elders of the tribes were
appointed to aid Moses in bearing the heavy
burden of administration, and were endowed
with the gift of prophecy that they might the
more impressively wield authority in the host.
In the first instance, these men might be zealous
helpers of Moses, but they proved, like the rest,
angry critics of his leadership when the spies
returned with their evil report. They were in-
cluded with the other men of the tribes in the
doom of the forty years' wandering, and might
easily become movers of sedition. When the ark
was stationed permanently at Kadesh, and the
tribes spread themselves after the manner of
shepherds over a wide range of the surrounding
district, we can easily see that the authority of
the seventy would increase in proportion to the
need for direction felt in the different groups
to which they belonged. Many of the scattered
♦ Prolegomena to the " History of Israel," p. 354.
Numbers xvi., xvii.] KORAH, DATHAN, AND ABIRAM.
435
companies too were so far from the tabernacle
that they might desire a worship of their own,
and the original priestly function of the heads
of tribes, if it had lapsed, might in this way be
revived. Although there were no altars, yet with
censers and incense one of the highest rites of
worship might be observed.
Again, the period of inaction must have been
galling to many who conceived themselves quite
capable of making a successful assault on the
inhabitants of Canaan, or otherwise securing a
settled place of abode for Israel. And the tribe
of Reuben, first by birthright, and apparently one
of the strongest, would take the lead in a move-
ment to set aside the authority of Moses. We
have also to keep in mind that though Moses
had pressed the Kenizzites to join the march
and relied on their fidelity, the presence in the
camp of one like Hobab, who was an equal not
a vassal of Moses, must have been a continual
incentive to disaffection. He and his troops
had their own notions, we may believe, as to the
delay of forty years, and would very likely deny
its necessity. They would also have their own
cultus, and religiously, as well as in other ways,
show an independence which encouraged revolt.
Once more, as to the Levites, it might seem
unfair to them that Aaron and his two sons
should have a position so much higher than
theirs. They had to do many offices in connec-
tion with sacrifice, and other parts of the holy
service. On them, indeed, fell the burden of the
duties, and the ambitious might expect to force
their way into the higher office of the priesthood,
at a time when rebellion against authority was
coming to a head. We may suppose that Korah
and his company of Levites, acting partly for
themselves, partly in concert with the two hun-
dred and fifty who had already assumed the right
to burn incense, agreed to make their demand
in the first instance, that as Levites they should
be admitted priests. This would prepare the way
for the princes of the tribes to claim sacerdotal
rights according to the old clan idea. And at the
same time, the priority of Reuben would be an-
other point, insistence upon which would strike
at the power of Moses. If the princes of Reuben
had gone so far as to erect a " tabernacle " or
mishcan for their worship, that may have been,
for the occasion, made the headquarters of re-
volt, perhaps because Reuben happened at the
time to be nearest the encampment of the
Levites.
A widespread rebellion, an organised rebellion,
not homogeneous, but with many elements in it
tending to utter confusion, is what we see.
Suppose it to have succeeded, the unity of wor-
ship would have been destroyed completely.
Each tribe with its own cultus would have gone
its own way so far as religion was concerned.
In a very short time there would have been as
many debased cults as there were wandering
companies. Then the claim of autonomy, if not
of right to lead the tribes, made on behalf of
Reuben, involved a further danger. Moses had
not only the sagacity but the inspiration which
ought to have commanded obedience. The
princes of Reuben had neither. Whether all
under the lead of Reuben or each tribe led by
its own princes, the Israelites would have
travelled to disaster. Futile attempts at conquest,
strife or alliance with neighbouring peoples, in-
ternal dissension, would have worn the tribes
piecemeal away. The dictatorship of Moses, the
Aaronic priesthood, and the unity of worship
stood or fell together. One of the three re-
moved, the others would have given way. But
the revolutionary spirit, springing out of ambi-
tion and a disaffection for which there was no
excuse, was blind to consequences. And the stern
suppression of this revolt, at whatever cost, was
absolutely needful if there was to be any future
for Israel.
It has been supposed that we have in this re-
bellion of Korah the first example of ecclesias-
tical dissension, and that the punishment is a
warning to all who presumptuously intrude into
the priestly office. Laj'men take the censer; and
the fire of the Lord burns them up. So, let not
laymen, at any time in the Church's history,
venture to touch the sacred mysteries. If ritual
and sacramentarian miracle were the heart of
religion; if there could be no worship of God
and no salvation for men now unless through
a consecrated priesthood, this might be said.
But the old covenant, with its symbols and
shadows, has been superseded. We have another
censer now, another tabernacle, another way
which has been consecrated for ever by the sacri-
fice of Christ, a way into the holiest of all open
to every believer. Our unity does not depend
on the priesthood of men, but on the universal
and eternal priesthood of Christ. The co-opera-
tion of Aaron as priest was needful to Moses,
not that his power might be maintained for his
own sake, but that he might have authority over
the host for Israel's sake. It was not the dignity
of an order or of a man that was at stake, but the
very existence of religion and of the nation.
This bond snapped a^ any point, the tribes would
have been scattered and lost.
A leader of men, standing above them for their
temporal interests, can rarely take upon him to be
the instrument of administering the penalty of
their sins. What king, for instance, ever invoked
an interdict on his own people, or in his own
right of judging for God condemned them to
pay a tax to the Church, because they had done
what was morally wrong? Rulers generally have
regarded disobedience to themselves as the only
crime it was worth their while to punish. When
Moses stood against the faithless spirit of the
Israelites and issued orders by way of punish-
ing that bad spirit, he certainly put his authority
to a tremendous test. Without a sure ground
of confidence in Divine support, he would have
been foolhardy in the extreme. And we are not
surprised that the coalition against him repre-
sented many causes of discontent. Under his
administration the long sojourn in the desert had
been decreed, and a whole generation deprived
of what they held their right — a settlement in
Canaan. He appeared to be tyrannising over the
tribes; and proud Reubenites sought to put an
end to his rule. The priesthood was his creation,
and seemed to be made exclusive simply that
through Aaron he might have a firmer hold of
the people's liberties. Why was the old pre-
rogative of the headmen in religious matters
taken from them? They would reclaim their
rights. Neither Levi nor Reuben should be de-
nied its priestly autonomy any longer. In the
whole rebellion there was one spirit, but there
were also divided counsels; and Moses showed
his wisdom by taking the revolt not as a single
movement, but part by part.
First he met the Levites, with Korah at their
head, professing great zeal for the principle that
43^
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
all the congregation were holy, every one of
them. A claim made on that ground could not
be disproved by argument, perhaps, although
the holiness of the congregation was evidently
an ideal, not a fact. Jehovah Himself would
have to decide. Yet Moses remonstrated in a
way that was fitted to move the Levites, and
perhaps did touch some of them. They had been
honoured by God in having a certain holy office
assigned to them. Were they to renounce it in
joining a revolt which would make the very
priesthood they desired common to all the tribes?
From Jehovah Himself the Levites had their
commission. It was against Jehovah they were
fighting; and how could they speed? They
spoke of Aaron and his dignity. But what was
Aaron? Only a servant of God and of the peo-
ple, a man who personally assumed no great airs.
By this appeal some would seem to have
been detached from the rebellion, for in xxvi.
9-11, when the judgment of Korah and his com-
pany is referred to, it is added, " Notwithstand-
ing the children of Korah died not." From i
Chron. vi. we learn that in the line of Korah's
descendants appeared certain makers and leaders
of sacred song, Heman among them, one of
David's singers, to whom Psalm Ixxxviii. is as-
cribv.J.
With the Reubenites Moses deals in the next
place, taking their cause of discontent by itself.
Already one of the three Reubenite chiefs had
withdrawn, and Dathan and Abiram stood by
themselves. Refusing to obey the call of Moses
to a conference, they stated their grievance
roughly by the mouth of a messenger; and Moses
could only with indignatioQ express before God
I his blamelessness in regard to them: " I have not
taken one ass from them, neither have I hurt one
of them." Neither for his own enrichment, nor
in personal ambition had he acted. Could they
maintain, did the people think, that the present
revolt was equally disinterested? Under cover
of opposition to tyranny, are they not desiring to
play the part of tyrants and aggrandise them-
selves at the expense of the people?
It is singular that not a word is said in special
condemnation of the two hundred and fifty be-
cause they were in possession of censers and in-
cense. May it be the case that the complete
reservation of the high-priestly duties to the
house of Aaron had not as yet taken effect, that
it was a purpose rather than a fact? May it not
further be the case that the rebellion partly took
form and ripened because an order had been
given withdrawing the use of censers from the
headmen of the tribes? If there had as yet been
a certain temporary allowance of the tribal priest-
hood and ritual, we should not have to ask how
incense and censers were in the hands of the two
hundred and fifty, and why the brass of their
vessels was held to be sacred and put to holy
. use.
The prayer of Moses in which he interceded
for the people, ver. 22, is marked by an expres-
sion of singular breadth, " O God, the God of the
spirits of all flesh." The men, misled on the
fleshly side by appetite (ver. 13), and shrinking
from pain, were against God. But their spirits
were in His hand. Would He not move their
spirits, redeem and save them? Would He not
look on the hearts of all and distinguish the
guilty from the innocent, the more rebellious
from the less? One man had sinned, but would
God burst out on the whole congregation? The
form of the intercession is abrupt, crude. Even
Moses with all his justice and all his pity could
not be more just, more compassionate, than Je-
hovah. The purpose of destruction was not as
the leader thought it to be.
Regarding the judgments, that of the earth-
quake and that of the fire, we are too remote in
time to form any proper conception of what they
were, how they were inflicted. " Moses," says
Lange, " appears as a man whose wonderful pre-
sentiment becomes a miraculous prophecy by the
Spirit of revelation." But this is not sufficient.
There was more than a presentiment. Moses
knew what was coming, knew that where the
rebels stood the earth would open, the consum-
ing fire burn. The plague, on the other hand,
which next day spread rapidly among the excited
people and threatened to destroy them, was not
foreseen. It came as if straight from the hand of
Divine wrath. But it afforded an opportunity for
Aaron to prove his power with God and his
courage. Carrying the sacred fire into the midst
of the infected people he became the means of
their deliverance. As he waved his censer, and
its fumes went up to heaven, faith in Jehovah
and in Aaron as the true priest of Jehovah was
revived in the hearts of men. Their spirits came
again under the healing power of that symbolism
which had lost its virtue in common use, and was
now associated in a grave crisis with an appeal
to Him who smites and heals, who kills and
makes alive.
It has been maintained by some that the
closing sentences of chap. xvii. should follow
chap. xvi. with which they appear to be closely
connected, the incident of the budding of
Aaron's rod seeming to call rather for a festal
celebration than a lament. The theory of the
Book of Numbers we have seen reason to adopt
would account for the introduction of the fresh
episode, simply because it relates to the priest-
hood and tends to confirm the Aaronites in ex-
clusive dignity. The symbolic test of the claim
raised by the tribes corresponds closely to the
signs that were used by some of the prophets,
such as the girdle laid up by the river Euphrates,
and the basket of summer fruits. The rod on
which Aaron's name was written was of almond,
a tree for which Syria was famous. Like the
sloe it sends forth blossoms before the leaves;
and the unique way in which this twig showed
its living vigour as compared with the others
was a token of the choice of Levi to serve and
Aaron to minister in the holiest office before
Jehovah.
The whole circumstances, and the closing cry
of the people, leave the impression of a grave
difficulty found in establishing the hierarchy and
centralising the worship. It was a necessity —
shall we call it a sad necessity? — that the men of
the tribes should be deprived of direct access to
the sanctuary and the oracle. Earthly, disobe-
dient, and far from trustful in God, they could
not be allowed, even the hereditary chiefs among
them, to offer sacrifices. The ideas of the Divine
holiness embodied in the Mosaic law were so far
in advance of the common thought of Israel, that
the old order had to be superseded by one fitted
to promote the spiritual education of the people,
and prepare them for a time when there shall be
" on the bells of the horses, Holy unto the
Lord; and every pot in Judah shall be holy unto
the Lord of hosts, and all they that sacrifice shall
come and take of them and seethe therein." The
Numbers xviii., xix.]
TITHES AND CLEANSINGS.
437
institution of the Aaronic priesthood was a step
of progress indispensable to the security of re-
ligion and the brotherhood of the tribes in that
high sense for which they were made a nation.
But it was at the same time a confession that
Israel was not spiritual, was not the holy con-
gregation Korah declared it to be. The greater
was the pity that afterwards in the day of Israel s
opportunity, when Christ came to lead the whole
people into the spiritual liberty and grace for
which prophets had longed, the priestly system
was held tenaciously as the pride of the nation.
When the law of ritual and sacrifice and priestly
mediation should have been left behind as no
longer necessary because the Messiah had come,
the way of higher life was opened in vain.
Sacerdotalism held its place with full consent of
those who guided affairs. Israel as a nation was
blinded, and its day shone in vain.
Of all priesthoods as corporate bodies, how-
ever estimable, zealous, and spiritually-minded
individual members of them may be, must it not
be said that their existence is a sad necessity?
They may be educative. A sacerdotal system
now may, like that of the Mosaic law, be a tutor
to bring men to Christ. Realising that, those
who hold office under it may bring help to men
not yet fit for liberty. But priestly dominance
is no perpetual rule in any church, certainly not
in the Kingdom of God. The freedom with
which Christ makes men free is the goal. The
highest duty a priest can fulfil is to prepare men
for that liberty; and as soon as he can he should
discharge them for the enjoyment of it. To find
in episodes like those of Korah's revolt and its
suppression a rule applicable to modern religious
afifairs is too great an anachronism. For what-
ever right sacerdotalism now has is purely of the
Church's tolerance, in the measure not of Divine
right, but of the need of uninstructed men. To
the spiritual, to those who know, the priestly
system with its symbols and authoritative claim
is but an interference with privilege and duty.
Can any Aaron now make an atonement for a
mass of people, or even in virtue of his of^ce
apply to them the atonement made by Christ?
How does his absolution help a soul that knows
Christ the Redeemer as every Christian soul
ought to know Him? The great fault of priest-
hoods always is, that having once gained power,
they endeavour to retain it and extend it, making
greater claims the longer they exist. Affirming
that they speak for the Church, they endeavour
to control the voice of the Church. Affirming
that they speak for Christ, they deny or minimise
His great gift of liberty. Freedom of thought
and reason was to Cardinal Newman, for ex-
ample, the cause of all deplorable heresies and
infidelities, of a divided Church and a ruined
world. The candid priest of our day is found
making his claim as largely as ever, and then
virtually explaining it away. Should not the
vain attempt to hold by Judaic institutions cease?
And although the Church of Christ early made
the mistake of harking back to Mosaism, should
not confession now be made that priesthood of
the exclusive kind is out of date, that every be-
liever may perform the highest functions of the
consecrated life?
The Divine choice of Aaron, his confirmation
in high religious office by the budding of the
almond twig as well as by the acceptance of his
intercession, have their parallels now. The re-
alities of one age become symbols for another.
Like the whole ritual of Israel, these particular
incidents may be turned to Christian use by way
of illustration. But not with regard to the pre-
rogative of any arch-hierarch. The availing in-
tercession is that of Christ, the sole headship
over the tribes of men is that which He has
gained by Divine courage, love, and sacrifice.
Among those who believe there is equal depend-
ence on the work of Christ. When we come to
intercession which they make for each other, it
is of value in consideration not of office but of
faith. " The effectual fervent prayer of a right-
eous man availeth much." It is as " right-
eous " men, humble men, not as priests they pre-
vail. The sacraments are efficacious, " not from
any virtue in them or in him that administers
them," but through faith, by the energy of the
omnipresent Spirit.
Yet there are men chosen to special duty,
whose almond twigs bud and blossom and be-
come their sceptres. Appointment and ordina-
tion are our expedients; grace is given by God in
a higher line of calling and endowment. While
there are blessings pronounced that fall upon
the ear or gratify the sensibility, theirs reach the
soul. For them the world has need to thank
God. They keep religion alive, and rnake it
bourgeon and yield the new fruits for which the
generations hunger. They are new branches of
the Living Vine. Of them it has often to be said,
as of the Lord Himself, " The stone which the
builders rejected the same has become head of
the corner; this is the Lord's doing, and it is
marvellous in our eyes.
CHAPTER XV.
TITHES AND CLEANSINGS.
Numbers xviii., xix.
I. Duties and Support of the Ministry. —
The statutes of chap, xviii. are related to the
rebellion of Korah by a clause in ver. 9, "Ye shall
keep the charge of the sanctuary and the
charge of the altar: that there be wrath
no more upon the children of Israel." The en-
actments are directed anew against any intrusion
into the sacred service by those who are not
Levites, and into the priesthood by those who
are not Aaronites. It is clearly implied that the
ministry of the tabernacle is held under a grave
responsibility. The " iniquity of the sanctuary "
and the " iniquity of the priesthood " have to
be borne; and the Aaronites alone are commis-
sioned to bear that iniquity. The Levites,
though they serve, are not to touch the holy ves-
sels lest they die. The priesthood, " for every-
thing of the altar, and for that within the veil,"
is given to the Aaronites as a service of gift.
A certain " iniquity," corresponding to the
holiness of the tabernacle and its vessels, attends
the service which is to be done by the priests.
Their entrance into the sacred tent is an approach
to Jehovah, and from His purity there is thrown
a defilement on human life. The idea thus rep-
resented is capable of fine spiritual realisation.
With this embodied in the law and worship, there
is no need to look in any other direction for that
evangelical poverty of spirit which the better
Israelites of an after time knew. Here proph-
ecy found in the law a germ of deep religious
feeling which, rising above tabernacle and altar.
438
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
became the holy fear of Him who inhabits eter-
nity. The creation throughout its whole range,
in the very act of receiving existence, comes into
contrast with the creative Will and is on a lower
moral plane, to which the Divine purity does not
accompany it. The seraphim of Isaiah's vision
feel this severance to a certain extent. They are
so far apart from God that His holiness is not
enjoyed unconsciously, as the element of life. It
shines above them and determines their attitude
and the terms of their praise. With their wings
they cover their faces, and they cry to each other,
" Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts: the whole
earth is full of His glory." Even they " bear
the iniquity " of the great temple of the world in
which they minister. On fallen rnan that ini-
quity lies with almost crushing weight. " Woe
is me! " says the prophet. " for I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell
in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for
mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts."
Thus the soul is brought into that profound con-
sciousness of defect and pollution which is the
preparation for reverent service of the Highest.
The attribute of holiness remains with God al-
ways, and His mercy in forgiving sin in no way
detracts from it. The eternity of God sets Him
so far above transitory men that He can extend
compassion to them. " Art Thou not from
everlasting, O Jehovah my God, mine Holy
One? We shall not die." But His touch is,
to the sinful earth, almost destruction. When
the Lord the God of hosts toucheth the land it
melteth, and all that dwell therein mourn (Amos
ix. 12). When a people falls from righteousness
the Divine holiness burns against it like a con-
suming fire. *' We are all become as one that is
unclean, and all our righteousnesses are as a pol-
luted garment: and we all do fade as a leaf, and
our iniquities like the wind take us away. . . .
Thou hast hid Thy face from us, and hast con-
sumed us by means of our iniquities " (Isa. Ixiv.
6. 7).
The idea of the identification with the Holy
God of the sanctuary dedicated to Him. so that
from the porch of it falls the shadow of iniquity,
is still further carried out in Numb, xviii. i,
where it is declared that Aaron and his sons
shall " bear the iniquity " of their priesthood.
The meaning is that the priesthood as an abstract
thing, an office held from Jehovah and for Him,
has a holiness like the sanctuary, and that the
entrance into it of a man like Aaron brings to
light his human imperfection and taint. And
this corresponds to a consciousness which every
one who deals with sacred truth and undertakes
the conduct of Divine worship in the right spirit
is bound to have. Entering on those exalted
duties he " bears his iniquity." The sense of
daring intrusion may almost keep back a man
who knows that he has. received a Divine call.
To the heavenly muse the poet can but reply: —
" I am not worthy even to speak
Of Thy prevailing mysteries ;
For I am but an eartlilj' muse . . .
And darken sanctities "with song."
With regard to the Levites whom Aaron is
to bring near " that they may be joined unto
him," it is singular that their duties and the
restrictions put on them are detailed here as if
now for the first time this branch of the sacred
ministry was being organised. In the actual de-
velopment of things this may be true. Difficul-
ties had to be overcome, the nature of the
statutes and ordinances had to be explained.
Now the time of practical initiation may have
arrived. On the other hand, the attempt of
Korah to press into the priesthood may have
made necessary a recapitulation of the' law of
Levitical service.
For the support of the Aaronites the heave
offerings, " even all the hallowed things of the
children of Israel " were to be given " by reason
of the anointing." The meal offerings, sin offer-
ings, and guilt offerings, as most holy, were to
be for the male Aaronites alone: heave offerings
of sacrifice, again, " all the wave offerings," were
to be used by the -Aaronites and their families,
the reservation being made that only those with-
out ceremonial defilement should eat of them.
The first-fruits of the oil and vintage and the
first ripe of all fruits in the land were other per-
quisites. Further, the first-born of man and of
beast were to be nominally devoted; but first-
born children were to be redeemed for five
shekels, and the firstlings of unclean beasts were
also to be redeemed. The children of Aaron
were to have no inheritance in the land. In these
ways however, and by the payment to the priests
of the tenth part of the tithes collected by the
Levites, ample provision was made for them.
For the Levites, nine-tenths of all tithes of
produce would appear to have been not only
sufficient, but far more than their proportion.
According to the numbers reported in this book,
twenty-two thousand Levites — about twelve
thousand of them adult men — were to receive
tithes from six hundred thousand. This would
make the provision for the Levite as much as for
any five men of the tribes. An explanation is
suggested that the regular payment of tithes
could not be reckoned upon. There would al-
ways be Israelites who resented an obligation
like this; and as the duty of paying tithes, though
enjoined in the law, was a moral one. not en-
forced by penalty, the Levites were really in
many periods of the history of Israel in a state
of poverty. It was a complaint of Malachi even
after the captivity, when the law was in force, that
the tithes were not brought to the temple store-
houses. The Deuteronomic laws of tithing,
moreover, are different from those given in
Numbers. While here we read of a single tithe
which is to be for the Levites, which, if paid,
would be more than sufficient for them, Deuter-
onomy speaks of an annual tithe of produce to
be eaten by the people at the central sanctuary
by way of a festival, to which children, servants,
and Levites were to be invited. Each third year
a special tithe was to be used in feasting, not
necessarily at the sanctuary, and again the Le-
vites were to have their share. It is supposed
by fone that there were two annual tithings and
in the tliira year three tithings of the produce of
the land. Brn this seems far more than even a
specially fertile country could bear. There was
no rent to be paid, of course; and if the tithes
were used in a festival no great difficulty might
be found. But it is clear at all events that more
dependence was placed on the free will of the
people than on the law; and the Levites and
priests must have suffered when religion fell into
neglect. Israel was not ideally generous.
2. W.\TER OF Purification. — The statute of
xix. 1-22 is peculiar, and the rites it enjoins are
full of symbolism. It is implied that water alone
was unable to remove the defilement caused by
]>f umbers xviii., xix.]
TITHES AND CLEANSINGS.
439
touching a dead body; but at the same time the
taint was so common and might be incurred so
far from the sanctuary that sacrifice could not
always be exacted. In order to meet the case an
animal was to be offered, and the residue of its
burnmg was to be kept for use whenever the
defilement of death had to be taken away.
A red heifer was to be chosen, the colour of
the animal pointing to the hue of blood. The
heifer was to be free from blemish, a type of
vigorous and prolific life. The charge of the
sacrifice was to be given to Eleazer the priest,
for the high-priest himself might not undertake
a duty the performance of which caused un-
cleanness. The ceremonies must take place not
only outside the tabernacle court, but outside the
camp, that the intensity of the uncleanness to be
transferred to the animal and purged by the sacri-
fice may be clearly understood. The heifer being
slain, the priest takes of its blood and sprinkles
it towards the tent of meeting seven times, in
lieu of the ordinary sprinkling on the altar. The
whole animal is then burnt, and while the flame
ascends the virtue of the residuent ashes is sym-
bolically increased by certain other elements.
These are cedar wood, which was believed to have
special medicinal qualities, and also may have
been chosen on account of the long life of the
tree; some threads of scarlet wool which would
represent the arterial blood, instinct with vital
power; and hyssop which was employed in puri-
fication.
The priest, having presided at the sacrifice,
was to wash his clothes in water and bathe his
flesh and hold himself unclean till the even. The
assistant who fed the fire was in like manner
unclean. These were both to withdraw; and one
who was clean was to gather the ashes of the
burning and, having provided some clean vessel
within the camp, he was to store up the purifying
ashes for future use by the people. Finally, the
person who did this last duty, having become
tainted like the others, was to wash his clothes
and be unclean for the day. The ashes were to
be used by mixing them with water to make
"water for pollution"; that is, water to take
away pollution. Special care was to be exer-
cised that only living water, or water from a
flow^ing stream, should be used for this purpose.
It was to be applied to the defiled person, ves-
sel, or tent, by means of hyssop. But. again,
the man who used the water of purification in
this way was to wash his clothes and be unclean
until even.
Here we have an extra-sacerdotal rite, not of
worship — for as ordinarily used there was no
prayer to God, nor perhaps even the thought of
appeal to God. It was religious, for the sense
of defilement belonged to religion; but when
under the necessity of the occasion any one ap-
plied the water of purification, his sense of acting
the priestly part was reduced to the lowest point.
The efficacy came through the action of the ac-
credited priest when the heifer was sacrificed,
it might be a year previously. So, although pro-
vision was made for needs occurring far from
the sanctuary, no opening was left for any one
to claim the power belonging to the sacerdotal
office. And in order to make this still more
sure it was enacted (ver. 21). that though the
sprinkled water of purification cleansed the un-
clean, any one who touched it being himself clean
should de facto be defiled. The water was de-
clared so sacred that unless in cases where it was
really required no one would be disposed to
meddle with it. The sanctity of the tabernacie
and the priesthood was symbolically carried forth
to the most distant parts of the land. All were
to be on their guard lest they should incur the
judgment of God by abusing that which had
ceremonial holiness and power.
The idea here is in a sense directly opposite
to that which we associate with the sacred word,
by which Divine will is communicated and souls
are begotten anew. To use that word, to make
it known abroad is the duty of every one who
has heard and believed. He diffuses blessing and
is himself blessed. There is no strict law hedg-
ing about with precautions the happy privilege
of conveying to the sin-defiled the message of
forgiveness and life. And yet may we not call
to recollection here the words of Paul, " I buffet
my body, and bring it into bondage; lest by any
means, after that I have preached to others, I
myself should be rejected." In a spiritual sense
they should be clean who bear the vessels of the
Lord; and every deed done, every word spoken
in the sacred Name, if not with purity of purpose
and singleness of heart, involves in guilt him who
acts and speaks. The privilege has its accom-
panying danger; and the more widely it is used
in the thousand organisations within and with-
out the Church, the more carefully do all who use
it need to guard the sanctity of the message and
the Name. " In a great house there are not only-
vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and
of earth; and some unto honour, and some unto
dishonour. If a man therefore purge himself
from these " — the profane babblings of those
who do not handle the word of God aright — " he
shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, meet
for the Master's use, prepared unto every good
work."
3. Defilement by the Dead. — The statute of
the water of purification stands closely related
to one form of uncleanness, that occasioned by
death. When death took place in a tent, every
one who came into the tent and every one who
was in the tent, every open vessel that had no
covering bound upon it, and the tent itself (ver.
18) were defiled; and the taint could not be re-
moved in less than seven days. Whoever in the
open field touched one who had been slain with
a sword, or had otherwise died, or touched the
bone of a man, or a grave — contracted like de-
filement. For purification the sacred water had
to be sprinkled on the defiled person, on the
third day and again on the seventh day. Not
only the aspersion with sacred water, but, in ad-
dition, cleansing of clothes and of the body was
necessary, in order to complete the removal of
the taint. And further, while any one was un-
clean from this cause, if he touched another,
his touch carried defilement that continued to the
close of the day. To neglect the statute of puri-
fication was to defile the tabernacle of Jehovah:
he who did so was to be cut off from his people.
The law was made stringent, as we have al-
ready seen, partly no doubt for the purpose of
preventing the spread of disease. And to that
extent the preservation of health was presented
as a religious duty; for only in that sense can we
understand the statement that he who did not
purify himself defiled the tabernacle of Jehovah.
Yet the stringency cannot be altogether due to
this, for a bone or a grave would not often com-
municate infection. The general principle must
44°
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
be received by way of explanation, that death is
peculiarly repugnant to the life of God, and there-
fore contact with it, in any form, takes away the
right of approach to the sanctuary. That this
idea goes back to the fall and the death penalty
then pronounced might seem a reasonable con-
clusion. But the same thought does not apply
to the defilement connected with birth. If the
statute regarding uncleanness by death rested on
the connection of death with sin, rnaking " death
and mortal corruption an embodiment of sin,"
the thought was obscured by many other laws
regarding uncleanness. The aim we must believe
was to make the theocratic oversight of the
people penetrate as many as possible of the inci-
dents and contingencies of their existence.
CHAPTER XVI.
SORROW AND FAILURE AT KADESH.
Numbers xx.
There is a mustering at Kadesh of the scat-
tered tribes, for now the end of the period of
wandering approaches, and the generation that
has been disciplined in the wilderness must pre-
pare for a new advance. The spies who searched
Canaan were sent from Kadesh (xiii. 26), to
which, in the second year from the exodus, the
tribes had penetrated. Now, in the first month
of the fortieth year it would seem, Kadesh is
again the headquarters. The adjacent district is
called the desert of Zin. Eastward, across the
great plain of the Arabah, reaching from the
Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf, are the moun-
tains of Seir, the natural rampart of Edom. To
the head of the Gulf at Elath the distance is
some eighty miles in a straight line southward;
to the southern end of the Dead Sea it is about
fifty miles. Kadesh is almost upon the southern
border of Canaan; but the way of the Negeb is
barred by defeat, and Israel must enter the
Promised Land by another route. In prepara-
tion for the advance the tribes gather from the
wadies and plateaus in which they have been
wandering, and at Kadesh or near it the earlier
incidents of this chapter occur.
First among them is the death of Miriam. She
has survived the hardships of the desert and
reached a very great age. Her time of influence
and vigour past, all the joys of life now in the
dim memories of a century, she is glad, no
doubt, when the call comes. It was her happi-
ness once to share the enthusiasm of Moses and
to sustain the faith of the people in their leader
and in God. But any service of this kind she
could render has been left behind. For some
time she has been able only now and then with
feeble steps to move to the tent of meeting that
she might assure herself of the welfare of Moses.
The tribes will press on to Canaan, but she shall
never see it.
How is a life like this of Miriam's to be reck-
oned? Take into account her faith and her faith-
fulness; but remember that both were maintained
with some intermixture of poor egotism; that
while she helped Moses she also claimed to rival
and rebuke him; that while she served Jehovah
it was with some of the pride of a prophetess.
Her devotion, her endurance, the long interest
in her brother's work, which indeed led to the
great error of her life — these were her virtues.
the old great virtues of a woman. So far as op~
portunity went she doubtless did her utmost, with
some independence of thought and decision of
character. Even though she gave way to jeal-
ousy and passed beyond her right, we must be-
lieve that, on the whole, she served her genera-
tion in loyalty to the best she knew, and in the
fear of the Most High. But into what a strange
disturbed current of life was her effort thrown!
Downcast, sorely burdened women, counting
for very little when they were cheerful or when
they complained, heard Miriam's words and took
them into their narrow thoughts, to resent her
enthusiasm, perhaps, when she was enthusiastic,
to grudge her the power she enjoyed, which to
herself seemed so slight. In the camp generally
she had respect, and perhaps, once and again,
she was able to reconcile to Moses and to one
another those whose quarrels threatened the
common peace. When she was put forth from
the camp in the shame of her leprosy, all were
affected, and the march was stayed till her time
of separation was over. Was she one of those
women whose lot it is to serve others all their
lives and to have little for their service? Still,
like many another, she helped to make Israel.
Of good and evil, of Divine elements and some
that are anything but Divine, lives are made up.
And although we cannot gather the results of any
one and tell its worth, the stream of being retains
and the unerring judgment of God accepts what-
ever is sincere and good. Miriam from first to
last fills but a few lines of sacred history; yet of
her life, as of others, more has to be told; the
end did not come when she died at Kadesh and
was buried outside Canaan.
Spread through a diversified and not alto-
gether barren region, over many square miles,
the tribes have been able during the thirty-seven
years to provide themselves with water. Gath-
ered more closely now, when the dry season be-
gins they are in want. And at once complaints
are renewed. Nor can we wonder much. In
flaming sunshine, in the parched air of the
heights and the stifling heat of the narrow val-
leys, the cattle gasping and many of them dying,
the children crying in vain for water, the little
that is to be had, hot and almost putrid, care-
fully divided, yet insufificient to give each family
a little, — the people might well lament their ap-
parently inevitable fate. It may be said, " They
should have confided in God.'" But while that
might apply in ordinary circumstances, would
not be out of place if the whole history were
ideal, the reality, once understood, forbids so
easy a condemnation of unbelief. Nothing is
more terrible to endure, nothing more fitted to
make strong men weep or turn them into savage
critics of a leader and of Providence, than to see
their children in the extremity of want which
they cannot relieve. And a leader like Moses,
patient as he may have been of other complaints,
should have been most patient of this. When
the people chode with him and said, " Would
God that we had died when our brethren died
before the Lord! And why have ye brought the
assembly of the Lord into this wilderness, that
we should die, we and our cattle?" they ought
surely to have been met with pity and soothing
words.
It is indeed a tragedy we are to witness when
we come to the rock; and one element of it is
the old age and the weary spirit of the leader.
Kumbers xx.]
SORROW AND FAILURE AT KADESH.
441
Who can tell what vexed his soul that day? how
many cares and anxieties burdened the mind that
was clear yet, but not so tolerant, perhaps, as
once it had been? The years of Moses, his long
and arduous service of the people, are not remem-
bered as they ought to be. Even in their ex-
tremity the men of the tribes ought to have ap-
pealed to their great chief with all respect, in-
stead of breaking in upon him with reproaches.
Was no experience sufficient for these people?
After the discipline of the wilderness, was the
new generation, like that which had died, still
a mere horde, ungrateful, rebellious? From the
leader's point of view this thought could not fail
to arise, and the old magnanimity did not drive
it away.
Another point is the forbearance of Jehovah,
who has no anger with the people. The Divine
Voice commands Moses to take his rod and go
forth to the rock and speak to it before the as-
sembly. This does not fall in with Moses' mood.
Why is God not indignant with the men of this
new generation who seize the first opportunity
to begin their murmuring? Relapsing from his
high inspiration to a poor human level, Moses
begins to think that Jehovah, whose forgiveness
he has often implored on Israel's behalf, is too
ready now to forgive. It is a failing of the best
men thus to stand for the prerogative of God
more than God Himself; that is, to mistake the
real point of the circumstances they judge and
the Divine will they should interpret. The story
of Jonah shows the prophet anxious that Nin-
eveh, the inveterate foe of Israel, the centre of
proud, God-defying idolatry, should be de-
stroyed. Does God wish it to be spared, to re-
pent and obtain forgiveness? So does not
Jonah. His creed is one of doom for wicked-
ness. He resents the Divine mercy and, in effect,
exalts himself above the Most High. In like
temper is Moses when he goes out followed by
the crowd. There is the rock from which water
shall be made to flow. But with the thought in
his mind that the people do not deserve God's
help, Moses takes the affair upon himself. The
tragedy is fulfilled when his own feelings guide
him more than the Divine patience, his own dis-
pleasure more than the Divine compassion; and
with the words on his lips, " Hear now, ye
•^ebels: shall we bring you forth water out of
this rock? " he smites it twice with his rod.
For the moment, forgetting Jehovah the merci-
ful, Moses will himself act God; and he misrep-
resents God, dishonours God, as every one who
forgets Him is sure to do. Is he confident in
the power of his wonder-working rod? Does he
wish to show that its old virtue remains? He
will use it as if he were smiting the people as
well as the rock. Is he willing that this thirsting
multitude should drink? Yet he is determined
to make them feel that they offend by the
urgency with which they press upon him for
help. There have been crises in the lives of
leaders of men when, with all the teaching of the
past to inspire them, they should have risen to
a faith in God far greater than they ever exer-
cised before; and more or less they have failed.
This is not the will of Providence, they have
thought, though they should have known that
it was. They have said, "Advance: but God
goes not with you," when they should have seen
the heavenly light moving on. So Moses failed.
He touched his limit: and it was far short of that
breadth of compassion which belongs to the
Most Merciful. He stood as God, with the rod
in his hand to give the water, but with the con-
demnation upon his lips which Jehovah did not
speak.
In this mood of assumed majesty, of moral in-
dignation which has a personal source, with an
air of superiority not the simplicity of inspira-
tion, a man may do what he will for ever regret,
may betray a habit of self-esteem which has
been growing upon him and will be his ruin if
it is not checked. In the strong mind of Moses
there had lain the germs of hauteur. The early
upbringing in an Egyptian court could not fail
to leave its mark, and the dignity of a dictator
could not be sustained, after the anxieties of the
first two years in the desert, without some slight
growth of a tendency or disposition to look down
on people so spiritless, and play among them the
part of Providence, the decrees of which Moses
had so often interpreted. But pride, even be-
ginning to show itself towards men, is an aping
of God. Unconsciously the mind that looks
down on the crowd falls into the trick of a super-
human claim. Moses, great as he is, without
personal ambition, the friend of every Israelite,
reaches unaware the hour when a habit long sup-
pressed lifts itself into power. He feels himself
the guardian of justice, a critic not only of the
lives of men but of the attitude of Jehovah to-
wards them. It is but for an hour; yet the evil
is done. What appears to the uplifted mind
justice, is arrogance. What is meant for a de-
fence of Jehovah's right, is desecration of the
highest office a man can hold under the Supreme.
The words are spoken, the rock is struck in
pride; and Moses has fallen.
Think of the realisation of this which comes
when the flush of hasty resentment dies, and the
true self which had been suppressed revives in
humble thought. "What have I done?" is the
reflection — " What have I said? My rod, my
hand, my will, what are they? My indignation!
Who gave me the right to be indignant? A king
against whom they have revolted! A guardian
of the Divine honour! Alas! I have denied
Jehovah. I, who stood for Him in my pride,
have defamed Him in my vanity. The people
who murmured, whom I rebuked, have sinned
less than I. They distrusted God, I have de-
clared Him unmerciful, and thereby sown the
seeds of distrust. Now I, too, am barred from
Israel's inheritance. Unworthy of the promise,
I shall never cross the border of God's land.
Aaron my brother, we are the transgressors.
Because we have not honoured God to sanctify
Him in the eyes of the children of Israel, there-
fore we shall not bring this assembly unto the
land He gives them." By the lips of Moses him-
self the oracle was given. It was tragical in-
deed.
But how could the brothers who had yielded
to this dictatorial hierarchical temper be men of
God again, fit for another stroke of work for
Him, unless, coming forth into action, their pride
had disclosed itself, and with whatever bad re-
sult shown its real nature? We deplore the
pride; we almost weep to see its manifestation;
we hear with sorrow the judgment of Moses and
Aaron. But well is it that the worst should come
to light, that the evil thing should be seen, God-
dishonouring, sacrilegious; should be judged, re-
pented of, punished. Moses must " feel himself
and find the blessedness of being little." " By
that sin fell the angels," that sin unconfessed.
442
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
Here in open sight of all, in hearing of all,
Moses lays down the godhead he had assumed,
acknowledges unworthiness, takes his place
humbly among those who shall not inherit the
promise. The worst of all happens to a man
when his pride remains unrevealed, uncon-
demned; grows to more and more, and he never
discovers that he is attempting to carry himself
with the air of Providence, of Divinity.
The error of Moses was great, yet only showed
him to be a man of like passions with ourselves.
Who can realise the mercy and lovingkindness
that are in the heart of God, the danger of limit-
ing the Holy One of Israel? The murmuring
of the Israelites against Jehovah had often been
rebuked, had often brought them into condemna-
tion. Moses had once and again intervened as
their mediator and saved them from death. Re-
membering the times when he had to speak of
Jehovah's anger, he feels himself justified in his
own resentment. He thought the murmuring
was over; it is resumed unexpectedly, the same
old complaints are made and he is -^arried away
by what appears zeal for Jehovah. Yet there is
in him even, the man, much more in God, a bet-
ter than the seeming best. Pathetic indeed is it
to find Moses judged as one who has failed from
the high place he could have reached by a final
effort of self-mastery, one more generous
thought. And we see him fail at a point where
we often fail. Sternly to judge our own right of
condemning before we speak sternly in the name
of God; neither to do nor say anything which
implies the assumption of knowledge, justice,
charity we do not possess — how few of us are
in these respects blameless for a day! Far back
in sacred history this high duty is presented so
as to evoke the best endeavour of the Christian
soul and warn it from the place of failure.
There is preserved in the Book of Exodus
(xxxvi.) a list of the Kings of Edom reaching
down apparently to about the establishment of
the monarchy of Israel. Recent archaeology sees
no reason to question the genuineness of this
historical notice or the names of the Dukes oT
Edom given in the same passage. With varying
boundaries the region over which they ruled ex-
tended southward from Moab and the Dead Sea
as far as the Efanitic Gulf. Kadesh, consider-
ably west of the Arabah, is described as being on
its uttermost border. But the district inhabited
by the Edomites proper was a narrow strip of
rugged country eastward of the range of Mount
Seir. One pass giving entrance to the heart of
Edom led by the base of Mount Hor towards
Selah, afterwards called Petra, which occupied a
fine but narrow valley in the heart of broken
mountains. To reach the south of Moab the Is-
raelites desired probably to take a road a good
deal farther north. But this would have led them
by Bozrah the capital, and the king who reigned
at the time refused them the route. The message
sent him in Moses' name was friendly, even ap-
pealing. The brotherhood of Edom and Israel
was claimed; the sore travail of the tribes in
Egypt and the deliverance wrought by Jehovah
were given as reasons: promise was made that no
harm should be done to field or vineyard: Israel
would journey by the king's way, turning neither
to the right nor the left. When the first request
was refused Moses added that if his people drank
of the water while passing through Edom they
would pay for it. The appeal, however, was
made in vain. An attempt to advance without
permission was repelled. An armed force barred
the way, and most reluctantly the desert road
was again taken.
We can easily understand the objection of the
King of Edom. Many of the defiles through
which the main road wound were not adapted for
the march of a great multitude. The Israelites
could scarcely have gone through Edom with-
out injuring the fields and vineyards; and though
the undertaking was given in good faith by
Moses, how could he answer for the whole of
that undiscip.iued host he was leading towards
Canaan? The safety of Edom lay in denying
to other peoples access to its strongholds. The
difficulty of approaching them was their main
security. Israel might go quietly through the
land now; but its armies might soon return with
hostile intent. Water, too, was very precious
in some parts of Edom. Enough was stored in
the rainy season to supply the wants of the in-
habitants; beyond that there was none to spare,
and for this necessary of life money was no
equivalent. A multitude travelling with cattle
would have made scarcity, or famine, — might
have left the region almost desolate. With the
information they had, Moses and Joshua may
have believed that there were no insuperable
difficulties. Yet the best generalship might have
been unequal to the task of controlling Israel
in the passes and among the cultivated fields of
that singular country.
There is no need to go back on the history of
Jacob and Esau in order to account for the ap-
parent incivility of the King of Edom to the
Israelites and Moses. That quarrel had surely
been long forgotten! But we need not wonder
if the kinship of the two peoples was no avail-
ing argument in the case. Those were not times
when covenants like that proposed could be easily
trusted, nor was Israel on an expedition the na-
ture of which could reassure the Idumseans. And
we have parallels enough in modern life to show
that from the only point of view the king could
take he was amply justified. There are demands
men make on others without perceiving how
difficult it will be to grant them, demands on
time, on means, on good-will, demands that would
involve moral as well as material sacrifice. The
foolish intrusions of well-meaning people may
be borne for a time, but there is a limit beyond
which they cannot be suffered. Our whole life
cannot be exposed to the derangements of every
scheme-maker, every claimant. If we are to do
our own work well, it is absolutely necessary
that a certain space shall be jealously guarded,
where the gains of thought may be kept safely
and the ideas revealed to us may be developed.
That any one's life should be open so that travel-
lers, even with some right of close fraternity,
may pass through the midst of it, drink of the
wells, and trample down the fields of growing
purpose or ripening thought, this is not required.
Good-will makes an open gate; Christian feeling
makes one still wider and bids many welcome.
But he who would keep his heart in fruitfulness
must be careful to whom he grants admission.
There is beginning to be a sort of jealousy of
any one's right to his own reserve. It is not
a single Israel approaching from the West, but
a score, with their different schemes, who come
from every side demanding right of way and even
of abode. Each presses a Christian claim on
whatever is wanted of our hospitality. But if
Numbers xx.J
SORROW AND
FAILURE
AT KADESH.
443
all had what they desire there would be no per-
sonal life left.
On the other hand, some whose highways are
broad, whose wells and streams are overflowing,
whose lives are not fully engaged, show them-
selves exclusive and inhospitable — like those
proprietors of vast moors who refuse a path to
the waterfall or the mountain-top. Without
Edom's excuse, some modern Idumaeans warn
every enterprise off their bounds. Neither
brotherhood nor any other claim is acknowl-
edged. They would find advantage, not injury,
in the visit of those who bring new enthusiasms
and ideas to bear on existence. They would
learn of other aims than occupy them, a better
hope than they possess. Their sympathy would
be enlisted in heavenly or humane endeavours,
and new alliances would quicken as well as
broaden their life. But they will not listen; they
continue selfish to the end. Against all such
Christianity has to urge the law of brotherhood
and of sacrifice.
We have assumed that Kadesh was on the
western side of the Arabab, and it is necessary
to take ver. 20 as referring to an incident that
occurred after the Israelites had crossed the
valley. Not otherwise can we explain how they
came to encamp among the mountains on the
eastern side. The repulse must have been sus-
tained by the tribes after they had left Kadesh
and penetrated some distance into the northern
defiles of Idumjea. Bozrah, the capital, appears
to have been situated about half way between
Petra and the southern extremity of the Dead
Sea, and a force issuing from that stronghold
would divert the march southward so that the
Israelites could safely encamp only when they
reached the open plain near Mount Hor. Hither
therefore they retreated: and here it was that
Moses and Aaron were parted. The time had
come for the high priest to be gathered to his
people.
Scarcely any locality in the whole track of the
wandering is better identified than this. From
the plain of the Arabah the mountains rise in a
range parallel to the valley, in ridges of sand-
stone, limestone, and chalk, with cliffs and peaks
of granite. The defile that leads by Mount Hor
to Petra is peculiarly grand, for here the range
attains its greatest height. " Through a narrow
ravine," says one traveller, " we ascended a steep
mountain side, amid a splendour of colour from
bare rock or clothing verdure, and a solemnity
of light on the broad summits, of shade in the
profound depths — a memory for ever. ... It
was the same narrow path through which in old
times had passed other trains of camels laden
with the merchandise of India, Arabia, and
Egypt. And thus having ascended, we had next
a long descent to the foot of Mount Hor, which
stands isolated." The mountain rises about four
thousand feet above the Arabah and has a pe-
culiar double crest. On its green pastures there
graze flocks of sheep and goats; and inhabited
caves — used perhaps since the days of the old
Horites — are to be seen here and there. The
ascent of the mountain is aided by steps cut in
the rock, " indeed a tolerably complete winding
staircase," for the chapel or mosque on the sum-
mit, said to cover the grave of Aaron, is a
notable Arab sanctuary, resorted to by many
pilgrims. " From the roof of the tomb — now
only an ordinary square building with a dome —
northward and southward, a hilly desert; east-
ward, the mountains of Edom, within which
Petra lies hid; westward, the desert of the
Arabah, or wilderness of Zin; beyond that, the
desert of Et-Tih; beyond that again, in the far
horizon, the blue-tinted hills of the Land of
Promise."
Such is the mountain at the foot of which
Israel lay encamped when the Lord said unto
Moses, '■ Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and
bring them up unto Mount Hor; and strip Aaron
of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his
son: and Aaron shall be gathered unto his people
and shall die there." We imagine the sorrowful
gaze of the multitude following the three climb-
ers, the aged brothers who had borne so long
the burden and heat of the day, and Eleazar,
already well advanced in life, who was to be in-
vested with his father's ofBce. Coming soon
after the death of Miriam, this departure of
Aaron broke sharply one other link that still
bound Israel with its past. The old times were
receding, the new had not yet come into sight.
The life of a good man may close mournfully.
W^hile some in leaving the world cross cheerfully
the river beyond which the smiling fields of the
heavenly land are full in view, others there are
who, even with the faith of the Conqueror of
death to sustain them, have no gladdening pros-
pect at the last. Only from a distance Aaron
saw the Land of Promise; from so great a dis-
tance that its beauty and fruitfulness could not
be realised. The sullen gleam of the Lake of
Sodom, lying in its grim hollow, was visible away
to the north. Besides that the dim eyes couKl
make out little. But Edom lay below; and the
tribes would have a great circuit round that in-
hospitable land, would have to traverse another
desert beyond the horizon to the east, ere they
could reach Moab and draw near to Canaan. A
true patriot, Aaron would think more of the
people than of himself. And the confidence he
had in the friendliness of God and the wisdom
of his brother would scarcely dispel the shadow
that settled on him as he forecast the journey
of the tribes and saw the difficulties they were
yet to meet. So not a few are called away from
the world when the great ends for which they
have toiled are still remote. The cause of liberty
or of reformation with which life has been identi-
fied may even appear farther from success than
years before. Or again, the close of life may be
darkened by family troubles more pressing than
any that were experienced earlier. A man may
be heavily burdened without distrusting God on
his own account, or doubting that in the long
run all shall be well. He may be troubled be-
cause the immediate prospect shows no escape
from painful endurance for those he loves. He
does not sorrow perhaps that he has found the
promises of life to be illusory; but he is grieved
for dear friends who must yet make that dis-
covery, who shall travel many a league and never
win the battle or pass beyond the wilderness.
The mind of Aaron as he went to his death
was darkened by the consciousness of a great
failure. Kadesh lay westward across the valley,
and the thought of what took place there was
with the brothers as they climbed Mount Hor
and stood upon its summit. They had repented,
but they had not yet forgiven themselves. How
could they, when they saw in the temper of the
people too plain proofs that their lese-majesty
had borne evil fruit? It needs much faith to be
444
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
sure that God will remedy the evil we have done;
and so long as the means cannot be seen, the
shadow of self-reproach must remain. Many a
good man, climbing the last slope, feels the
burden of transgressions committed long before.
He has done his utmost to restore the defences
of truth and rebuild the altars of witness which in
thoughtless youth or proud manhood he cast
down. But circumstances have hindered the
work of reparation; and many who saw his sin
have passed far beyond the reach of his repent-
ance. The thought of past faults may sadly
obscure the close of a Christian life. The end
would indeed be hopeless often were it not for
trust in the omnipotent grace which brings again
that which was driven away and binds up that
which was broken. Yet since the very work of
God and the victory of Christ are made more
difficult by things a believer has done, is it pos-
sible that he should always have happy recollec-
tions of the past as life draws near its end?
It was no doubt honourable to Aaron that his
death was appointed to be on that mountain in
Seir. Old as he was, he would never think of
complaining that he was ordained to climb it.
Yet to the tired limbs it was a steep, difficult
path, a way of sorrow. Here, also, we find re-
semblance to the close of many a worthy life.
High office in the Church has been well served,
overflowing wealth has been used in beneficence;
but at the last reverses have come. The man
who was always prosperous is now stripped of
his possessions. Darkened in mind by successive
losses, bereaved of friends and of power, he has
to climb a dreary mountain-path to the sharp
end. It may be really honourable to such a man
th t God has thus appointed his death to be not
in the midst of luxury, but on the rugged peak
of loss. Understanding things aright, he should
say: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away; blessed be the name of the Lord." But
if dependence is felt as shame, if he who gave
freely to others feels it a sore thing to receive
from others, who can have the heart to blame
the good man because he does not triumph here?
And if he has to climb alone, no Eleazar with
him, scarcely one human aid, what shall we say?
Now life must gird itself and go whither it would
not. Sad is the journey, but not into night.
The Christian does not impeach Divine provi-
dence nor grieve that earthly good is finally
taken away. Though his life has been in his
generosity, not in his possessions, yet he will
confess that the last bitter trial is needful to the
perfecting of faith.
Should the believer triumph over death
through Christ? It is his privilege; but some
display unwarranted complacency. They have
confidence in the work of Christ; they boast that
they rest everything on Him. But is it well with
them if they have no sorrow because of days and
years that ran to waste? Is it well with them if
they deplore no failure in Christian effort when
the reason is that they never gave heart and
strength to any difficult task? Who can be satis-
fied with the apparent victory of faith at the last
of one who never had high hopes for himself and
others, and therefore was never disappointed?
Better the sorrowful ending to a life that has
dared great things and been defeated, that has
cherished a pure ideal and come painfully short
of it, than the exultation of those who even as
Christians have lived to themselves.
Perhaps the circumstances that attended the
death of Aaron were to him the finest discipline
of life. Climbing the steep slope at the com-
mand of God, would he not feel himself brought
into a closer relation with the Eternal Will?
Would he not feel himself separated from the
world and gathered up into the quiet massive-
ness of life with Him who is from everlasting to
everlasting? The years of a high priest, dealing
constantly with sacred things and symbols, might
easily fall into a routine not more helpful to
generous thought and spiritual exaltation than
the habits of secular life. One might exist among
sacrifices and purifications till the mind became
aware of nothing beyond ritual and its orderly
performance. True, this had not been the case
with Aaron during a considerable portion of the
time since he began his duties. There had been
many events by means of which Jehovah broke
in upon the priests with His great demands. But
thirty-seven years had been comparatively un-
eventful. And now the little world of camp and
tabernacle court, the sacred shrine with its ark,
the symbolic dwelling-place of God, must have
their contrast in the broad spaces filled with
gleaming light, the blue vault, the widespread
hills and valleys, the heavens which are Jehovah's
throne, the earth which is His footstool. The
bustle of Israel's little life is left behind for the
calm of the mountain land. The high priest
finds another vestibule of the dwelling of Jehovah
than that which he has been accustomed to enter
with sprinkled blood and the pungent fumes of
the incense.
Is it not good thus to be called away from the
business of the world, immersed in which every
day men have lost the due proportions of things,
both of what is earthly and what is spiritual?
They have to leave the computations recorded in
their books, and what bulks largely in the gossip
of the way and the news of the town; they are
to climb where greater spaces can be seen, and
human life, both as brief and as immortal, shall
be understood in its relations to God. Often
those who have this call addressed to them are
most unwilling to obey. It is painful to lose the
old standards of proportion, to hear no longer
the familiar noise of wheels, to see no machinery,
no desks, no ledgers, to read no newspapers, to
have the quiet, the slow-moving days, the moon-
less or moonlit nights. But if reflection fol-
lows, as it should, and brings wisdom, the change
has saved a man who was near to being lost.
The things he toiled for once, as well as the
things he dreaded, — that success, this breath of
adverse opinion, — seem little in the new light,
scarcely disturb the new atmosphere. One thus
called apart.with God, learning what are the real
elements of life, may look with pity on his
former self, yet gather out of the experience that
had small value, for ihe most part, here and there
a jewel of price. And the wise, becoming wiser,
will feel preparation made for the greater exist-
ence that lies beyond.
Moses accompanied his brother to the mount-
ain top. By his hands, with all considerateness,
the priestly robes were taken from Aaron's
shoulders and put on Eleazar. The true friend
he had all along relied upon was with the dying
man at the last, and closed his eyes. In this
there was a palliation of the decree under which
it would have been terrible to suffer alone; yet
in the end the loneliness of death had to be
felt. We know a Friend who passed through
death for us, and made a way into the higher
Numbers xxi.]
LAST MARCH AND FIRST CAMPAIGN.
445
life, but still we have our dread of the solitude.
How much heavier must it have weighed when
no clear hope of immortality shone upon the hill.
The vastness of nature was around the dying
priest of Israel, his face was turned to the skies.
But the thrill of Divine love we find in the touch
of Christ did not reassure him. " These all . . .
received not the promise, God having provided
some better thing concerning us, that apart from
us they should not be made perfect."
Eleazar followed Aaron and took up the vyork
of the priesthood, not less ably, let us believe,
yet not precisely with the same spirit, the same
endowments. And indeed to have one in all re-
spects like Aaron would not have served. The
new generation, in new circumstances, needs
a new minister. Office remains; but, as history
moves on, it means always something different.
When the hour comes that requires a clear step
to be taken away from old notions and traditions
of duty, neither he who holds the office nor
those to whom he has ministered should com-
plain or doubt. It is not good that one should
cling to work merely because he has served well
and may still seem able to serve; often it is the
case that before death commands a change the
time for one has come. Even the men who are
most useful to the world, Paul, Apollos, Luther,
do not die too soon. It may appear to us that
a man who has done noble work has no succes-
sor. When, for instance, England loses its Dr.
Arnold, Stanley, Lightfoot, and we look in vain
for one to whom the robes are becoming, we
have to trust that by some education they did
not foresee the Cliurcli has to be perfected. The
same theory, nominally, is not the same when
others undertake to apply it. The same cere-
monies have another meaning when performed
by other hands. There are ways to the full frui-
tion of Christ's government which go as far
about as Israel's to Canaan round the land of
Moab, for a time as truly retrogressive. But
the great Leader, the one High Priest of the
new covenant, never fails His Church or His
world, and the way that does not hasten, as well
as that which makes straight for the goal, is
within His purpose, leads to the fulfilment
among men of His mediatorial design.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LAST MARCH AND THE FIRST
CAMPAIGN.
Numbers xxi.
It has been suggested in a previous chapter
that the repulse of the Israelites by the King of
Arad took place on the occasion when, after the
return of the spies, a portion of the army en-
deavoured to force its way into Canaan. If that
explanation of the passage with which chap. xxi.
opens cannot be accepted, then the movements
of the tribes after they were driven back from
Edom must have been singularly vacillating.
Instead of turning southward along the Arabah
tliey appear to have moved northward from
Mount Hor and made an attempt to enter Ca-
naan at the southern end of the Dead Sea. Arad
v/as in the Negeb or South Country, and the
Canaanites there, keeping guard, must have de-
fcended from the hills and inflicted a defeat
which finally closed that way.
From the time of the departure from Kadesh
29— Vol. I.
onward no mention is made of the pillar of
cloud. It may have still moved as the standard
of the host; yet the unsuccessful attempt to pass
through Edom, followed possibly by a north-
ward march, and then by a southward journey to
the Elanitic Gulf when they " compassed Mount
Seir many days " (Deut. ii. i), would appear to
prove that the authoritative guidance had in
some way failed. It is a suggestion, which,
however, can only be advanced with diffidence,
that after the day at Kadesh when the words fell
from Moses' lips, " Hear now, ye rebels," his
power as a leader declined, and that the guidance
of the march fell mainly into the hands of
Joshua, — a brave soldier indeed, but no acknowl-
edged representative of Jehovah. It is at all
events clear that attempts had now to be made
in one direction and another to find a feasible
route. Moses may have retired from the com-
mand, partly on account of age, but even more
because he felt that he had in part lost his au-
thority. Israel, moreover, had to become a
military nation: and Moses, though nominally
the head of the tribes, had to stand aside to a
great extent that the new development might
proceed. In a short time Joshua would be sole
leader; already he appears to hold the military
command.
The journey from Mount Hor to the borders
of Moab by way of the Red Sea, or Yam-Suph,
is very briefly noticed in the narrative. Oboth,
lye-abarim, Zared, are the only three names
mentioned in chap. xxi. before the border of
Moab is reached. Chap, xxxiii. gives Zal-
monah, Punon, Oboth, and lastly lye-abarim,
which is said to be in the border of Moab. The
mention of these names suggests nothing as to
the extremely trying nature of the journey; that
is only indicated by the statement, " the soul of
the people was much discouraged because of the
way." The truth is, that of all the stages of the
wandering, these along the Arabah, and from the
Elanitic Gulf eastward* and northward to the
valley of Zared, were perhaps the most difficult
and perilous. The Wady Arabah is " an expanse'
of shifting sands, broken by innumerable undu-
lations, and countersected by a hundred water-
courses." Along this plain the route lay for fifty
miles, in the track of the furious sirocco and
amidst terrible desolation. Turning eastward
from the palm-groves of Elath and the beautiful
shores of the Gulf, the way next entered a tract
of the Arabian wilderness outside the border of
Edom. Oboth lay, perhaps, east from Maan,
still an inhabited city, and the point of departure
for one who journeys from Palestine into central
Arabia. Out from Maan this desert lies, and is
thus described: — " Before and around us ex-
tended a wide and level plain, blackened over
with countless pebbles of basalt and flint, except
when the moonbeams gleamed white on little in-
tervening patches of clear sand, or on yellowish
streaks of withered grass, the scanty produce of
the winter rains, and now dried into hay. Over
all a deep silence which even our Arab com-
panions seemed fearful of breaking; when they
spoke it was in a half whisper and in few words,
while the noiseless tread of our camels sped
stealthily but rapidly through the gloom with-
out disturbing its stillness." * For one hundred
miles the route for Israel lay through this wil-
derness: and it is hardly possible to escape the
conviction that although little is said of the ex-
♦ Palgrave, " Central and Eastern Arabia," p. 2.
446
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
periences of the way the tribes must have suf-
fered enormously and been greatly reduced in
number. As for cattle, we must conclude that
hardly any survived. Where camels sustain
themselves with the greatest difificulty, oxen and
sheep would certainly perish. There had come
the necessity for a rapid advance, to be made at
whatever hazard. All that would retard the
progress of the people had to be sacrificed.
There is indeed some ground for the supposition
that part of the tribes remained near Kadesh
while the main body made the long and perilous
detour. The army entering Canaan by way of
Jericho would as soon as possible open com-
munication with those who had been left behind.
The only recorded episode belonging to the
period of this march is that of the fiery serpents.
In the Arabah and the whole North Arabian
region the cobra, or naja haie, is common, and
is supcrstitiously dreaded. Other serpents are
so innocuous by comparison that this chiefly re-
ceives the attention of travellers. One incident
is recorded thus by Mr. Stuart-Glennie: — "Two
cobras have been caught, and one, which has
been dexterously pinned by the neck in the slit
end of a stick, its captor comes up triumphantly
to exhibit. . . After a time the fellow let it go.
refusing to kill it, and permitting it to glide away
unharmed. This I understood to be from fear —
fear of the vengeance after death of what, in life,
had been incapable of defending itself. At Petra
. . . the snakes which Hamilton, a fearless
hunter of them, killed, the Arabs would not allow
to lie within the encampment, asserting that we
should thus bring the whole snake-tribe to
which the individual belonged to avenge the
death of their kinsman." Whether all the ser-
pents that attacked the Israelites were cobras is
doubtful; but the description "fiery" seems to
point to the effects of the cobra-poison, which
produces an intense burning sensation in the
v/hole body. Another explanation of the ad-
jective is found in the* metallic sparkle of the
reptiles.
" Much people of Israel died " of the bites of
these serpents, which, disturbed by the travellers
as they went sullenly and carelessly along, issued
from crevices of the ground and from the low
shrubs in which they lurked, and at once fastened
on feet and hands. The peculiar character of the
new enemy caused universal alarm. As one and
another fell writhing to the ground, and after a
few convulsive movements died in agony, a
feeling of terrified revulsion spread through the
ranks. Pestilence was natural, familiar, as com-
pared with this new punishment which their
murmuring about the light food and the thirst
of the desert had brought on them. The serpent,
lithe and subtle, scarcely seen in the twilight,
creeping into the tents at night, quick at any
moment, without provocation, to use its poisoned
fangs, has appeared the hereditary enemy of
man. As the instrument of the Tempter it was
connected with the origin of human misery; it
appeared the embodied evil which from the very
dust sprang forth to seek the evil-doer. Many
ways had Jehovah of reaching men who showed
distrust and resented His will. This was in a
sense the most dreadful.
The serpents that lurked in the Israelites' way
and darted suddenly upon them are always felt
to be analogues of the subtle sins that spring on
man and poison his life. What traveller knows
the moment when he may feel in his soul the
sharp sting of evil desire that will burn in him
to a deadly fever? Men who have been wounded
can, for a time, hide from fellow-travellers their
mortal hurt. They keep on the march and make
shift to look like others. Then the madness re-
veals itself. Words are spoken, deeds are done,
that show the vile inoculation taking effect. By-
and-by there is another moral death. Humanity
may well fear the power of evil thoughts, of
lusts, of envious feelings, that serpent-like at-
tack and madden the soul; may well look up and
cry aloud to God for a sufificient remedy. No
herb nor balm to be found in the gardens or
fields of earth is an antidote to this poison; nor
can the surgeon excise the tainted flesh, or de-
stroy the virus by any brand of penance.
Resuming his generous part as intercessor for
the people, Moses sought and found the means
to help them. He was to make a serpent of
brass, an image of the foe, and erect it on a
standard full in sight of the camp, and to it the
eyes of the stricken people were to be turned.
If they realised the Divine purpose of grace and
trusted Jehovah while they looked, the power of
the poison would be destroyed. The serpent of
brass was nothing in itself, was, as long after-
wards Hezekiah declared it to be, nehushtan;
but as a symbol of the help and salvation of God
it served the end. The stricken revived: the
camp, almost in a panic through supersti-
tious fear, was calmed. Once more it was
known that He who smote the sinful, in wrath
remembered mercy. It must be assumed that
there was repentance and faith on the part of
those who looked. The serpents appear as the
means of punishment, and the poison loses its
elTect with the growth of the new spirit of sub-
mission. It has rightly been pointed out that
the heathen view of the serpent as a healing
power has no countenance here. That singular
belief must have had its origin in the worship of
the serpent which arose from dread of it as an
embodiment of demoniacal energy. Our pass-
age treats it as a creature of God, ready, like the
lightning and the pestilence, or like the frogs
and insects of the Egyptian plagues, to be used as
an instrument in bringing home to men their sins.
And when our Lord recalled the episode of the
healing of Israel by means of the brazen serpent.
He certainly did not mean that the image in itself
was in any sense a type or even symbol of Him.
It was lifted up; He was to be lifted up: it was
to be looked upon with the gaze of repentance
and faith; He is to be regarded, as He hangs on
the cross, with the contrite, believing look: it
signified the gracious interposition of God, who
was Himself the True Healer; Christ is lifted up
and gives Himself on the cross in accordance
with the Father's will, to reveal and convey His
love — these are the points of similarity. " As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." The
uplifting, the healing, are symbolic. The ser-
pent-image fades out of sight. Christ is seen
giving Himself in generous love, showing us
the way of life when He dies, the just for the un-
just. He is the power of God unto salvation.
With Him we die that He may live in us. He
judges us, condemns us as sinners, and at the
same time turns our judgment into acquittal, our
condemnation into liberty. Israel's past and the
grace of Jehovah to the stricken tribes are con-
nected by our Lord's words with the redemption
provided through His own sacrifice. The Di-
Numbers xxi J
LAST MARCH AND FIRST CAMPAIGN.
447
vine Healer of humanity is there and here; but
here in spiniuai life ni quickening grace, not in
an empirical sjmbol. Christ on the cross is no
mere sign of a higher energy; the very energy is
with Him. most potent when He dies.
Like the serpent poison, that of sin creates a
burning fever, a mortal disease. But into all the
springs and channels of infected life the reno-
vating grace of God enters through the long
deep look of faith. We see the Man, our
brother full of sympathy, the Son of God our
sin-bearer. The pity is profound as our need;
the strong spiritual might, sin-conquering, life-
giving, is enough for each, more than sufficient
for all. We look — to wonder, to hope, to trust,
to love, to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full
of glory. We see our condemnation, the hand-
writing of ordinances that is against us — and we
see it cancelled through the sacrifice of our Di-
vine Redeemer. Is it the death that moves us
first? Then we perceive love stronger than
death, love that can never die. Our souls go
forth to find that love, they are bound by it for
ever to the Infinite Truth, the Eternal Purity, the
Immortal Life. We find ourselves at length
whole and stro«g, fit for the enterprises of God.
The trumpet call is heard; we respond with joy.
We will fight the good fight of faith, suffering
and achieving all through Christ.
At lye-abarim, the Heaps of the Outlands.
" which is toward the sunrising," the worst of
the desert march was over. That the long and
dreary wilderness did not swallow up the host
is, humanly speaking, matter of astonishment.
Yet singular light is thrown on the journey by
an incident recorded by Mr. Palmer. In the
midst of the broken country extending from the
neighbourhood of the ancient Kadcsh to the
Arabah, he and his companions encamped at the
head of the Wady Abu Taraimeh, which slopes
to the south-east. Here in the midst of the deso-
late mountains a quite young girl, small, solitary
traveller, was found. She was on her way to
Abdeh. some twenty miles behind, and had come
from a place called Hesmeh, six days' journey
beyond Akabah. a distance of some hundred and
fifty miles. " She had been without bread or
water, and had only eaten a few herbs to support
herself by the way." The simple trust of the
child could achieve what strong men might have
pronounced impossible. And the Israelites,
knowing little of the road, trusted and hoped
and pressed on till the green hills of Moab were
at last in sight. The march was eastward of the
present highway, which keeps within the border
of Edom and passes through El Buseireh, the
ancient •Bozrah. We may suppose that the
Israelites followed a track afterwards chosen for
a Roman road and still traceable. The valley of
Zared, perhaps the modern Feranjy, would be
reached about fifteen miles east from the south-
ern gulf of the Dead Sea. Thence, striking on a
watercourse and keeping to the desert side of Ar.
the modern Rabba, the Hebrews would have a
march of about twenty miles to the Arnon, which
at that time formed the boundary between Moab
and the Amorites.
At this point the history incorporates, why we
cannot tell, part of an old song from the " Book
of the Wars of Jehovah."
" Valieb in Suphali.
And the valleys nf Arnon,
And the slope of the valleys
That inclineth toward the dwelling of Ar.
And leaneth upon the border of iVIoab."
The picturesque topography of this chant, the
meaning of winch as a whole is obscured for us
by the first line, may be the sole reason of its
quotation. If we read " Vaheb in storm " we
have a word-picture of the scene under im-
pressive conditions; and if the storm is that of
war the relique may belong to the time of the
contest described in ver. 26 when the Amorite
chief, crossing Jordan, gained the northern
heights and drove the Moabites in confusion
across the Arnon toward the stronghold of Ar,
some twelve or fifteen miles to the south. Yet
another ancient song is connected with a station
called Beer, or the Well, some spot in the wilder-
ness north of the Arnon valley. Moses points
out the place where water may be found, and as
the digging goes on the chant is heard:
" Spring up, O well ; sing ye unto it :
The well which the princes digged,
Which the nobles of the people delved.
With the sceptre, and with their staves."
The seeking of the precious water by rude art in
a thirsty valley kindles the mind of some poet of
the people. And his song is spirited, with ample
recognition of the zeal of the princes who them-
selves take part in the labour. While they dig
he chants, and the people join in the song till
the words are fixed in their memory, so as to be-
come part of the traditions of Israel.
The finding of a spring, the discovery that by
their own effort they can reach the living water
laid up for them beneath the sand, is an event to
the Israelites, worth preserving in a national
ballad. What does this imply? That the re-
sources of nature and the means of unlocking
them were still only beginning to be understood?
We are almost compelled to think so, whatever
conclusions this may involve. And Israel,
slowly finding out the Divine provision lying be-
neath the surface of things, is a type of those
who very gradually discover the possibilities
that are concealed beneath the seemingly ordi-
nary and unpromising. By the beaten tracks of
life, in its arid valleys, there are, for those who
dig, wells of comfort, springs of truth and salva-
tion. Men are athirst for inspiration, for power.
They think of these as endowments for which
they must wait. In point of fact they have but
to open the fountains of conscience and of gen-
erous feeling in order to find what they desire.
Multitudes faint by the way because they will not
seek for themselves the water of Divine truth
that would reinvigorate their being. When we
trust to wells opened by others we cannot obtain
the supply suited to our special need. Each for
himself must discover Divine providence, duty,
conviction, the springs of repentance and of love.
The many wait, and never get beyond spiritual
dependence. The few, some with sceptre, some
with staff, dig for themselves and for the rest
wells of new ardour and sustaining thought.
The whole of human life, we may say, has be-
neath its surface veins and rills of heavenly water.
In heart and conscience we can find the will of
our Maker, the springs of His promises, revela-
tions of His power and love. More than we
know of the living water that flows through the
world of humanity like a river has its source in
springs that have been dug in waste places by
those who reflected, who saw in man's world
and man's soul the work of the " faithful
Creator."
448
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
From Beer in the wilderness the march skirted
the green fields and valleys of the country once
held by the Moabites, now under Sihon the
Amorite. When they had gone but a few stages
along this route the leaders of the host found it
necessary to enter into negotiations. They were
now some twenty miles only by road from the
fords of Jordan, but Heshbon, a strong fortress,
confronted them. The Amorites must be either
conciliated or attacked. This time there was no
circuitous way that could be taken; a critical
hour had come.
The presence of the Amorites on the eastern
side of Jordan is accounted for in a passage ex-
tending from vv. 26-30. Moab had apparently,
as at a later time referred to by one of the
prophets, been at ease, resting securely behind
her mountain rampart. Suddenly the Amorite
warriors, crossing the ford of Jordan and press-
ing up the defile, had attacked and taken Hesh-
bon; and with the loss of that fortress Moab was
practically defenceless. Field by field the old in-
habitants had been driven back, out into the
desert, southward beyond the Arnon. Even as
far as Ar itself the victors had carried fire and
sword. Retiring, they left all south of the Arnon
to the Moabites, and themselves occupied the
country from Arnon to Jabbok, a stretch of sixty
miles. The song of vv. 27-30 commemorates
this ancient war:
"Come ye to Heshbon,
Let the city of Sihon be built and established ;
For a fire is gone out of Heshbon,
A flame from the city of Sihon :
It hath devoured Ar of Moab,
The Lords of the High Places of Arnon.
Woe to thee, Moab !
Thou art undone, O people of Chemosh."
The chant rejoicing over the defeated goes on to
tell how the sons of Moab fled, and her daughters
were taken captive; how the arms of the Amorite
were victorious from Heshbon to Dibon, over
Nophah and Medeba. The Israelites arriving
soon after this sanguinary conflict, found the
conquered region immediately beyond the Arnon
open to their advance. The Amorites had not
yet occupied the whole of the land; their power
was concentrated about Heshbon, which accord-
ing to the song had been rebuilt.
The request made of Sihon to allow the pass-
age of a people on its way to Jordan and the
country beyond came possibly at a time when the
Amorites were scarcely prepared for resistance.
They had been successful, but their forces were
insufficient for the large district they had taken,
larger considerably than that on the other side of
Jordan from which they had migrated. In the
circumstances Sihon would not grant the request.
These Israelites were bent on establishing them-
selves as rivals: the answer accordingly was a re-
fusal, and war began. Refreshed by the spoil of
the fields of Arnon, and now almost within sight
of Canaan, the Hebrew fighting men were full of
ardour. The conflict was sharp and decisive.
Apparently in a single battle the power of Sihon
was broken. Leaving his fortress the Amorite
chief had gone out against Israel " into the wil-
derness"; and at Jahaz the fight went against
him. From Arnon to Jabbok his land lay open
to the conquerors.
And having once tasted success the warriors of
Israel did not sheathe their swords. The fortress
of Amman guarded the land of the Ammonites
so strongly that it seemed for the time perilous
to strike in that direction. Crossing the valley
of the Jabbok, however, and leaving the fierce
Ammonites unattacked, the Israelites had Bashan
before them; a fertile region of innumerable
streams, populous, and with many strongholds
and cities. There was hesitation for a time, but
the oracle of Jehovah reassured the army. Og
the king of Bashan waited the attack at Edrei in
the north of his kingdom, about forty miles east
from the Sea of Galilee. Israel was again vic-
torious. The king of Bashan, his sons, and his
army were cut to pieces.
Such was the rapid success the Israelites had
in their first campaign, amazing enough, though
partly explained by the strifes and wars which
had reduced the strength of the peoples they at-
tacked. We must not suppose, however, that
though the Amorites and the people of Bashan
were defeated, their lands were occupied or could
be occupied at once. What had been done was
rather in the way of defending the passage of the
Jordan than providing a settlement for any of
the tribes. When the Reubenites, Gadites, and
Manassites came to dwell in those districts east
of the Jordan, they 'had to make good their
ground against the old inhabitants who remained.
The army had passed into the north, but the
main body of the people descended from the
neighbourhood of Heshbon by a pass leading to
the Jordan Valley. The return of the victorious
troops after a few months gave them the assur-
ance that at last they could safely prepare for
the long expected entrance into the Land of
Promise.
Suffering and the discipline of the wilderness
had educated the Israelites for the day of action.
By what a long and tedious journey they reached
their success! Behind them, yet with them still,
was Sinai, whose lightnings and awful voices
made them aware of the power of Jehovah into
covenant with whom they entered, whose law
they received. As a people bound solemnly to the
unseen Almighty God they left that mountain
and journeyed towards Kadesh. But the cove-
nant had neither been thoroughly accepted nor
thoroughly understood. They began their march
from the mountain of the Lord as the people of
Jehovah, yet expecting that He was to do all for
them, require little at their hands. The other
side of privilege, the duty they owed to God, had
to be impressed by many a painful chastisement,
by the sorrows and disasters of the way. Won-
derfully, all things considered, had they sped,
though their murmurings were the sign of an
ignorant rebellious temper which was incompati-
ble with any moral progress. By the long delay
in the wilderness of Kadesh that disposition had
to be cured. In a region not fertile like^ Canaan
itself, yet capable of supporting the tribes, they
had to forget Egypt, realise that forward not
backward was their only way, that while desert
after desert intervened now between them and
Goshen, they were within a day's march of the
Promised Land. But even this was not enough.
Perhaps they might have crept gradually north-
ward; shifting their headquarters a few miles at
a time till they had taken possession of the
Negeb and made a settlement of some kind in
Canaan. But if they had done so, as a nation of
shepherds, advancing timorously, not boldly,
they would have had no strength at the opening
of their career. And it was decreed that by an-
other door, in another spirit, they should enter.
Edom refused them access to the east country.
They had again to gird up their loins for a long
Numbers xxii. 1-19.]
BALAAM INVOKED.
449
journey. And that last terrible march was the
discipline they required. Resolutely kept to it
by their leader, on through the Arabah, across
the desert, to the " Heaps of the Outlands to-
wards the sunrising " they went, with new need
for courage, a new call to endure hardness every
day. Did they faint once, and turn murmurers
again? The serpents stung them in judgment,
and the cure was provided in grace. They
learned once more that it was One they could
not elude with whom they had to do. One who
could be severe and also kind, who could strike
and also save. Decimated, but knit together, as
they had never been, the tribes reached the
Arnon. And then, the first trial of their arms
made, they knew themselves a conquering people,
a people with power, a people with a destiny.
It is so in the making of manhood, in the dis-
cipline of the soul. Sinai, and the awful declara-
tions of duty and of the Divine claim there,
must enter into our life; it would be light, friv-
olous, and incapable otherwise. But the revela-
tion of power and righteousness does not insure
our submission to the power, our conformity to
the righteousness. Divine words have to be fol-
lowed by Divine deeds; we have to learn that in
God's kingdom there is to be no murmuring, no
shrinking even from death, no turning back. It
is a lesson that tries the generations. How
many will not learn it! In society, in the
Church, the rebellious spirit is shown and has to
be corrected. At the " Graves of Lust," at the
" Place of Burning," murmurers are judged,
those who refuse God's way fall and are left be-
hind. And when the Land of Promise is in
sight possession of it shall not be easily obtained
by those who are still half-wedded to the old life,
distrustful of the righteousness of God and His
demand on the whole love and service of the
soul. There is indeed no heaven for those who
look back, who even if angels were to hurry
them on would still lament the losses of this life
as irremediable. There must be the courage of
the daring soul that adventures all on faith, on
the Divine promise, on the eternity of the
spiritual.
Wherefore, that the earthly temper may be
taken out of us, we have to cross desert after
desert, to make long circuits through the hot and
thirsty wilderness even when we think our faith
complete and our hope nigh its fulfilment. It
is as those who overcome we are to enter the
kingdom. Not as " the world's poor routed
leavings," not obtaining permission from Edom-
ites or Amorites to slip ingloriously through
their land, but as those who with the sword of
the Spirit can hew our own way through false-
hoods and bring down the lusts of the flesh and
of the mind, as warriors of God we are to reach
and cross the border. How many survive, hav-
ing gone through discipline like this? How
many overcome and have the right to pass
through the gate into the city?
CHAPTER XVIIL
BALAAM INVOKED.
Numbers xxii. 1-19.
While a part of the army of Israel was en-
gaged in the campaign against Bashan, the tribes
remained " in the plains of Moab beyond the
Jordan at Jericho." The topography is given
here, as elsewhere, from the point of view of one
dwelling in Canaan; and the locality indicated is
a level stretch of land, some five or six miles
broad, between the river and the hills. In this
plain there was ample room for the encampment,
while along the Jordan and on the slopes to the
east all the produce of field and garden, the
spoil of conquest, was at the disposal of the
Israelites. They rested therefore, after their
long journey, in sight of Canaan, waiting first
for the return of the troops, then for the com-
mand to advance; and the delay may very likely
have extended to several months.
Now the march of Israel had kept to the
desert side of Moab, so that the king and people
of that land had no reason to complain. But
the campaign against the Amorites, ending so
quickly and decisively for the invaders, showed
what might have taken place if they had attacked
Moab, what might yet come to pass if they
turned southward instead of crossing the Jordan.
And there was great dismay. " Moab was sore
afraid of the people, because they were many;
and Moab was distressed because of the chil-
dren of Israel." Manifestly it would have been
unwise for Balak the king of the Moabites to
attack Israel single-handed. But others might
be enlisted against this new and vigorous enemy,
among them the Midianites. And to these Balak
turned to consult in the emergency.
By the " Midianites " we must understand the
Bedawin of the time, the desert tribes which pos-
sibly had their origin in Midian, east of the
Elanitic Gulf, but were now spread far and wide.
On the borders of Moab a large and important
clan of this people fed their fiocks; and to their
elders Balak appealed. " Now," he said, " shall
this multitude lick up all that is round about us,
as the ox licketh up the grass of the field." The
result of the consultation was not an expedition
of war but one of a quite different kind. Even
the wild Bedawin had been dismayed by the firm
resolute tread of the Israelites, a people march-
ing on, as no people had ever been seen to
march, from far-away Egypt to find a new home.
The elders of Moab and of Midian cannot decide
on war; but superstition points to another means
of attack. May they not obtain a curse against
Israel, under the influence of which its strength
shall decay? Is there not in Pethor one who
knows the God of this people and has the power
of dreadful malediction? They will send for
him; Balaam shall invoke disaster on the in-
vaders, then peradventure Balak will prevail, and
smite them, and drive them out of the land.
There can be no doubt in what direction we
are to look for Pethor, the dwelling-place of the
great diviner. It is " by the River," that is to
say, by the River Euphrates. It is in Aram, for
thence Balaam says Balak has brought him. It
is in " the land of the children of Ammo " (xxii.
5), for such is the preferable translation of the
words rendered " children of his people." The
situation of Pethor has been made out. " At an
early period in Assyrian research," says Mr. A.
H. Sayce,* " Pethor was identified by Dr.
Hincks with the Pitru of the cuneiform inscrip-
tions. Pitru stood on the western bank of the
Euphrates, close to its junction with the Sajur,
and a little to the north of the latter. It was
consequently only a few miles to the south of the
Hittite capital Carchemish. Indeed, Shalman-
• "The Higher Criticism and the Monuments," p. 274..
45°
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
eser II. tells us explicitly that the city was called
Pethor by ' the Hittites.' It lay on the main
road from east to west, and so occupied a posi-
tion of military and commercial importance."
Originally an Aramaean town, Pethor had re~
ceived, on its conquest by the Hittites, a new
element of population from that race, and the
two peoples lived in it side by side. The Ara-
maeans of Pethor called themselves " the sons of
(the god) Ammo "; and, according to Mr. Sayce,
Dr. Neubauer is right in explaining the name of
Balaam as a compound of Baal with Ammi,
which occurs as a prefix in the Hebrew names
Amniiel, Amminadab, and others. It is also
worthy of mention that the name of Balak's
father — Zippor, or " Bird " — occurs in the notice,
still extant, of a despatch sent by the Egyptian
government to Palestine in the third year of
Menephtah II.
It may be further said with regard to Mr.
Sayce's valuable work, that he does not attempt
to deal particularly with the prophecies of Ba-
laam. " They must." he says. '' be explained by
Hebrew philology before the records of the
monuments can be called upon to illustrate them.
It may be that the text is corrupt; it may be
that passages have been added at various times
to the original prophecy of the Aramaean seer;
these are questions which must be settled before
the Assyriologist can determine when it was that
the Kenite was carried away captive, or when
Asshur himself was ' afflicted.' "
The divination of which so great things were
expected by Balak is amply illustrated in the
Babylonian remains. Among the Chaldeans the
art of divination rested " on the old belief in
every object of inanimate nature being possessed
or inhabited by a spirit, and the later belief in a
higher power, ruling the world and human affairs
to the smallest detail, and constantly manifesting
itself through all things in nature as through
secondary agents, so that nothing whatever could
occur without some deeper significance which
might be discovered and expounded by specially
trained and favoured individuals." The Chaldeo-
Babylonians " not only carefully noted and ex-
plained dreams, drew lots in doubtful cases by
means of inscribed arrows, interpreted the rustle
of trees, the plashing of fountains and murmur of
streams, the direction and form of lightnings,
not only fancied that they could see things in
bowls of water, and in the shifting forms
assumed by the flame which consumed sacrifices
and the smoke which rose therefrom, and that
they could raise and question the spirits of the
dead, but drew presages and omens, for good or
evil, from the flight of birds, the appearance of
the liver, lungs, heart, and bowels of the animals
oflfered in sacrifice and opened for inspection,
from the natural defects or monstrosities of
babies or the young of animals — in short, from
any and everything that they could possibly sub-
ject to observation." There were three classes
of wise men, astrologers, sorcerers, and sooth-
sayers; all were in constant demand, and all used
rules and principles settled for them by the so-
called science which was their study.
We cannot of course affirm that Balaam was
one of these Chaldeans, or that his art was pre-
cisely of the kind described. He is declared by
the narrative to have received communications
from God. There can, however, be no doubt
that his wide reputation rested on the mystical
rites by which he sought his oracles, for these,
and not his natural sagacity, would impress the
common mind. When the elders of Moab and
Midian went to seek him they carried the " re-
wards of divination " in their hands. It was be-
lieved that he might obtain from Jehovah the
God of the Israelites some knowledge concern-
ing them on which a powerful curse might be
based. If then, in right of his ofiice, he pro-
nounced the malediction, the power of Israel
would be taken away. The journey to Pethor
was by the oasis of Tadmor and the fords at
Carchemish. A considerable time, perhaps a
month, would be occupied in going and return-
ing. But there was no other man on whose in-
sight and power dependence could be placed.
Those who carried the message were men of
rank, who might have gone as ambassadors to a
king. It was confidently expected that the
soothsayer would at once undertake the impor-
tant commission.
Arriving at Pethor they find Balaam and con-
vey the message, which ends with the flattering
words, " I know that he whom thou blessest is
blessed, and he whom thou cursest is cursed."
But they have to treat with no vulgar thauma-
turgist, no mere weaver of spells and incanta-
tions. This is a man of intellectual power, a
diplomatist, whose words and proceedings have
a tone of high purpose and authority. He hears
attentively, but gives no immediate answer.
From the first he takes a position fitted to make
the ambassadors feel that if he intervenes it will
be from higher motives than desire to earn the
rewards witli which they presume to tempt him.
He is indeed a prince of his tribe, and will be
moved by nothing less than the oracle of that
unseen Being whom the chiefs of Moab and
Midian cannot approach. Let the messengers
wait, that in the shadow and silence of night Ba-
laam may inquire of Jehovah. His answer shall
be in accordance with the solemn, secret word
that comes to him from above.
Three of the New Testament writers, the
Apostles Peter. John, and Jude, refer to Balaam
in terms of reprobation. He is " Balaam the
son of Beor who loved the hire of wrongdoing ";
he '■ taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block be-
fore the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed
to idols, and to commit fornication"; he is the
type of those who run riotously in the way of
error for hire. Gathering up the impressions of
his whole life, these passages declare him avari-
cious and cunningly malignant, a prophet who,
perverting his gifts, brought on himself a special
judgment. At the outset, however, Balaam does
not appear in this light. The pictorial narrative
shows a man of imposing personality, who claims
the " vision and the faculty Divine." He seems
resolute to keep by the truth rather than gratify
any dreams of ambition or win great pecuniary
rewards. It is worth while to study a character
so mingled, in circumstances that may be called
typical of the old world.
Did Balaam enjoy communications with God?
Had he real prophetic insight? Or must we
hold with some that he only professed to consult
Jehovah, and found the answer to his inquiries in
the conclusions of his own mind?
It would appear at first sight that Balaam, as
a heathen, was separated by a great gulf from
the Hebrews. But at the time to which the nar-
rative of Numbers refers, if not at the period of
its composition, the boundary line implied by the
word " gentile " did not exist. Moses had
Numbers xxii. 1-19.]
BALAAM INVOKED.
451
clearly taught to the Hebrews ethical and re-
ligious truths which neighbouring nations saw
very indistinctly; and the Israelites were begin-
ning to know themselves a chosen race. Yet
Abraham was their father, and other peoples
could claim descent from him. Edom, for
example, is in Numbers xx. acknowledged as
Israel's brother.
At the stage of history, then, to which our
passage belongs, the strongly marked diflferences
between nation and nation afterwards insisted
upon were not realised. And this is so far true
in respect of religion, that though the Kenites, a
Midianite tribe, did not follow the way of Je-
hovah, Moses, as we have seen, had no difficulty
in joining with them in a sacrificial feast in
honour of the Lord of Heaven. If beyond the
circle of the tribes any one, impressed by their
history, attributing their rescue from Egypt and
their successful march towards Canaan to Je-
hovah, acknowledged His greatness and began
to approach Him with sacred rites, no doubt
would have existed among the Hebrews gener-
ally that by such a man their God could be found
and His favour won. The narrative before us,
stating that Jehovah called Balaam and com-
municated with him, simply declares what the
more patriotic and religious Israelites would have
had no difficulty whatever in receiving. This
diviner of Pethor had heard of Israel's deliver-
ance at the Red Sea, had followed with keen
interest the progress of the tribes, had made him-
self acquainted with the law of Jehovah given at
Sinai. Why, then, should he not worship Je-
hovah? And why should not Jehovah speak to
him, make revelations to him of things still in
the future?
So far, however, we touch only the beliefs, or
possible beliefs, of the Israelites. The facts may
be quite different. We are in the way of con-
sidering revelations of the Divine will to have
been so uncommon and sacred that a man of very
high character alone could have enjoyed them.
If indeed God spoke to Balaam, it must have
been in another way than to Abraham, Moses,
Elijah. Especially since his history shows him
to have been a man bad at heart, we are inclined
to pronounce his consultation of God mere pre-
tence; and as for his prophecies, did he not
simply hear of Israel's greatness and forecast the
future with the prescience of a clear calculator,
who used his eyes and reason to good purpose?
But with this the gist of the Bible narrative can-
not be said to agree. It seems to be certainly
implied that God did speak to Balaam, open his
eyes, unfold to him things far oiT in the future.
Although many cases might be adduced which
go to prove that an acute man of the world,
weighing causes and tracing the drift of things,
may show wonderful foresight, yet the language
here used points to more than that. It seems to
mean that Divine illumination was given to one
bieyond the circle of the chosen people, to one
who from the first was no friend of God and at
the last showed himself a malicious enemy of
Israel. And the doctrine must be that any one
who, looking beneath the surface of things,
studying the character of men and peoples, con-
nects the past and the present and anticipates
events which are still far ofif, has his illumination
from God. Further it is taught that in a real
sense the man who has some conception of
Providence, though he is false at heart, may yet,
in the sincerity of an hour, in the serious thought
roused at some crisis, have a word of counsel, a
clear indication of duty, a revelation of things to
come which others do not receive. Still we must
interpret the words, " God said to Balaam," in
a way which will not lift him into the ranks of
the heaven-directed who are in any sense media-
tors, prophets of the age and the world. This
man has his knowledge so far from above, has
his insiglTt as a true gift, receives the word of
prohibition, of warning, veritably from a Divine
source. Yet he does not stand in a high posi-
tion, lifted above other men. The whole history
is of value for our instruction, because as surely
as Balaam recei-^d directions from God, we
also receive them through conscience; because
as he opposed God so we also may oppose Him
in self-will or the evil mind. When we are
urged to do what is right the urgency is Divine,
as certainly as if a voice from heaven fell on our
ears. Only when we realise this do we feel
aright the solemnity of obligation. If we fail to
ascribe our knowledge and our sense of duty to
God, it will seem a light thing to neglect the
eternal laws by which we should be ruled.
Reaching Pethor the messengers of Balak state
their request. Instead of going with them at
once, as a false man might be expected to do,
Balaam declares that he must consult Jehovah;
and the result of his consultation is that he de-
clines. In the morning he says to the princes of
Moab, " Get you into your land, for Jehovah re-
fuseth to give me leave to go with you." The
question whether Israel was a fit subject for
blessing or for cursing has been practically
settled in his mind. When he lays the matter
before Jehovah, as he knows Him through His
law and the history of Israel, it is made unmis-
takable that no malediction is to be pronounced.
But what, then, was the secret of Balaam's delay,
of his consultation of the oracle? If it had been
an absolute determination to serve the interests
of righteousness, he could now frame his reply
to the princes in such a way that they would
understand it to be final. He would not say de-
murely, " Jehovah refuseth to give me leave,"
for these words allow the belief that somehow
the power to curse may yet be obtained. Balaam
permits himself to hope that he will find some
flaw in Israel's relation to Jehovah which will
leave room for a malediction. He delays, and
professes to consult God, diplomatically, that
even by the refusal his fame as a diviner ac-
quainted with the Unseen Power may be estab-
lished. And the answer he returns means that
his own reputation is not to be hazarded by any
divination which Jehovah will discredit.
Had not the future proceedings of Balaam cast
their shadow back on his career and words, he
might have been pronounced at the outset a man
of integrity. The rewards offered him were
probably large. We may believe that whatever
reputation Balaam had previously enjoyed this
embassy was the most important ever sent to
him, the greatest tribute to his fame. And we
would have been inclined to say. Here is an
example of conscientiousness. Balaam might
go with the princes at least, though he can pro-
nounce no curse on Israel; but he does not; he
is too honourable even to profess the desire to
gratify his patrons. This favourable judgment,
however, is forbidden. It was of himself, of his
fame and position, he was thinking. He would
not have gone in any case unless it had precisely
suited his purpose. Understanding that Israel is
452
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
not to be cursed, he manages so that his refusal
shall enhance his own reputation.
Still, the small amount of sincerity there is in
Balaam, superimposed on his self-love and
diplomacy, is in contrast to the utter want of it
which men often show. They are of a party, and
at the first call they will make shift to denounce
whatever their leaders bid them denounce.
There is no pretence even of waiting for a night
to have time for quiet reflection; much less any
anxious thought regarding Divine providence,
righteousness, mercy, by means of which duty
may be discovered. It is possible for men to ap-
pear earnest defenders of religion who never go
even as far as Balaam went in seeking the guid-
ance of truth and principle. They pass judg-
ments with a haste that shows the shallow heart.
Tempted by some envious Balak within, even
when no appeal is made, they set up as sooth-
sayers and take on them to prophesy evil.
The messengers of Balak returned with the re-
port of their disappointment; but what they had
to say caused, as Balaam no doubt intended,
greater anxiety than ever to secure his services.
One who was so lofty, and at the same time so
much in the secrets of the God Israel wor-
shipped, was indeed a most valuable ally, and his
help must be obtained at any price. Did he say
that Jehovah refused to give him leave? Balak
will assure him of rewards which no God of
Israel can give, very great recompense, tangible,
immediate. Other messengers are sent, more,
and more honourable than the former, and they
carry very flattering offers. If he will curse
Israel, Balak the son of Zippor will do for him
whatever he desires. Nothing is to hinder him
from coming; neither the prohibition of Jehovah
nor anything else.
The conduct of Balaam when he is appealed
to the second time confirms the judgment it has
been found necessary to pronounce on his char-
acter. He behaves like a man who has been ex-
pecting, and yet, with what conscience he has,
dreading, the renewed invitation. He appears
indeed to be emphatic in declaring his superiority
to the ofifer of reward: " If Balak would give me
his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go be-
yond the word of the Lord my God, to do less or
more." The air of incorruptible virtue is kept.
The Moabites and Midianites are to understand
that they have to do with a man whose whole
soul is set on truth. And the protestation would
deceive us — only Balaam does not dismiss the
men. Giving him all credit for an intention still
to keep right with the Almighty, or, shall we
say? allowing that he was too clever a man to
imperil his reputation by intending a curse which
would not be followed by any ill effects, we find
immediately that he is unwilling to let the oppor-
tunity pass. He asks the messengers to tarry for
the night, that he may again consult Jehovah in
the matter. He has already seen the truth as to
Israel, the promise of its splendid career. Yet
he will repeat the inquiry, ask once more regard-
ing the prospect he has distinctly seen. It is am-
bition that moves him, and perhaps, along with
that, avarice. May he not be able to say some-
thing that will sound like a curse, something on
which Balak shall fasten in the belief that it gives
him power against Israel? It would, at all
events, be a gratification to travel in state across
the desert, to appear amongst the princes of
Midian and Moab as the man after whom kings
had to run. And there was the possibility that
without absolutely forfeiting his reputation as a
seer of things to come he might obtain at least
a portion of the reward. He will at all events
do the messengers the honour of seeking another
oracle for their sakes,' though he dishonours the
name of God from whom he seeks it.
It was possible for Balaam during the interval
of the two embassies to recover himself. He
was one who could understand integrity, who
knew enough of the conditions of success to see
that absolute consistency is the only strength.
There was a straight way which he might have
followed. But temptation pressed on him.
Tired of the narrow field within which he had
as yet exercised his powers, he saw one wider
and more splendid open to him. The wealth was
no small inducement. He was in the way of
divining for reward; this was the greatest ever
in his reach. And Balaam, knowing well how
base and vain his pretext was, resigned his in-
tegrity, even the pretence of it, when he bade the
messengers wait.
Yet was his fault a singular one? We cannot
say that he showed extraordinary covetousness
in desiring Balak's silver and gold. For the
time, in the circumstances, scarcely anything else
could be expected of a man like him. To judge
Balaam by modern Christian rules is an anach-
ronism. The remarkable thing is to find one of
his class at all scrupulous about the means he
employs to promote himself. We say that he
was guilty of perverting conscience; and so he
was. But his conscience did not see or speak so
clearly as ours. And are not Christian men liable
to have their heads turned by the countenance of
those in a higher rank than their own, and to
succumb to the enticement of great wealth?
When they are asked to reconsider a decision
they know to be right, do they never tamper with
conscience? It is one of the commonest things
to find persons nominally religious indulging in
the same desires and acting in the same way as
Balaam. But the earthly craving that makes any
one go back to God a second time about a
matter which ought to have been settled once
for all, involves the greatest moral hazard. No
human being, in any situation, has spiritual
strength to spare. There is a point where he
who hesitates casts the whole of his life into the
balance. For young persons, especially, a great
warning, often needed, lies here.
The fault of Balaam, a fault of which he could
not fail to be conscious, was that of tampering
with his inspiration. The insight he possessed —
and which he valued — had come through his sin-
cere estimate of things and men apart from any
pressure brought to bear on him to take a side
either for money or for fame. His mind using
perfect freedom, travelling in a way of sincere
judgment, had reached a height from which he
enjoyed wide prospects. As a man and a
prophet he had his standing through this superi-
ority to the motives that swayed vulgar minds.
The admission of sordid influences, whether it
began with the visit of Balak's messengers or had
been previously allowed, was perhaps the first
great error of his life. And it is so in the case
of every man who has found the strength of in-
tegrity and reached the vision of the true. The
Christian who h^s held himself free from the en-
tanglements of the world, refusing to touch its
questionable rewards, or to be influenced by its
jealousy and envy, has what may be called his in-
spiration, though it lifts him to no prophetic
Numbers xxii. 20-38.]
BALAAM ON THE WAY.
453
height. He has a clear mind, a clear eye. His
own way is plain, and he can also see the crook-
edness of paths which others follow and reckon
straight enough. He can go with a firm step
and say fearlessly, " Be ye followers of me."
But if the base considerations of gain and loss,
of ease or discomfort, of the applause or enmity
of other men, intrude, if even in a small way he
becomes a man of the world, at once there is
declension. He may not be ambitious nor
covetous. Yet the withdrawal of his mind from
its sole allegiance to God and the righteousness
of God tells at once on his moral vision. It is
clouded. The oracle becomes ambiguous. He
hears two voices, many voices; and the counsels
of his mind are confused. Like others, he now
takes a crooked course, he feels that he has lost
the old firmness of speech and action.
It is a sad thing when one who has felt him-
self " born to the good, to the perfect," who has
gained the power that comes through reverence,
and sees greater power before him, yields to
that which is not venerable, not pure. The be-
ginnings of the fatal surrender may be small.
Only a throb of self-consciousness and satisfac-
tion when some one speaks a word of flattery or
with show of much deference prefers an astute
request. Only a disposition to listen when in
seeming friendship counsel of a plausible kind
is oflfered, and milder ways of judging are recom-
mended to lessen friction and put an end to dis-
cord. Even the strong are so weak, and those
who see are so easily blinded, that no one can
count himself safe. And indeed it is not the
great temptations, like that which came to Ba-
laam, we have chiefly to dread. The very great-
ness of a bribe and magnificence of an oppor-
tunity put conscience on its guard. Peril comes
rather when the appeal for charity, or the
casuistry of protesting virtue, sends one to
reconsider judgment that has been solemnly pro-
nounced by a voice we cannot mistake; when we
forget that the matter is only rightly determined
for men when it is clearly and irrevocably de-
cided by the law of God, whatever men may
think, however they may deplore or rebel.
"Thou and God exist —
So think !— for certain ; think the mass— mankind-
Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone !
Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee—
Thee and no other,— stand or fall by them !
That is the part for thee : regard all else
For what it may be— Time's illusion."
Men in their need, in their sorrow, their self-
esteem, would have the true man revoke his
judgment, yield a point at least to their en-
treaties. He will do them kindness, he will show
himself human, reasonable, judicious. But on
the other side are those to whom, in showing
this consideration, he will be unjust, declaring
their honour worthless, their sore struggle a
useless waste of strength; and he himself stands
before the Judge. The one sure way is that
which keeps the life in the line of the statutes of
God, and every judgment in full accord with His
righteousness.
CHAPTER XIX.
BALAAM ON THE WAY.
Numbers xxii. 20-38.
The history is moving towards a great vindi-
cation of Israel and prediction of its coming
power, all the more impressive that they are to
be wrung from an unwilling witness, a man who
would pronounce a curse rather than a blessing;
all the more impressive, too, because the enemies
of Israel will themselves arrange on a mountain
pinnacle the scene of the revelation, with smok-
ing altars and princely spectators. The great
Actor in the drama is unseen; but His voice is
heard. However tractable the omens may have
been under other circumstances in the hands of
the soothsayer, he now finds a Master. As the
story unfolds, Balaam is seen attempting the im-
possible, endeavouring to force the hands of
Providence, held as in a chain at every stage.
There is a Power that treats him as if he were a
child. Finally, with most unwilling eloquence,
he is compelled to fling far and wide a challenge
to Israel's enemies, the praises of her rising star.
In harmony with this general movement is the
result of Balaam's second appeal for permission
to take the journey to Moab. He receives it,
but with a reservation. Fear of the great God
whom he invokes holds him to the conviction
that whatever he may do no word must pass his
lips other than Jehovah gives him to speak. In
repeating his inquiry he has assumed that the
God of Israel is amenable to human urgency;
and as he will have Jehovah to be, so within
limits he seems to find Him. Yet there is more
to reckon with than a dubious oracle, discovered
through signs and portents of the sky or whis-
perings of the breeze at night. Jehovah has
brought His people from Egypt, fed them in
the desert, given them victory. Balaam finds
that this God can send angels upon His errands,
that there is no escape from His presence nor
evasion of His will.
It was in a kind of madness the diviner set
out from Pethor by the way of the Euphrates'
ford. Excited by the hope of gaining the re-
wards and enjoying the fame awaiting him in
Moab, he was at the same time conscious of
being in opposition to the God of Israel, and
committed to an adventure that might end disas-
trously. He went in a mood of wilfulness, hop-
ing and yet half doubting that his way would
become clear, irritable therefore, ready to resent
every hindrance. A diviner of repute, credited
with powers of blessing and cursing, he perhaps
felt himself safe on ordinary occasions, espe-
cially among his own people, even when he went
against those who consulted him. But could he
count on the forbearance of the king of Moab
into whose country he was venturing? Je-
hovah might be opening his way only to destruc-
tion. Such fears could hardly be avoided.
And men who have gone back to conscience
endeavouring to extort from it a sanction or
permission previously denied, who, with some
half assurance that the way is open, set out on a
desired course, are practically in the same mad
mood, have equal reason to dread the issue. Is
this understood? It may be safely asserted that
half the wrong things men do — taking an average
of human action, half at least — are done not in
despite of conscience, but with its dubious con-
sent, when the first clear decision has been set
aside. No doubt the urgency is often very great,
as it was in Balaam's case, and frequently of a
less questionable kind. Not the desire of en-
vious persons to have others cursed or evil in-
treated, but possibly the desire of some to have
the shadow of adverse judgment taken away,
may be the plea, and be supported by the promise
of large reward. The first word of conscience is
454
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
.distinct — Have nothing whatever to do with the
matter: the shadow has fallen on the wrongdoer;
he has not repented; let him suffer still. But his
agents come with gold and silver, with plausible
words, with seeming Christian arguments. Then
the appeal to conscience is renewed, and he
who should be firm in judgment finds a false per-
mission. Or the case may be of one in business,
tempted to some practice, common enough, but
dishonest, vile. His first feeling has been that
of disgust. He could not for a moment con-
template a thing so base. But under the press-
ure of what appears to be necessity, plausible
arguments and pretexts gain ground. The -fact
that reputable men find no difficulty about the
matter, the notion that a custom is excusable be-
cause it is followed by most if not by all, along
with other considerations of a personal kind, are
allowed to have some weight, and then to over-
balance the sense of duty. And the result is that
the moral atmosphere is confused. The man sets
out on a way which appears to be opened for
him; but he goes under the shadow of a haunt-
ing fear.
Like Balaam, one who thus extorts from con-
science, that is from God, permission to go
where he himself desires, knowing it to be a
wrong way, is quite aware, may indeed be eager
to acknowledge to himself, that he is still held
by a Divine command extending over a part of
his conduct. He will not speak a word that
shall be against truth. He will resume friend-
ship with the rich transgressor; but he will not
in words excuse or palliate his crime. He will
adulterate certain commodities in which he deals,
but he will never assert that they are genuine.
This is the tribute to religion and to conscience
that sustains decaying self-respect. By this the
man who passes for a Christian endeavours to
keep himself separate from those who have no
conscience. The most is made of the difference.
As compared with those who unblushingly de-
fend the wrong, this man may think himself a
saint. He would on no account speak a false-
hood. Does he not fear God? Is he a dog
that he should do this thing? Nevertheless, the
way leads into a bottomless quagmire. For a
time the waning light of religion may shine. It
may even burst before it dies into a bright flame
of indignation against sin — the crimes others
commit — or of loud protestation against what are
called false charges. But the man dies a Ba-
laam, with a perverted conscience, and must face
the dreadful result.
Well has it been said that no virtue is safe
without enthusiasm. A man cannot be true to
the highest law unless he has the motive within
him of pure devotion to God as his personal Re-
deemer, unless he recognises that his joy in God
and his salvation are bound up with fidelity to
the moral ideal which is presented to him.
Faith, hope, love must inspire and keep the soul
in fervour of desire to reach the heights to which
it is called by the Divine voice. But the most
of men come far short of this enthusiasm. It is
rather with reluctance, after a kind of struggle
with themselves, that they look duty in the face.
And even when they do they find no pleasure in
resolving to press on where the absolutely right
is seen. Their pleasure lies in doing less than
that. They seek accordingly some way of ob-
serving the letter of duty while they avoid its
spirit. But the sense of having come short in a
matter that involves their highest wellbeing.
their standing before God. their very right to
hope and to live, remains with them. Marriage,
for example, is often entered upon after a strug-
gle with conscience in which a clear mandate has
been set aside. The desire to please self is
allowed to overcome the conviction that the
new bond will keep life on the low worldly
ground, or drag it back from spirituality. The
merely expedient is chosen rather than the ideal
of moral independence and power. And of this
come fretfulness, dissatisfaction with self, with
others, with Providence. All the sophistries that
can be used fail to set the mind at rest. Events
continually occur which throw flashes of light on
the past and reveal the lost hope, the forfeited
vision.
God does not make the wrong way smooth for
one who has extorted permission to follow it.
A man desiring to enter on a course which he
sees to be dishonourable or at least dubious may
be absolutely prevented at first. His appeal is
to Providence. If circumstances allowed his
plan he would reckon the Divine will favourable
to it. But they do not. Every door he tries in
the direction he wishes to take is barred against
him. Afterwards one yields to pressure, or is
thrown wide because he knocks at it persist-
ently. Then he advances, taking for granted
that he has obtained permission from God. But
he does not go far till he is undeceived. So,
Balaam sets out on his adventure, riding on his
ass and attended by his two servants. Yet he
does not get clear of the vineyards of Pethor
without hindrance. Obstacles to his journey
which do not appear in the narrative may have
at first stood in his way, certain political com-
plications, we may suppose. Now they are re-
moved. But he is met by others. The angel
of the Lord opposes him. one who stands with
;t 'Irawn sword in hand in a hollow way between
the vineyards, a path closely fenced on the one
side and the other. Balaam fails to see the ad-
versary;' he is absorbed in his own thoughts.
But the ass sees, and will not go forward, and
as Balaam becomes aware of resistance his anger
is kindled.
The narrative here is confessedly difificult.
One of the most reverent commentators on the
passage declares that he feels too deeply the
essential veracity of the story to be troubled with
minute questions about its details. " I would
not," he says, " force them upon any one's belief
merely by uttering the coarse sentence, that they
are in the Bible and therefore must be received.
One is afraid of leading people to fancy that they
do believe what they do not believe, and so of
propagating hypocrisy under the name of faith."
To some the narrative may present no serious
difficulty. They accept it literally at every point.
Others again are not so easily satisfied that
the occasion called for miracles like those which
appear on the face of the history. It seems to
them of no great moment whether Balaam
went or did not go to Moab, whether he cursed
Israel or blessed it. Neither the curse nor
the blessing of a man of Balaam's sort could
make the least difiference to Israel. These
readers accordingly would find a parabolical or
pictorial explanation of the incidents. Literal
!:)elief, in any case, need not be made a test of
reverence; the spirit is surely more than the
letter. The point of greatest importance is to
believe that God dealt with this man, opposed his
perverse will by gracious influences and unex-
Numbers xxii. 20-38.]
BALAAM ON THE WAY.
455
pected protests. To Balaam, no doubt, the
angel's appearance and the ass's rebuke were
real, as real and impressive as any experiences
he ever had. He was humbled; he acknowl-
edged his sin and offered to return. When he
reached the land of Moab, the recollection of
what befell him by the way had a salutary in-
fluence on all he said and did.
In many unforeseen, singular, and often
homely ways, men are checked in the endeavour
to carry out the schemes which ambition and
avarice prompt. The angel of the Lord who
opposes one bent on a bad enterprise often ap-
pears in familiar guise. To some men their
wives stand in the way. some are challenged by
their children. What in voluntary blindness
they have declined to see — the madness of the
wrong course, the intrinsic baseness of the thing
undertaken — those who look with pure eyes per-
ceive clearly and are brave -enough to condemn.
At other times obstacles are placed in the way
by the simple ordinary duties which claim at-
tention, occupy thought and time, and tend to
bring back the mind to humility and saneness.
Yet covetousness can make men very blind.
Un.der the influence of it they suppose themselves
to be acting cleverly, while all the time those
whom they think they are outwitting see them
posting on the way to bankruptcy and shame.
Even a good man may lose his spiritual dis-
crimination occasionally when he fancies him-
self called to curse not Israel but Moab, and sets
out in heat upon the errand. He fails to see that
the case of Balaam is so far parallel to his own
that he ought to expect an angel to oppose him.
The critical Balaam who feels it his high duty to
pronounce maledictions on some theological
opponent, not for silver and gold, but for the
cause of God. is resisted by many an angel bear-
ing the sharp sword of the Word, set to declare
the great tolerance of Christ, and to vindicate the
liberty that is in Him. That men fail to see these
angels, or else ride past them, is abundantly evi-
dent, for the altars smoke on many a height, and
scrolls of futile condemnation are flung upon the
breeze.
Balaam smites the ass even when she falls
down under him in her abject terror. He en-
deavours to force her on till at last he is put to
shame by her rebuke. We are pointed to the
irrational way in which those act whose moral
judgment is blinded. Their course being wrong,
they do not turn against themselves, but rise in
passion against every person or thing that hin-
ders. The husband who is resolved to take a
wrong path thrusts away his faithful wife; the
son bent on what will be his ruin pushes off his
weeping mother when she pleads before him.
Often an apparently inexplicable fit of temper in
public or in private means that a man is in the
wrong and is aware of a mistake, from the con-
sequences of which he would fain escape. One's
heart bleeds for none more than for those vic-
tims of selfish anger who suffer under the abuse
of the Balaams of society. They have seen the
angel in the way. They have sought by a ges-
ture or a warning word to arrest the friend who
would go on to evil. Then the cruel strokes fall
on them, curses, foul abuse, taunts often directed
against their religion. They are charged with
setting themselves up as holier and better than
other people. They are denounced as meddlers
and fools. They protest without effect often,
and suffer apparently to no purpose. Yet shall
we suppose their endeavours altogether lost*
Good is surely stronger than evil. Every right
act and word is germinal. After long years it
bears fruit.
In Balaam's case there was a happier issue
than is often seen. The protest against his
cruelty opened his eyes to the truth that a mes-
senger of God stood in his way. The rebuke
came home to him. So might a hard, self-willed
man who rode rough-shod over the feelings and
rights of others be brought suddenly to a sense
of his cruelty by the look on the face of a dog.
Bad as men and women may be. violent and
abusive as they may become in times of anger
and impatience, there are ways of softening their
hearts. They go on for years attempting to
justify themselves in a rough and selfish course.
But who shall say that even the seeming worst
are beyond recovery? When there appears to be
no redeeming feature left in the character, the
crisis may be at hand, the transgressor may be
so taught by the piteous look of a dumb animal
that his infatuation will come to an end. Re-
coiling from himself he will acknowledge his
perversity and turn to better thoughts.
How far did Balaam's repentance go? There
can be little doubt the motive of it was the sud-
den discovery that the God of Israel was
mightier and more observant than he had
imagined; in short, that Jehovah was his master.
Balaam yields, changes his mind, not because he
is in the least degree more disposed to do what
is right, but because he finds the antagonism of
God falling suddenly upon his life. To the
angel he says: " I have sinned: for I knew not
that thou stoodest in the way against me: now
therefore, if it displease thee, I will get me back
again." This is an acknowledgment of authority,
but not of an obligation into which any sense of
God's goodness enters. It is the sullen acquies-
cence of a foiled adventurer, who at the very out-
set is made to understand the terms and narrow
limits of his power. He has his knowledge, his
vision. When he set out he intended to use
them, if possible, under such conditions as would
secure his own liberty. He is now made to
understand that he is not free. The angel with
the drawn sword will be in Moab before him,
ready to cut him down if he should do or say
anything opposed to the mind of the God of
Israel. He is cowed, not converted.
And so it often is with men who find their
schemes counteracted, and are made to feel their
weakness in presence of the forces of human
government, or of the natural world. Their
confession of sin is really a sullen acknowledg-
ment of impotence. Sift their feelings and you
discover no sense of guilt. They miscalculated,
and they regret having done so, because it is to
their shame. They will go back to make other
plans, to lay the foundations deeper with greater
subtlety, and by-and-by, if they can, to carry
out their ideas and gratify their covetousness and
ambition in other ways. Sometimes indeed it
may become clear to a man that his efforts to
advance himself, such as he is, cannot prosper
because Omnipotence is against him. Then ac-
knowledgment of defeat is confession of despair.
Of this we see an example in the first Napoleon
after his final capture when he was on the voyage
to St. Helena. He had forced his way over ob-
stacles enough, leaving blood and ruin behind
him. But at length the stronger power came
down to meet him, and he knew that the game
456
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
was lost. Beneath the seeming acquiescence
there lurked rebellion. He often spoke as a be-
liever in God; but the God he knew was one he
could have wished to foil. In the island to which
he was confined he schemed desperately to re-
gain his freedom that he might renew the vain
conflict with Providence for his own glory and
the glory of France. " I have sinned: I will get
me back again." Yes. But will it be to lay
other and more cunning plots for self-aggrand-
isement, and recover the lost ground by some
daring stroke? Then it will be also to meet
other angels, and at the last the minister who
bears the sword of doom.
Balaam will return, confessing himself defeated
for the time. But he learns that he may not.
He has come so far with designs of his own; he
must now go on to Moab to serve the purposes
of God. The permission he wrested, so to speak,
from Providence, was not wrested after all.
There are deeper schemes than Balaam can form,
the great far-reaching plans of the God of Israel,
and by these, however unwillingly, the sooth-
sayer of Pethor is now bound. This journey has
been of his own perverse choosing; now he must
finish it, feeling himself at every point a servant,
an instrument; and if danger and even death
await him, still he must proceed. Easy it is to
begin in the craftiness of human purpose and the
foolishness of earthly hope; but the end is not
under the control of him who begins. There is
One who orders all things so that the gifts of
men and their perversity and their wrath shall
all praise Him, shall all be woven into the web
of His evolving purpose, universal, holy, sure.
It is a startling thought that in a sense what-
ever we begin in pride or self-will, playing, as it
were, the first act of the drama on some stage we
ourselves select, the movement cannot be arrested
when we choose. In one way or another, act
after act must proceed to the very end which
God foreordains. Many human purposes appear
to be sharply and completely broken off. In the
midst of his days man hears the call he cannot
disobey. His tools, his hopes, his declared in-
tentions must be laid aside. But the end is not
yet. The curtain has fallen here. It will be
raised again. And in many unfoldings of Divine
purpose we witness scene after scene, in scene
after scene have to play our part. One who has
begun ill may sincerely repent, and then the de-
velopment takes a direction which will be to the
glory of Divine grace. That act of repentance
over, another comes, in which the humble
thought of the penitent reveals itself. He is
seen a new man, timorous where he was bold,
bold where he was timorous. Beyond there are
other scenes, in which he shall be found endeav-
ouring to repair the evil he has done, to gather
the poisoned arrows he has strewed about the
world. And the consummation shall be reached
when the task at which he has vainly laboured
is completed for him by Christ, and his recovery
and the restitution he toiled for shall be com-
plete.
But if there is no penitence, still the drama
must go on to its finish. The man resenting,
yet unable to resist, shall do what God requires,
what God permits. He shall attempt to curse,
yet be constrained to bless. He shall in bitter-
ness of anger frame new devices and carry them
out. Then, when the cup of his iniquity is full,
and all is done Providence allows, retribution
shall overtake him. In the thick of battle the
sword of the angel shall smite him to the ground.
For each man, under God's rule, in the midst of
the forces He upholds, there is a destiny, some
stages of which we can trace. Entering on life
we of necessity become subject to great laws
which our revolt cannot in the least afifect. And
these are moral laws. The seeming success of
the immoral who are intellectually or brutally
strong is within the narrow limits of time and
space. In the breadths of eternity and infinity
there is no strength for any but the good.
There is a purpose of God which Balaam is
unwilling to subserve; and of that the man be-
comes gradually aware. When he is met by
Balak and his train and upbraided with his re-
luctance to come where honours and rewards are
to be had, the soothsayer realises his peril and
begins at once to prepare the Moabite king for
disappointment. " Lo, I am come unto thee,"
he says: " have I now any power at all to speak
anything? The word that God putteth in my
mouth, that shall I speak." What we see now
is a contest between the influence of Balak, with
his power to reward and also to punish, and the
consciousness of a constraint which had entered
deeply into Balaam's mind. The sense of Je-
hovah's authority over him on this occasion was
indeed supported by another strong motive
which the diviner never allowed to fall into the
background. He had his reputation to maintain.
At whatever hazard, he must show himself to
Moabites, Midianites, Aramgeans, a man who
knew the knowledge of the Most High. The
ignorance of Balak is seen in his absurd hope
that for the sake of some bribe of his the prophet
of Pethor will be induced to fling away his
fame.
There are things which even money cannot
buy. There is a limit beyond which even a false
and avaricious man cannot venture for the sake
of honours and rewards. It is a vulgar judg-
ment that every man has his price. One who is
not particularly conscientious on most occasions
will sometimes touch the bounds of concession
and take his stand for what is left, all the self he
has in any true sense. Neither will money buy
nor threats compel his further acquiescence in
what he deems wrong. Again, as in Balaam's
case, the limit of the power of gold or of threats
may be fixed by pride. There are gifts, qualities,
distinctions possessed by some, in virtue of
which they seem to themselves to occupy a place
which all might covet. The veteran has his
decoration, once attached to his uniform by some
honoured commander under whom he served.
No money could buy that. He would die rather
than part with it. Another is proud of his name.
To dishonour that would be treachery to his an-
cestors. Balaam has his unique power of vision,
and for a while at least he preserves it. A man
like Balak, measuring others by himself, regards
a diviner as one of a lower order who may be
moved by menaces and promises. He finds that
Balaam has pride enough to lift him above them.
Thus vanity counteracts vanity; the compara-
tively base keeps the base in check.
Numbers xxii. 39-xxiv. 9.]
BALAAM'S PARABLES.
457
CHAPTER XX.
BALAAM'S PARABLES.
Numbers xxii. 39-xxiv. 9. -
The scene is now on some mountain of Moab
from which the encampment of the Hebrew
tribes in the plain of the Jordan is fully visible.
At Kiriath-huzoth, possibly the modern Shihan,
about ten miles east of the Dead Sea, and to the
south of the Arnon valley, preparation for the at-
tempt against Israel's destiny has been made by
a great sacrifice of oxen and sheep intended to
secure the good-will of Chemosh, the Baal or
Lord of Moab. On the range overhanging the
Dead Sea, somewhat to the north of the Arnon,
perhaps, are the Bamoth-Baal, or high places of
Baal, and the " bare height " where Balaam is to
seek his auguries and will be met by God.
The evening of Balaam's arrival has been spent
in the sacrificial festival, and in the morning Ba-
lak and his princes escort the diviner to the
Bamoth-Baal that he may begin his experiment.
After his usual manner, Balaam pompously re-
quires that great arrangements be made for the
trial of auguries by means of which his oracle is
to be found. Balak has ofYered sacrifices to
Chemosh; now Jehovah must be propitiated, and
seven altars have to be built, and on each of them
a bullock and a ram ofifered by fire. The altars
erected, the carcases of the animals prepared,
Balaam does not remain beside them to take
actual part in the sacrifice. It is, in fact, to be
Balak's, not his; and if the God of Israel should
refuse His sanction to the curse, that will be be-
Cc/use the offering of the king of Moab has not
secured His favour. Accordingly, while the
seven wreaths of smoke ascend from the altars,
and the invocations of the Divine power which
usually accompany sacrifice are chanted by the
king and his princes, the soothsayer withdraws
to a peak at some distance that he may read the
omens. " Peradventure," he says, " Jehovah will
come to meet me."
It was now a critical hour for the ambitious
prophet. He had indeed already found distinc-
tion, for who in Moab or Midian could have
commanded with so royal an air and received at-
tention so obsequious? But the reward re-
mained to be won. Yet may we not assume'
that when Balaam reached Moab and saw the
pitiable state of what had been once a strong
kingdom, the cities half ruined, filled with poor
and dejected inhabitants, he conceived a kind of
contempt for Balak and perceived that his offers
must be set aside as worthless? God met Ba-
laam, we are told. And this may have been the
sense in which God met him and put a word into
h's mouth. What was Moab compared with
Israel? A glance at Kiriath-huzoth, a little ex-
perience of Balak's empty boastfulness and the
■entreaties and anxiety which betrayed his weak-
Ti iss, would show Balaam the vanity of propos-
ing to reinvigorate Moab at the expense of
Israel. His way led clearly enough where the
finger of the God of Israel pointed, and his mind
a most anticipated what the Voice he heard as
J ihovah's declared. He saw the smoke stream-
ing south-eastward, and casting a black shadow
between him and Moab; but the sun shone on
the tents of Israel, right away to the utmost part
of the camp (xxii. 41). The mind of Balaam was
made up. It would be better for him in a
worldly sense to win some credit with Israel than
to have the greatest honour Moab could offer.
Chemosh was in decline, Jehovah in the
ascendant. Perhaps the Hebrews might need a
diviner when their great Moses was dead, and he,
Balaam, might succeed to that exalted office.
We never can tell what dreams will enter the
mind of the ambitious man, or rather, we do not
know on what slender foundations he builds the
most extravagant hopes. There was nothing
more unlikely, the thing indeed was absolutely
impossible, yet Balaam may have imagined that
his oracle would come to the ears of the Israel-
ites, and that they would send for him to give
favourable auguries before they crossed the
Jordan.
Rapidly the diviner had to form his decision.
That done, the words of the oracle could be
trusted to the inspiration of the moment, inspi-
ration from Jehovah, whose superiority to all
the gods of Syria Balaam now heartily acknowl-
edged. He accordingly left his place of vision
and returned to the Bamoth where the altars
still smoked. Then he took up his parable and
spoke.
" From Aram Balak brought me,
Moab's king from the mountains of the east ;
' Come, curse for me Jacob,
And come, menace Israel.'
How can I curse whom God hath not cursed?
And how can I menace whom God hath not menaced ?
For from the head of the rocks I see him,
And from the hills I behold him.
Lo, a people apart he dwells.
And among the nations he is not counted.
Who can reckon the dust of Jacob,
And in number the fourth of Israel ?
Let my soul die the death of the righteous ;
And be my last end like his ! "
In this parable, or mashal, along with some ele-
ments of egotism and self-defence, there are
others that have the ring of inspiration. The
opening is a vaunt, and the expression, " How
can I curse whom God hath not cursed?" is a
form of self-vindication which savours of vanity.
We see more of the cowed and half-resentful
man than of the prophet. Yet the vision of a
people dwelling apart, not to be reckoned among
the others, is a real revelation, boldly flung out.
Something of the difference already established
between Israel and the goim, or peoples of the
Syrian district, had been caught by the seer in
his survey of past events, and now came to clear
expression. For a moment, at least, his soul
rose almost into spiritual desire in the cry that
his last end should be of the kind an Israelite
might have; one who with calm confidence laid
himself down in the arms of the great God, the
Lord of providence, of death as well as life.
A man has learned one lesson of great value
for the conduct of life when he sees that he can-
not curse whom God has not cursed, that he
would be foolish to menace whom God has not
menaced. Reaching this point of sight, Balaam
stands superior for the time to the vulgar ideas
of men like the king of Moab, who have no con-
ception of a strong and dominant will to which
human desires are all subjected. However re-
luctantly this confession is made, it prevents
many futile endeavours and much empty vapour-
ing. There are some indeed whose belief that
fate must be on their side is simply immovable.
Those whom they choose to reckon enemies are
established in the protection of heaven; but they
think it possible to wrest their revenge even from
45
a
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
the Divine hand. Not till the blow they strike
recoils with crushing force on themselves do they
know the fatuity of their hope. In his " Instans
Tyrannus " Mr. Browning pictures one whose
persecution of an obscure foe ends in defeat.
" I soberly laid my last plan
To extinguish the man.
Round his creep-hole, with never a break,
Ran my fires for his sake ;
Overhead, did my thunder combine
With my underg'found mine :
Till I looked from my labour, content
To enjoy the event.
When sudden . . . how think ye, the end ?
Did I say. ' Without friend ' ?
Say rather from marge to blue marge
The whole skv grew his targe.
With the sun's self for visible boss,
While an Arm ran across,
Which the earth heaved beneath, like a breast
Where the wretch was safe prest !
Do you see ? Just my vengeance complete.
The man sprang to his feet.
Stood erect, caught at God's skirts and prayed !
— So, I was afraid ! "
In smaller matters, the attempts at impudent
detraction which are common, when the base,
girding at the good, think it possible to bring
them to contempt, or at least stir them to un-
seemly anger, or prick them to humiliating self-
defence, the law is often well enough under-
stood, yet neither the assailants nor those at-
tacked may be wise enough to recognise it.
A man who stands upon his faithfulness to God
does not need to be vexed by the menaces of the
base; he should despise them. Yet he often
allows himself to be harassed, and so yields all
the victory hoped for by his detractor. Calm
indiflference, if one has ? right to use it, is the
true shield against the arrows of envy and malice.
Balaam's vision of Israel as a separated people,
a people dwelling alone, had singular penetra-
tion. The others he knew — Amorites, Moabites,
Ammonites, Midianites, Hittites, Aramaeans —
went together, scarcely distinguishable in many
respects, with their national Baals all of the same
kind. Was Ammon or Chemosh, Melcarth or
Sutekh. the name of the Baal? The rites might
dififer somewhat, there might be more or less
ferocity ascribed to the deities; but on the whole
their likeness was too close for any real distinc-
tion. And the peoples, dififering in race, in
culture, in habit, no doubt, were yet alike in this,
that their morality and their mental outlook
passed no boundary, were for the most part of
the beaten, crooked road. Strifes and petty am-
bitions here and there, temporary combinations
for ignoble ends, the rise of one above another
for a time under some chief who held his ground
by force of arms, then fell and disappeared — such
were the common events of their histories. But
Israel came into Balaam's sight as a people of an
entirely dififerent kind, generically distinct.
Their God was no Baal ferocious by report,
really impotent, a mere reflection of human pas-
sion and lust. Jehovah's law was a creation, like
nothing in human history ascribed to a God.
His worship meant solemn obligation, imposed,
acknowledged, not simply to honour Him, but to
be pure and true and honest in honouring Him.
Israel had no part in the orgies that were held
in professed worship of the Baals, really to the
disgrace of their devotees. The lines of the
national development had been laid down, and
Balaam saw to some extent how widely they di-
verged from those along which other peoples
sought power and glory. Amorites and Hittites
and Canaanites might keep their place, but
Israel had the secret of a progress of which they
never dreamed. Wherever the tribes settled,
when they advanced to fulfil their destiny, they
would prove a new force in the world.
For the time Israel might be called the one
spiritual people. It was this Balaam partly saw,
and made the basis of his striking predictions.
The modern nations are not to be distinguished
by the same testing idea. The thoughts and
hopes of Christianity have entered more or less
into all that are civilised, and have touched others
that can scarcely be called so. Yet if there is any
oracle for the peoples of our century it is one
that turns on the very point which Balaam seems
to have had in view. But it is. that not one of
them, as a nation, is distinctly moved and sepa-
rated from others by spirituality of aim. Of not
one can it be said that it is confessedly, eagerly,
on the way to a Canaan where the Living and
True God shall be worshipped, that its popular
movements, its legislation, its main endeavours
look to such a heavenly result. If we saw a
people dwelling apart, with a high spiritual aim,
resolutely excluding those ideas of materialism
which dominate the rest, of them it would not be
presumptuous to prophesy in the high terms to
which the oracles of Balaam gradually rose.
Regarding the wish with which the diviner
closed his first mashal, hard things have been
said, as for example, that " even in his sublimest
visions his egotism breaks out; in the sight of
God's Israel he cries, ' Let me die the death of
the righteous.' " Here, however, there may be
personal sorrow and regret, a pathetic confession
of human fear by one who has been brought to
serious thought, rather than any mere egoistic
craving. Why should he speak of death? That
is not the theme of the egotist. We hear a sud-
den ejaculation that seems to open a glimpse of
his heart. For this man, like every son of Adam,
has his burden, his secret trouble, from which all
the hopes and plans of his ambition cannot re-
lieve his mind. Now for the first time he speaks
in a genuinely religious strain. " There are the
righteous whom the Great Jehovah regards with
favour, and gathers to Himself. When their end
comes they rest. Alas! I, Balaam, am not one
df them; and the shadows of my end are not far
away! Would that by some mighty effort I
could throw aside my life as it has been and is,
revoke my destiny, and enter the ranks of Je-
hovah's people — were it only to die among
them."
Wistfully, men whose life has been on the low
ground of mere earthly toil and pleasure may,
in like manner, when the end draws near, envy
the confidence and hope of the good. For the
old age of the sensualist, and even of the success-
ful man of the world, is under a dull wintry sky,
with no prospect of another morning, or even of
a quiet night of dreamless sleep.
" The weariest and mo.st loathed worldly life,
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death."
Courage and peace at the last belong to those
alone who have kept in the way of righteousness.
To them and no others light shall arise in the
darkness. The faithfulness of God is their
refuge even when the last shadows fall. He
whom they trust goes before them in the pillar
of fire when night is on the world, as well as in
Numbers xxii. 3<;-xxiv. 9 j
BALAAM'S PARABLES.
459
the pillar of cloud by day. To the man of this
earth even the falling asleep of the good is en-
viable, though they may not anticipate a blessed
immortality. Their very grave is a bed of peace-
ful rest, for living or dying they belong to the
great God.
It was with growing dissatisfaction, rising to
anxiety, Balak heard the first oracle that fell
from the diviner's lips. Despite the warning he
had received that only the words which Jehovah
gave should be spoken, he hoped for some kind
of a curse. His altars had been built, his oxen
and rams sacrificed, and surely, he thought, all
would not be in vain! Balaam had not travelled
from Pethor to mock him. But the prophecy
carried not a single word of heartening to the
enemies of Israel. The camp lay in the full sun-
shine of fortune, unobscured by the least cloud.
It was the first blow to Balak's malignant jeal-
ousy, and might well have put him to confusion.
But men of his sort are rich in conjectures and
expedients. He had set his mind on this as the
means of finding advantag'e in a struggle that
was sure to come; and he clung to his hope. Al-
though the curse would not light on the whole
camp of Israel, yet it might fall on a part, the
remote outlying portion of the tribes. In super-
stition men are for ever catching at straws. If
the anger of some heavenly power, what power
mattered little to Balak, could be once enlisted
against the tribes, even partially, the influence
of it might spread. And it would at least be
something if pestilence or lightning smote the
utmost part of that threatening encampment.
One must be sorry for men whose impotent
anger has to fall on expedients so miserably in-
adequate. Moab defeated by the Amorites sees
them in turn vanquished and scattered by this
host which has suddenly appeared, and to all
ordinary reckoning has no place nor right in the
region. Sad as was the defeat which deprived
Balak of half his land and left his people in pov-
erty, this incursion and its success foreboded
greater trouble. The king was bound to do
something, and, feeling himself unable to fight,
this was his scheme. The utter uselessness of it
from every point of view gives the story a singu-
lar pathos. But the world under Divine provi-
dence cannot be left in a region where supersti-
tion reigns and progress is impossible — simply
that a people like the Moabites may settle again
on their lees, and that others may continue to
enjoy what seem to them to be their rights.
There must be a stirring of human existence, a
new force and new ideas introduced among the
peoples, even at the expense of war and blood-
shed. And our sympathy with Balak fails when
we recollect that Israel had refrained from at-
tacking Moab in its day of weakness, had even
refrained from asking leave to pass through its
impoverished territory. The feelings of the van-
quished had been respected. Perhaps Balak,
with the perversity of a weak man and an incom-
petent prince, resented this as much as anything.
Balaam was now brought into the field of Zo-
phim, or the Watchers, to the " top of Pisgah,"
whence he could see only a part of the camp of
Israel. The Hebrew here as well as in xxii. 41 is
ambiguous. It has even been interpreted as
meaning that on the first occasion part of the
encampment only was in view, and on the second
occasion the whole of it (so Keil in loco). But
the tenor of the narrative corresponds better with
the translation given in the English Version.
The precise spot here called the top of Pisgah
has not been identified. In the opinion of some
the name Pisgah survives in the modern Siag-
hah; but even if it does we are not helped in the
least. Others take Pisgah as meaning simply
" hill," and read " the field of Zophim on the
top of the hill." The latter translation would
obviate the difficulty that in Deut. xxxiv. i it is
said that Moses, when the time of his death ap-
proached, " went up from the plains of Moab
unto Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah that is
over against Jericho." Pisgah may have been
the name of the range; yet again in Numb, xxvii.
12, and Deut. xxxii. 49, Abarim is given as the
name of the range of which Nebo is a peak. We
are led to the conclusion that Pisgah was the
name in general use for a hill-top of some
peculiar form. The root meaning of the word
is difficult to make out. It may at all events be
taken as certain that this top of Pisgah is not the
same as that to which Moses ascended to die.
Balak and his princes had not as yet ventured so
far beyond the Arnon.
At Balaam's request the same arrangements
were made as at Bamoth-Baal. Seven altars
were built, and seven bullocks and seven rams
were offered; and again the diviner withdrew to
some distance to seek omens. This time his
meeting with Jehovah gave him a more emphatic
message. It would seem that with the passing
of the day's incidents the vatic fire in his mind
burned more brightly. Instead of endeavouring
to conciliate Balak he appears to take delight in
the oracle that dashes the hopes of Moab to the
ground. He has looked from the new point of
vision and seen the great future that awaits
Israel. It is vain to expect that the decree of
the Almighty One can be revoked. Balak must
hear all that the spirit of Elohim has given to
the seer.
" Up, Balak, and hear ;
Hearken to me, son of Zippor :
No man is God, that He should lie ;
And no son of man, that He should repent.
Hath He said, and shall He not do it?
And spoken, and shall He not make good?
Behold to bless I have received ;
And He hath blessed and I cannot undo.
He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob,
Nor seen perverseness in Israel.
Jehovah his God is with him ;
And the shout of a King is with him.
God brings them forth from Egypt :
Like the horns of the wild ox are his.
Surelj' no snake-craft is in Jacob,
And no enchantment with Israel.
At the time it shall be .said of Jacob and Israel
What hath God wrought. >
Behold the people as a lioness arises,
And as a lion lifts himself up ;
He shall not lie down till he eat the prey,
And drink the blood of the slain."
The confirmation of the first oracle by what Ba-
laam has realised on his second approach to Je-
hovah compels the question which rebukes the
king's vain desire. " Hath He said, and shall
He not do it? " Balak did not know Jehovah
as Balaam knew Him. This God never went
back from His decision, nor recalled His
promises. And He is able to do whatever He
wills. Not only does He refuse to curse Israel,
but He has given a blessing which Balaam even,
powerful as he is, cannot possibly hinder. It
has become manifest that the judgment of God
on His people's conduct is in no respect adverse.
Reviewing their past, the diviner may have found
such failure from the covenant as would give
460
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
cause for a decision against them, partial at least,
if not general. But there is no excuse for sup-
posing that Jehovah has turned against the tribes.
Their recent successes and present position are
proofs of His favour unrevoked, and, it would
seem, irrevocable. There is a King w^ith this
people, and when they advance it is with a shout
in His honour. The King is Jehovah their God;
mightier far than Balak or any ruler of the
nations. When the loud Hallelujah rose from
the multitude at some sacred feast, it was indeed
the shout of a monarch.
Singular is it to find a diviner like Balaam not-
ing as one of the great distinctions of Israel that
the nation used neither augury nor divination.
The hollowness of his own arts in presence of
the God of Israel who could not be moved by
them, who gave His people hope without them,
would seem to have impressed Balaam pro-
foundly. He speaks almost as if in contempt of
the devices he himself employs. Indeed, he sees
that his art is not art at all, as regards Israel.
The Hebrews trust no omens; and either for or
against them omens give no sign. It was an-
other mark of the separateness of Israel. Je-
hovah had fenced His people from the spells of
the magician. True to Him, they could defy all
the sorcery of the East. And when the time for
further endeavour came, the nations around
should have to hear of the God who had brought
the Hebrew tribes out of Egypt. With a lion-
like vigour they would rise from their lair by the
Jordan. The Canaanites and Amorites beyond
should be their prey. Already perhaps tidings
had come of the defeat of Bashan: the cities
on the other side of Jordan should fall in their
turn.
As yet there is nothing in the predictions of
Balaam that can be said to point distinctly to any
future event in Israel's history. The oracles are
of that general kind which might be expected
from a man of the world who has given attention
to the signs of the times and perceived the value
to a people of strong and original faith. But
taking them in this sense they may well rebuke
that modern disbelief which denies the inspiring
power of religion and the striking facts which
come to light not only in the history of nations
like Israel but in the lives of men whose vigour
springs from religious zeal. Balaam saw what
any whose eyes are open will also see, that when
the shout of the Heavenly King is among a peo-
ple, when they serve a Divine Master, holy, just,
and true, they have a standing ground and an
outlook not otherwise to be reached. The critics
of religion who take it to be a mere heat of the
blood, a transient emotion, forget that the grasp
of great and generous principles, and the thought
of an Eternal Will to be served, give a sense of
right and freedom which expediency and self-
pleasing cannot supply. However man comes
to be what he is, this is certain, that for him
strength depends not so much on bodily physique
as on the soul, and for the soul on religious in-
spiration. The enthusiasm of pleasure-seeking
has never yet made a band of men indomitable,
nor need it be expected to give greatness; we
cannot persuade ourselves that apart from God
our blessedness is a matter of surpassing impor-
tance. We are a multitude whose individual
lives are very small, very short, very insignifi-
cant, unless they are known to serve some Di-
vine end.
It has been seen by one philosopher that if the
religious sanction be taken away from morality
some other must be provided to fill up the
vacuum. Further, it may be said that if the re-
ligious support and stimulus of human energy
be withdrawn there will be a greater vacuum
more difficult to fill. The would-be benefactors
of our race, who think that the superstition of a
personal God is effete and should be swept away
as soon as possible, so that man may return to
nature, might do well to return to Balaam. He
had a penetration which they do not possess.
And singularly, the very apostle of that imper-
sonal " stream of tendency making for righteous-
ness," which was once to be put in the place of
God, did on one occasion unwittingly remind us
of this prophet. Mr. Matthew Arnold had a
difficult thing to do when he tried to encourage
a toiling population to go on toiling without
hope, to plod on in the underground while a
select few above enjoyed the sunlight. The part
was that of a diviner finding auguries for the in-
evitable. But he spoke as one who had to pity
a poor blind Israel, no longer inspired by the
shout of a king or the hope of a promised land,
an Israel that had lost its faith and its way and
seemed about to perish in the desert. Well did
he know how difficult it is for men under this
dread to endure patiently when those above have
abolished God and the future life; men, who are
disposed to say, yet must be told that they say
vainly, " If there is nothing but this life, we must
have it. Let us help ourselves, whenever we can,
to all we desire." Was that Israel to be blessed
or cursed? There was no oracle. Yet the cul-
tured Balak, hoping for a spell at least against
the revolutionaries, had a rebuke. The prophet
did not curse; he had no power to bless. But
Moab was shown to be in peril, was warned to
be generous.
Balaams enough there are, after a sort, with
more or less penetration and sincerity. But
what the peoples need is a Moses to revive their
faith. The hollow maledictions and blessings
that are now launched incessantly from valley to
hill, from hill to valley, would be silenced if we
found the leader who can re-awaken faith. It
would be superfluous, then, for the race in its
fresh hope to bless itself, and vain for the pessi-
mists to curse it. With the ensign of Divine
love leading the way, and the new heavens and
earth in view, all men would be assured and
hopeful, patient in suffering, fearless in death.
The second oracle produced in the mind of
Balak an effect of bewilderment, not of com-
plete discomfiture. He appears to be caught so
far in the afflatus that he must hear all the
prophet has to tell. He desires Balaam neither
to curse nor bless; neutrality would be some-
thing. Yet, with all he has already heard giving
clear indication what more is to be expected, he
proposes another place, another trial of the au-
guries. This time the whole of Israel shall
again be seen. The top of Peor that looketh
down upon Jeshimon, or the desert, is chosen.
On this occasion when the altars and sacrifices
are prepared the order is not the same as before.
The diviner does not retire to a distance to seek
for omens. He makes no profession of mystery
now. The temperature of thought and feeling is
high, for the spot on which the company gathers
is almost within range of the sentinels of Israel.
The adventure is surely one of the strangest
which the East ever witnessed. In the dramatic
Numbersxxiv. lo-xxv. i8.] THE MATTER OF BAAL-PEOR.
461
unfolding of it the actors and spectators are alike
absorbed.
The third prophetic chant repeats several of
the expressions contained in the second, and adds
little; but it is more poetical in form. The
prophet standing on the height saw " immedi-
ately below him the vast encampment of Israel
amongst the acacia groves of Abel Shittim — like
the water-courses of the mountains, like the
hanging gardens beside his own river Euphrates,
with their aromatic shrubs and their wide-
spreading cedars. Beyond them on the western
side of Jordan rose the hills of Palestine, with
glimpses through their valleys of ancient cities
towering on their crested heights. And beyond
all, though he could not see it with his bodily
vision, he knew well that there rolled the deep
waters of the great sea, with the Isles of Greece,
the Isle of Chittim — a world of which the first
beginnings of life were just stirring, of which the
very name here first breaks upon our ears."
From the deep meditation which passed into a
trance the diviner awoke to gaze for a little upon
that scene, to look fixedly once more on the
camp of the Hebrew tribes, and then he began:
" Balaam the son of Beor saith,
And the man whose eye was closed saith :
He saith who heareth the words of El,
Who seeth the vision of Shaddai,
Falling down and having his eyes opened."
Thus in the consciousness of an exalted state of
mind which has come with unusual symptoms,
the ecstasy that overpowers and brings visions
before the inward eye, he vaunts his inspiration.
There is no small resemblance to the manner in
which the afiflatus came to seers of Israel in after-
times; yet the description points more distinctly
to the rapture of one like King Saul, who has
been swept by some temporary enthusiasm into
a strain of thought, an emotional atmosphere, be-
yond ordinary experience. The far-reaching
encampment is first poetically described, with
images that point to perennial vitality and
strength. Then as a settled nation Israel is de-
scribed, irrigating broad fields and sowing them
to reap an abundant harvest. Why comparison
is made between the power of Israel and Agag
one can only guess. Perhaps the reigning chief
of the Amalekites was at this time distinguished
by the splendour of his court, so that his name
was a type of regal magnificence. The images of
the wild ox and the lion are repeated with addi-
tional emphasis; and the strain rises to its climax
in the closing apostrophe:
" Blessed be every one that blesseth thee
And cursed be every one that curseth thee."
So Strongly is Israel established in the favour
of Shaddai, the Almighty One, that attempts to
injure her will surely recoil on the head of the
aggressor. And on the other hand, to help
Israel, to bid her God-speed, will be a way to
blessedness. Jehovah will make the overflowing
of His grace descend like rain on those who take
Israel's part and cheer her on her way.
In the light of what afterwards took place, it
is clear that Balaam was in this last ejaculation
carried far beyond himself. He may have seen
for a moment, in the flash of a heavenly light,
the high distinction to which Israel was advanc-
ing. He certainly felt that to curse her would be
perilous, to bless her meritorious. But the
thought, like others of a more spiritual nature,
30— Vol. I.
did not enter deeply into his mind. Balaam
could utter it with a kind of strenuous cordiality,
and then do his utmost to falsify his own pre-
diction. What matter fine emotions and noble
protestations if they are only momentary and
superficial? Balak's open jealousy and hatred of
Israel were, after all, more complimentary to
her than the high-sounding praises of Balaam,
who spoke as enjoyjng the elation of the prophet,
not as delighting in the tenor of his message.
Israel was nothing to him. Soon the prosperity
to which she was destined became like gall and
wormwood to his soul. The encampment roused
his admiration at the time, but afterwards, when
it became clear that the Israelites would have
none of him, his mood changed towards them.
Ambition ruled him to the end; and if the He-
brews did not olTer in any way to minister to it,
a man like Balaam would by-and-by set himself
to bring down their pride. Weak humanity
gives many examples of this. The man who has
been an expectant flatterer of one greater than
himself, but is denied the notice and honour he
looks for, becomes, when his hopes have finally
to be renounced, the most savage assailant, the
most bitter detractor of his former hero. And so
strong often are the minds which fall in this
manner, that we look sometimes with anxiety
even to the highest.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE MATTER OF BAAL-PEOR.
Numbers xxiv. lo-xxv. 18.
The last oracle of Balaam, as we have it, ven-
tures into far more explicit predictions than the
others, and passes beyond the range of Hebrew
history. Its chief value for the Israelites lay in
what was taken to be a Messianic prophecy con-
tained in it, and various bold denunciations of
their enemies. Whether the language can bear
the important meanings thus found in it is a
matter of considerable doubt. On the whole, it
appears best not to make over-much of the pres-
cience of this mashal, especially as we cannot be
sure that we have it in the original form. One
fact may be given to prove this. In Jeremiah
xlviii. 45, an oracle regarding Moab embodies
various fragments of the Book of Numbers,
and one clause seems to be a quotation from
chap. xxiv. 17. In Numbers the reading is,
"and break down r^pliiTI, all the sons of tu-
muh ptJfJ ;" in Jeremiah it is, " and the crown
of the head nfj']i^1"l of the sons of tumult [liNt^T "
The resemblance leaves little doubt of thp deri-
vation of the one expression from the other, and
at the same time shows diversity in the text.
The earlier deliverances of Balaam had disap-
pointed the king of Moab; the third kindled his
anger. It was intolerable that one called to
curse his enemies should bless them again and
again. Balaam would do well to get him back
to his own place. That Jehovah of whom he
spake had kept him from honour. If he de-
layed he might find himself in peril. But the
diviner did not retire. The word that had come
to him should be spoken. He reminded Balak
of the terms on which he had begun his auguries,
and, perhaps to embitter Moab against Israel,
462
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
persisted in advertising Balak " what this people
should do to his people in the latter days."
The opening was again a vaunt of his high
authority as a seer, one who knew the knowl-
edge of Shaddai. Then, with ambiguous forms
of speech covering the indistinctness of his out-
look, he spoke of one whom he saw far away,
in imagination, not reality, a personage bright
and powerful, who should rise star-like out of
Jacob, bearing the sceptre of Israel, who should
smite through the corners of Moab and break
down the sons of tumult. Over Edom and Seir
he should triumph, and his dominion should ex-
tend to the city which had become the last refuge
of a hostile people. Of spiritual power and right
there is not a trace in this prediction. It is un-
questionably the military vigour of Israel gath-
ered up into the headship of some powerful king
Balaam sees on the horizon of his field of view.
But he anticipates with no uncertainty that Moab
shall be attacked and broken, and that the vic-
torious leader shall even penetrate to the fast-
nesses of Edom and reduce them. A people like
Israel, with so great vitality, would not be con-
tent to have jealous enemies upon its very bor-
ders, and Balak is urged to regard them with
more hatred and fear than he has yet shown.
The view that this prophecy " finds its pre-
liminary fulfilment in David, in whom the king-
dom was established, and by whose victories the
power of Moab and Edom was broken, but its
final and complete fulfilment only in Christ," is
supported by the unanimous belief of the Jews,
and has been adopted by the Christian Church.
Yet it must be allowed that the victories of
David did not break the power of Moab and
Edom, for these peoples are found again and
again, after his time, in hostile attitude to Israel.
And it is not to the purpose to say that in Christ
the kingdom reaches perfection, that He de-
stroys the enemies of Israel. Nor is there an
argument for the Messianic reference worth
considering in the fact that the pseudo-Messiah
in the reign of Hadrian styled himself Bar-
cochba, son of the star. A pretender to Messiah-
ship might snatch at any title likely to secure
for him popular support; his choice of a name
prr>,os only the common belief of the Jews, and
tlial was very ignorant, very far from spiritual.
There is indeed more force in the notion that the
star by which the wise men of the East were
guided to Bethlehem is somehow related to this
prophecy. Yet that also is too imaginative.
The oracle of Balaam refers to the virility and
prospective dominance of Israel, as a nation fav-
oured by the Almighty and destined to be
strong in battle. The range of the prediction is
not nearly wide enough for any true anticipation
of a Messiah gaining universal sway by virtue
of redeeming love. It is becoming more and
more necessary to set aside those interpretations
which identify the Saviour of the world with one
who smites and breaks down and destroys, who
wields a sceptre after the manner of Oriental
despots.
In Balaam's vision small nations with which
he happens to be acquainted bulk largely — the
Kenites, Amalek, Moab, and Edom. To him
the Amalekites appear as having once been " the
first of the nations." We may explain, as before,
that he had been impressed on some occasion by
what he had seen of their force and the royal
state of their king. The Kenites, dwelling
either among the cliffs of Engedi or the moun-
tains of Galilee, were a very small tribe; and the
Amalekites, as well as the people of Moab and
Edom, were of little account in the development
of human history. At the same time the
prophecy looks in one direction to a power des-
tined to become very great, when it speaks of the
ships of Chittim. The course of empire is seen
to be westward. Asshur, or Assyria, and Eber —
the whole Abrahamic race, perhaps, including
Israel — are threatened by this rising power, the
nearest point of which is Cyprus in the Great
Sea. Balaam is, we may say, a political prophet:
to class him among those who testified of Christ
is to exalt far too much his inspiration and read
more into his oracles than they naturally contain.
There is no deep problem in the narrative re-
garding him — as, for instance, how a man false
at heart could in any sense enter into those gra-
cious purposes of God for the human race which
were fulfilled by Christ.
Balaam, we are told, " rose up and returned to
his own place "; and from this it would seem that
with bitterness in his heart he betook himself to
Pethor. If he did so, vainly hoping still that
Israel would appeal to him, he soon returned to
give Balak and the Midianites advice of the
most nefarious kind. We learn from xxxi. 16,
that through his counsel the Midianite women
caused the children of Israel to commit trespass
against Jehovah in the matter of Peor. The
statement is a link between chaps, xxiv. and xxv.
Vainly had Balaam as a diviner matched himself
against the God of Israel. Resenting his defeat,
he sought and found another way which the cus-
toms of his own people in their obscure idola-
trous rites too readily suggested. The moral
law of Jehovah and the comparative purity of the
Israelites as His people kept them separate from
the other nations, gave them dignity and vigour.
To break down this defence would make them
like the rest, would withdraw them from the
favour of their God and even defeat His pur-
poses. The scheme was one which only the vilest
craft could have conceived; and it shows us too
plainly the real character of Balaam. He must
have known the power of the allurements which
he now advised as the means of attack on those
he could not touch with his maledictions nor
gain by his soothsaying. In the shadow of this
scheme of his we see the diviner and all his tribe,
and indeed the whole morality of the region, at
their very worst.
The tribes were still in the plain of Jordan; and
we may suppose that the victorious troops had
returned from the campaign against Bashan.
when a band of Midianites, professing the
utmost friendliness, gradually introduced them-
selves into the camp. Then began the tempta-
tion to which the Midianitish women, some of
them of high rank, willingly devoted themselves.
It was to impurity and idolatry, to degradation
of manhood in body and soul, to abjuration at
once of faith. and of all that makes individual and
social life. The orgies with which the Midianites
were familiar belonged to the dark side of a
nature-cultus which carried the distinction be-
tween male and female into religious symbolism.
and made abject prostration of life before the
Divinity a crowning act of worship. Surviving
still, the same practices are in India and else-
where the most dreadful and inveterate barriers
which the Gospel and Christian civilisation en-
counter. The Israelites were assailed unexpect-
Numbersxxiv.io-xxv.i8] THE MATTER OF BAAL-PEOR.
463
edly, it would appear, and in a time of compara-
tive inaction. Possibly, also, the camp was
composed to some extent of men whose families
were still in Kadesh waiting the conquest of the
land of Canaan to cross the border. But the
fact need not be concealed that the polygamy
which prevailed among the Hebrews was an ele-
ment in their danger. That had not been for-
bidden by the law; it was even countenanced by
the example of Moses. The custom, indeed,
was one which at the stage of development Israel
had reached implied some progress; for there are
conditions even worse than polygamy against
which it was a protest and safeguard. But like
every other custom falling short of the ideal of
the family, it was one of great peril; and now
disaster came. The Midianites brought their
sacrifices and slew them; the festival of Baal-
peor was proclaimed. " The people did eat and
bowed down to their gods." It was a transgres-
sion which demanded swift and terrible judg-
ment. The chief men of the tribes who had
joined in the abominable rites were taken and
"hanged up before the Lord against the sun";
the " judges of Israel " were commanded to slay
" every one his men that were joined unto Baal-
peor."
The narrative of the " Priests' Code," begin-
ning at ver. 6, and going on to the close of the
chapter, adds details of the sin and its punish-
ment. Assuming that the row of stakes with
their ghastly burden is in full view, and the dead
bodies of those slain by the executioners are
lying about the camp, this narrative shows the
people gathered at the tent of meeting, many of
them in tears. There is a plague, too, which is
rapidly spreading and carrying off the trans-
gressors. In the midst of the sorrow and wail-
ing, when the chief men should have been bowed
down in repentance, one of the princes of Simeon
is seen leading by the hand his Midianitish para-
mour, herself a chief's daughter. In the very
sight of Moses and the people the guilty persons
enter a tent. Then Phinehas, son of Eleazar the
priest, following them, inflicts with a javelin the
punishment of death. It is a daring but a true
deed; and for it Phinehas and his seed after him
are promised the " covenant of peace," even the
" covenant of an everlasting priesthood." His
swift stroke has vindicated the honour of God,
and " made an atonement for the children of
Israel." An act like this, when the elemental
laws of morality are imperilled and a whole
people needs a swift and impressive lesson, is a
tribute to God which He will reward and remem-
ber. True, one of the priestly house should keep
aloof from death. But the emergency demands
immediate action, and he who is bold enough to
strike at once is the true friend of men and of
God.
The question may be put. whether this is not
justice of too rude and ready a kind to be praised
in the name of religion. To some it may seem
that the honour of God could not be served by
the deed attributed to Phinehas; that he acted in
passion rather than in the calm deliberation with-
out which justice cannot be dealt out by man to
man. Would not this excuse the passionate
action of a crowd, impatient of the forms of law,
that hurries an offender to the nearest tree or
lamp-post? And the answer cannot be that
Israel was so peculiarly imder covenant to God
that its necessity would exonerate a deed other-
wise illegal. We must face the whole problem
alike of personal and of united action for the vin-
dication of righteousness in times of widespread
license.
It is not necessary now to slay an offender in
order clearly and emphatically to condemn his
crime. In that respect modern circumstances
differ from those we are discussing. Upon
Israel, as it was at the time of this tragedy, no
impression could have been made deep and swift
enough for the occasion other\*ise than by the
act of Phinehas. But for an offender of the
same rank now, there is' a punishment as stern as
death, and on the popular mind it produces a
far greater effect — publicity, and the reprobation
of all who love their fellowmen and God. The
act of Phinehas was not assassination; a similar
act now would be, and it would have to be dealt
with as a crime. The stroke now is inflicted by
public accusation, which results in public trial
and public condemnation. From the time to
which the narrative refers, on to our own day,
social conditions have been passing through
many phases. Occasionally there have been cir-
curnstances in which the swift judgment of
righteous indignation was justifiable, though it
did seem like assassination. And in no case
has such action been more excusable than when
the purity of family life has been invaded, while
the law of the land would not interfere. We do
not greatly wonder that in France the avenging
of infidelity is condoned when the sufferer
snatches a justice otherwise unattainable. That
is not indeed to be praised, but the imperfection
of law is a partial apology. The higher the
standard of public morality the less needful is
this venture on the Divine right to kill. And
certainly it is not private revenge that is ever to
be sought, but the vindication of the elemental
righteousness on which the well-being of hu-
manity depends. Phinehas had no private re-
venge to seek. It was the public good.
It is confidently affirmed by Wellhausen that
the " Priestly Code " makes the cultus the prin-
cipal thing, and this, he says, implies retrogres-
sion from the earlier idea. The passage we are
considering, like many others ascribed to the
" Priests' Code," makes something else than the
cultus the principal thing. We are told that in
the teaching of this code " the bond between
cultus and sensuality is severed; no danger can
arise of an admixture of impure, immoral ele-
ments, a danger which was always present in He-
brew antiquity." But here the danger is ad-
mitted, the cultus is entirely out of sight, and the
sin of sensuality is conspicuous. When Phine-
has intervenes, moreover, it is not in harmony
with any statute or principle laid down in the
" Priests' Code " — rather, indeed, against its
general spirit, which would prohibit an Aaronite
from a deed of blood. According to the whole
tenor of the law the priesthood had its duties,
carefully prescribed, by doing which faithfulness
was to be shown. Here an act of spontaneous
zeal, done not " on the positive command of a
will outside," but on the impulse arising out of
a fresh occasion,* receives the approval of Je-
hovah, and the " covenant of an everlasting
priesthood " is confirmed for the sake of it.
Was Phinehas in any sense carrying out statutory
instructions for atonement on behalf of Israel
when he inflicted the punishment of death on
Zimri and his paramour? To identify the
* Wellhausen, " Prolegomena," p. 424.
464
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
" Priestly Code " with " cultus legislation," and
that with theocracy, and then declare the cultus
to have become a " pedagogic instrument of dis-
cipline," " estranged from the heart," is to make
large demands on our inattention.
In the closing verses of the chapter another
question of a moral nature is involved. It is
recorded that after the events we have considered
Jehovah spake ?unto Moses, saying, " Vex the
Midianites, and smite them; for they vex you
with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled
you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of
Cozbi, the daughter of the prince of Midian,
their sister, which was slain on the day of the
plague in the matter of Peor." Now is it for
the sake of themselves and their own safety the
Israelites are to smite Midian? Is retaliation
commanded? Does God set enmity between the
one people and the other, and so doing make
confession that Israel has no duty of forgiveness,
no mission to convert and save?
There is difficulty in pronouncing judgment as
to the point of view taken by the narrator.
Some will maintain that the historian here, who-
ever he was, had no higher conception of the
command than that it was one which sanctioned
revenge. And there is nothing on the face of
the narrative which can be brought forward to
disprove the charge. Yet it must be remem-
bered that the history proceeds on the theocratic
conception of Israel's place and destiny. To the
writer Israel is of less account in itself than as a
people rescued from Egypt and called to nation-
ality in order to serve Jehovah. The whole tenor
of the " Priests' Code " narrative, as well as of
the other, bears this out. There is no patriotic
zeal in the narrow sense, — " My country right or
wrong." Scarcely a passage can be pointed to
implying such a sentiment, such a drift of
thought. The underlying idea in the whole story
is the sacredness of morality, not of Israel; and
the suppression or extinction of this tribe of
Midianites with their obscene idolatry is God's
will, not Israel's. Too plain, indeed, is it that
the Israelites would have preferred to leave
Midian and other tribes of the same low moral
cast unmolested, free to pursue their own ends.
And Jehovah is not revengeful, but just. The
vindication of morality at the time the Book of
Numbers deals with, and long afterwards, could
only be through the suppression of those who
Were identified with dangerous forms of vice.
The forces at command in Israel were not equal
to the task of converting; and what could be
achieved was commanded — opposition, enmity;
if need were, exterminating war. The better
people has a certain spiritual capacity, but not
enough to make it fit for what may be called
moral missionary work. It would suffer more
than it would gain if it entered on any kind of
intercourse with Midian with the view of rais-
ing the standard of thought and life. All that
can be expected meanwhile is that the Israelites
shall be at issue with a people so degraded; they
are to be against the Midianites, keep them from
power in the world, subject them by the sword.
Our judgment, then, is that the narrative sus-
tains a true theocracy in this sense, exhibits
Israel as a unique phenomenon in human history,
not impossible, — there lies the clear veracity of
the Bible accounts, — but playing a part such as
the times allowed, such as the world required.
From a passage like that now before us, and the
sequel, the war with Midian, which some have
regarded as a blot on the pages of Scripture, an
argument for its inspiration may be drawn. We
find here no ethical anachronisms, no imprac-
ticable ideas of charity and pardon. There is a
sane and strenuous moral aim, not out of keep-
ing with the state of things in the world of that
time, yet showing the rule and presenting the
will of a God who makes Israel a protesting
people. The Hebrews are men, not angels; men
of the old world, not Christians — true! Who
could have received this history if it had repre-
sented them as Christians, and shown us God
giving them commands fit for the Church of to-
day? They are called to a higher morality than
that of Egypt, for theirs is to be spiritual; higher
than that of Chaldea or of Canaan, for Chaldea
is shrouded in superstition, Canaan in obscene
idolatry. They can do something; and what
they can do Jehovah commands them to do.
And He is not an imperfect God because His
prophet does not give from the first a perfect
Christian law, a redeeming gospel. He is the
" I Am." Let the whole course of Old Testa-
ment development be traced, and the sanity and
coherency of the theocratic idea as it is pre-
sented in law and prophecy, psalm and parable,
cannot fail to convince any just and frank
inquirer.
The end of Balaam's life may be glanced at
before the pages close that refer to his career.
In xxxi. 8, it is stated that in the battle which
went against the Midianites Balaam was slain.
We do not know whether he was so maddened
by his disappointment as to take the sword
against Jehovah and Israel, or whether he only
joined the army of Midian in his capacity of
augur. F. W. Robertson imagines " the insane
frenzy with which he would rush into the field,
and finding all go against him, and that lost for
which he had bartered heaven, after having died
a thousand worse than deaths, find death at last
upon the spears of the Israelites." It is of
course possible to imagine that he became the
victim of his own insane passion. But Balaam
never had a profound nature, was never more
than within sight of the spiritual world. He ap-
pears as the calculating, ambitious man, who
would reckon his chances to the last, and with
coolness, and what he believed to be sagacity,
decide on the next thing to attempt. But his
penetration failed him, as at a certain point it
fails all men of his kind. He ventured too far,
and could not draw back to safety.
The death he died was almost too honourable
for this false prophet, unless, indeed, he fell flee-
ing like a coward from the battle. One who had
recognised the power of a higher faith than his
country professed, and saw a riation on the way
to the vigour that faith inspired, who in personal
spleen and envy set in operation a scheme of the
very worst sort to ruin Israel, was not an enemy
worth the edge of the sword. Let us suppose
that a Hebrew soldier found him in flight, and
with a passing stroke brought him to the ground.
There is no tragedy in such a death; it is too
ignominious. Whatever Balaam was in his boy-
hood, whatever he might have been when the
cry escaped him, " Let me die the death of the
righteous," selfish craft had brought him below
the level of the manhood of the time. Balak
with his pathetic faith in cursing and incantation
now seems a prince beside the augur. For Ba-
Numbers xxvi., xxvii
A NE^
rENERATION.
465
laam, though he knew Jehovah after a manner,
had no religion, had only the envy of the religion
of others. He came on the stage with an air that
almost deceived Balak and has deceived many.
He leaves it without one to lament him. Or
shall we rather suppose that even for him, in
Pethor beyond^ the Euphrates, a wife or child
waited and prayed to Sutekh and, when the tid-
ings of his death were brought, fell into incon-
solable weeping? Over the worst they think and
do men draw the veil to hide it from some eyes.
And Balaam, a poor, mean tool of the basest
cravings, may have had one to believe in him,
one to love him. He reminds us of Absalom in
his character and actions — Absalom, a man void
of religion and morals; and for him the father
he had dethroned and dishonoured wept bitterly
in the chamber over the gate of Mahanaim, " My
son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O
Absalom, my son, my son!" So may some
woman in Pethor have wailed for Balaam fallen
under the spear of a Hebrew warrior.
CHAPTER XXII.
A NEW GENERATION.
Numbers xxvi., xxvii.
The numbering at Sinai before the sojourn in
the Desert of Paran has its counterpart in the
numbering now recorded. In either case those
reckoned are the men able to go forth to war,
from twenty years old and upward. Once, an
easy entrance into the land of promise may have
been expected; but that dream has long passed
away. Now the Israelites are made clearly to
understand that the last efifort will require the
whole warlike energy they can summon, the
best courage of every one who can handle sword
or spear. There has been hitherto comparatively
little fighting. The Amalekites at an early stage,
afterwards the Amorites and the Bashanites,
have had to be attacked. Now, however, the
serious strife is to begin. Peoples long estab-
lished in Canaan have to be assailed and dis-
possessed. Let the number of capable men be
reckoned that there may be confidence for the
advance.
Nothing is to be won without energy, courage,
unity, wise preparation and adjustment of means
to ends. True, the battle is the Lord's and He
can give victory to the few over the many, to
the feeble over the strong. But not even in the
case of Israel are the ordinary laws suspended.
This people has an advantage in its faith. That
is enough to support the army in the coming
struggle; and the Israelites must make Canaan
theirs by force of arms. For, surely, in a sense,
there is right on the other side, the right of prior
possession at least. The Canaanites, Hittites,
Jebusites, Hivites have tilled the land, planted
vineyards, built cities, and fulfilled, so far, their
mission in the world. They, indeed, never
feel themselves secure. Often one tribe falls on
the territory of another, and takes possession.
The right to the soil has to be continually
guarded by military power and courage. It is
not wonderful to Amorites that another race
should attempt the conquest of their land. But
it would be strange, humanly speaking impos-
sible, that a weaker, less capable people should
master those who are presently in occupation.
By the great laws that govern human develop-
ment, the dominant laws of God we may call
them, this could not be. Israel must show itself
powerful, must prove the right of might, other-
wise it shall not even yet obtain the inheritance
It has long been desiring. The might of some
nations is purely that of animal physique and
dogged determination. Others rise higher in
virtue of their intellectual vigour, splendid dis-
cipline, and ingenious appliances. Man for man,
Israelites should be a match for any people, be-
cause there is trust in Jehovah, and hope in His
promise. Now the trial of battle is to be made;
the Hebrews are to realise that they will need all
their strength.
Do we ever imagine that the law of endeavour
shall be relaxed for us, either in the physical or
in the spiritual region? Is it supposed that at
some point, when after struggling through the
wilderness we have but a narrow stream between
us and the coveted inheritance, the object of our
desire shall be bestowed in harmony with some
other law, having <)een procured by other efforts
than our own? Thinking so, we only dream.
What we gain by our endeavour — ^physical, in-
tellectual, spiritual — can alone become a real pos-
session. The future discipline of humanity is
misunderstood, the forecast is altogether wrong,
when this is not comprehended. In this world
we have that for which we labour; nothing more.
So-called properties and domains do not belong
to their nominal owners, who have merely " in-
herited." The literature of a country does not
belong to those who possess books in which it
is contained; it is the domain of men and women
who have toiled for every ell and inch of ground.
And spiritually, while all is the gift of God, all
has to be won by eflforts of the soul. Before
humanity lies a Canaan, a Paradise. But no
easy way of acquisition shall ever be found, no
other way indeed than has all along been fol-
lowed. The men of God able to go forth to war
need to be numbered and brought under disci-
pline for the conquests that remain. And what
is yet to be won by moral courage and devotion
to the highest shall have to be kept in like
manner.
The second numbering of the people showed
that a new generation filled the ranks. Plagues
that swept away thousands, or the slow, sure
election of death, had taken all who left Egypt
excepting a few. It was the same Israel, yet
another. Is, then, the nation of account, and
not the individuals who compose it? Perhaps
the two numberings may be intended to guard
us against this error; at all events, we may take
them so. Man by man, the host was reckoned at
Sinai; man by man it is reckoned again in the
plains of Moab. There were six hundred and
three thousand five hundred and fifty: there are
six hundred and one thousand seven hundred
and thirty. The numberings by the command of
Jehovah could not but mean that His eye was
upon each. And when the new race looked back
along the wilderness way, each group remember-
ing its own graves over which the sand of the
desert was blown, there might at least be the
thought that God also remembered, and that the
mouldering dust of those who, despite their
transgression, had been brave and loving and
honest, was in His keeping. Israel was experi-
encing a singular break in its history. It would
begin its new career in Canaan without me-
morials, except that cave at Machpelah where,
466
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
centuries before, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and
Jacob, had been buried, and the field at Shechem
where the body of Joseph was laid. No graves
but these would be the monuments of Israel. In
Jehovah, the Ancient of Days, lay the history,
with Him the career of the tribes.
The past receding, the future advancing, and
God the sole abiding link between them. For
us, as for Israel, notwithstanding all our care of
the monuments and gains of the past, that is the
one sustaining faith: and it is adequate, inspiring.
The swift decay of life, the constant flux of hu-
manity, would be our despair if we had not God.
" Thou carriest them away as with a flood ; they are as a
sleep :
In the morning they are like grass which groweth up,
In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up ;
In the evening it is cut down and witheretli."
So the " Prayer of Moses the man of God,"
under the saddening thought of mortality. But
God is " from everlasting to everlasting," " the
dwelling place of His people in all generations."
The life that begins in the Divine will, and en-
joys its day under the Divine care, blends with
the current, yet is not absorbed. A generation
or a people lives only as the men and women
that compose it live. Such is the final judgment,
Christ's judgment, by which all providence is to
be interpreted. An Israelite might enter much
into the national hope, and to some extent for-
get himself for the sake of it. But his proper
life was never in that forgetfulness: it was always
in personal energy of will and soul that con-
tributed to the nation's strength and progress.
The tribes, Reuben, Simeon, Judah, and the rest,
are mustered. But the men make the tribes,
give them quality, value; or rather, of the men,
those who are brave, faithful, and true.
That each life is a fact in the Eternal overflow-
ing Life, conscious of all — in this there is com-
fort for us who are numbered among the mil-
lions, with no particular claim to reminiscence,
and aware, at any rate, that when a few years
pass the world will forget us. In vain the most
of us seek a niche in the Valhalla of the race, or
the record of a single line in the history of our
time. Whatever our sufifering or achieving, are
we not doomed to oblivion? The grave-yard
will keep our dust, the memorial stone will pre-
serve our names — but for how long? Until in
the evolutions that are to come the ploughshare
of a covetous age tears up the soil we imagine to
be consecrated for ever. But there is a memory
that does not grow old, in which for good or evil
we are enshrined. " We all live unto God."
The Divine consciousness of us is our strength
and hope. It alone keeps the soul from despair
— or, if the life has not been in faith, stings with
a desperate reassurance. Does God remember
us with the love He beareth to His own? In
any case each human life is held in an abiding
consciousness, a purpose which is eternal.
The page of Israel's history we are reading
preserves many names. It is in outline a
genealogy of the tribes. Reuben's sons are
Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, Carmi. The son of
Pallu is Eliab. The sons of Eliab are Nemuel,
Dathan, and Abiram. And of Dathan and
Abiram we are reminded that tfiey strove against
Moses and Aaron in the company of Korah;
and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed
them up. The judgment of evildoers is com-
memorated. The rest have their praise in
this alone, that they held aloof from the sin.
Turn to other tribes, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali,
for instance, and in the case of each the
names of those who were heads of families
are given. In the First Book of Chronicles
the genealogy is extended, with various de-
tails of settlement and history. In what
are we to find the explanation of this attempt
to preserve the lineage of families, and the
ancestral names? If the progenitors were great
men distinguished by heroism, or by faith, the
pride of the descendants might have a show of
reason. Or again, if the families had kept the
pure Hebrew descent we should be able to under-
stand. But no greatness is assigned to the heads
of families, not a single mark of achievement or
distinction. x\nd the Israelites did not preserve
their purity of race. In Canaan, as we learn
from the Book of Judges, they " dwelt among
the Canaanites, the Hittite, and the Amorite, and
the Periz.^ite. and the Hivite, and the Jebusite:
and they took their daughters to be their wives
and gave their own daughters to their sons, and
served their gods " (iii. 5, 6).
The sole reason we can find for these records
is the consciousness of a duty which the Israelites
felt, but did not always perform — to keep them-
selves separate as Jehovah's people. In the
more energetic minds, through all national de-
fection and error, that consciousness survived.
And it served its end. The Bene-Israel, tracing
their descent through the heads of families and
tribes to Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, realised their
distinctness from other races and entered upon
a unique destiny which is not yet fulfilled. It is
a singular testimony to what on the human side
appears as an idea, a sentiment; to what on the
Divine side is a purpose running through the
ages. Because of this human sentiment and this
Divine purpose, the former maintained appar-
ently by the pride of race, by genealogies, by
traditions often singularly unspiritual, but really
by the over-ruling providence of God. Israel be-
came unique, and filled an extraordinary place
among the nations. Many things co-operated to
make her a people regarding whom it could be
said: " Israel never stood quietly by to see the
world badly governed, under the authority of a
God reputed to be just. Her sages burned with
anger over the abuses of the world. A bad
man, dying old, rich, and at ease, kindled their
fury; and the prophets in the ninth century b. c.
elevated this idea to the height of a dogma. . .
The childhood of the elect is full of signs and
prognostics, which are only recognised after-
wards." A race may treasure its ancient records
and venerated names to little purpose, may pre-
serve them with no other result than to mark its
own degenerac}' and failure. Israel did not.
The Unseen King of this people so ordered their
history that greater and still greater names were
added to the rolls of their leaders, heroes, and
prophets, until the Shiloh came.
By the computations that survive, a dimin-
ished yet not greatly diminished number of fight-
ing men was reckoned in the plains of Moab.
Some tribes had fallen away considerably, others
had increased; Simeon notably among the for-
mer, Judah and Manasseh among the latter.
The causes of diminution and increase alike are
purely conjectural. Simeon may have been in-
volved in the sin of Baal-peor more than the
others and suflfered proportionately. Yet we
cannot suppose that, on the whole, character had
Numbers xxvi., xxvii.]
A NEW GENERATION.
467
much to do with numerical strength. Assuming
the transgressions of which the history informs
us and the punishments that followed them, we
must believe that the tribes were on much the
same moral plane. In the natural course of
things there would have been a considerable in-
crease in the numbers of men. The hardships
and judgments of the desert and the defection of
some by the way are general causes of diminu-
tion. We have also seen reason to believe that
a proportion, not perhaps very great, remained
at Kadesh, and did not take the journey round
Edom. It is certainly worthy of notice with re-
gard to Simeon that the final allocation of terri-
tory gave to this tribe the district in which Ka-
desh was situated. The small increase of the
tribe of Levi is another fact shown by the second
census; and we remember that Simeon and Levi
were brethren (Gen. xlix. 5).
The numbering in the plains of Moab is con-
nected in vv. 52-6 with the division of the land
among the tribes. " To the more thou shalt
give the more inheritance, and to the fewer thou
shalt give the less inheritance: to every one ac-
cording to those that were numbered of him
shall his inheritance be given." The principle of
allocation is obvious and just. No doubt the
comparative value of different parts of Canaan
was to be taken into account. There were fertile
plains on the one hand, barren highlands on the
other. These reckoned for, the greater the tribe
the larger was to be the district assigned to it.
An elementary rule; but how has it been set
aside! Vast districts of Great Britain are almost
without inhabitants; others are overcrowded. An
even distribution of people over the land capable
of tillage is necessary to the national health. In
no sense can it be maintained that good comes of
concentrating population in immense cities. But
the policy of proprietors is not more at fault than
the ignorant rush of those who desire the com-
forts and opportunities of town life.
The twenty-seventh chapter is partly occupied
with the details of a case which raised a question
of inheritance. Five daughters of one Zelophe-
had of the tribe of Manasseh appealed to Moses
on the ground that they were the representatives
of the household, having no brother. Were they
to have no possession because they were women?
Was the name of their father to be taken away
because he had no son? It was not to be sup-
pose4 that the want of male descendants had
been a judgment on their father. He had died
in the wilderness, but not as a rebel against Je-
hovah, like those who were in the company of
Korah. He had " died in his own sins." They
petitioned for an inheritance among the breth-
ren of their father.
The claim of these women appears natural if
the right of heirship is acknowledged in any
sense, with this reservation, however, that
women might not be able properly to cultivate
the land, and could not do much in the way of
defending it. And these, for the time, were con-
siderations of no small account. The five sisters
may of course have been ready to undertake all
that was necessary as occupiers of a farm, and no
doubt they reckoned on marriage. But the
original qualification that justified heirship of
land was ability to use the resources of the in-
heritance and take part in all national duties.
The decision in this case marks the beginning of
another couception — that of the pei'sonal devel-
opment of women. The claim of the daughters
of Zelophehad was allowed, with the result that
they found themselves called to the cultivatioh
of mind and life in a manner which would not
otherwise have been open to them. They re-
ceived by the judgment here recorded a new posi-
tion of responsibility as well as privilege. The
law founded on their case must have helped to
make the women of Israel intellectually and
morally vigorous.
The rules of inheritance among an agricultural
people, exposed to hostile incursions, must, like
that of ver. 8, assume the right of sons in prefer-
ence to daughters; but under modern social con-
ditions there are no reasons for any such prefer-
ence, except indeed the sentiment of family, and
the maintenance of titles of rank. But the truth
is that inheritance, so-called, is every year be-
coming of less moral account as compared with
the acquisitions that are made by personal in-
dustry and endeavour. Property is only of
value as it is a means to the enlargement and
fortifying of the individual life. The decision on
behalf of the daughters of Zelophehad was of
importance for what it implied rather than for
what it actually gave. It made possible that dig-
nity and power which we see illustrated in the
career of Deborah, whose position as a " mother
in Israel " does not seem to have depended
much, if at all, on any accident of inheritance; it
was reached by the strength of her character and
the ardour of her faith.
The generation that came from Egypt has
passed away, and now (xxvii. 12) Moses himself
receives his call. He is to ascend the mountain
of Abarim and look forth over the land Israel is
to inhabit; then he is to be gathered to his
people. He is reminded of the sin by which
Aaron and he dishonoured God when they
failed to sanctify Him at the waters of Meribah.
The burden of the Book of Numbers is revealed.
The brooding sadness which lies on the whole
narrative is not cast by human mortality but by
moral transgression and defect. There is judg-
ment for revolt, as of those who followed Korah.
There are men who like Zelophehad die " in
their own sins," filling up the time allowed to
imperfect obedience and faith, the limit of exist-
ence that falls short of the glory of God. And
Moses, whose life is lengthened that his honour-
able task may be fully done, must all the more
conspicuously pay the penalty of his high mis-
demeanour. With the goal of Israel's great des-
tiny in view the narrative moves from shadow to
shadow. Here and throughout, this is a char-
acteristic of Old Testament history. And the
shadows deepen as they rest on lives more capa-
ble of noble service, more guilty in their dis-
belief and defiance of Jehovah.
The rebuke which darkens over Moses at the
close and lies on his grave does not obscure the
greatness of the man; nor have all the criticisms
of the history in which he plays so great a part
overclouded his personality. The opening of
Israel's career may not now seem so marvellous
in a sense as once it seemed, nor so remote from
the ordinary course of Providence. Develop-
ment is found where previously the complete
law, institution, or system appeared to burst at
once into maturity. But the features of a man
look clearly forth on us from the Pentateuchal
narrative; and the story of the life is so coherent
as to compel a belief in its veracity, which at the
468
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
same time is demanded by the circumstances of
Israel. A beginning there must have been, in
the line which the earliest prophets continued,
and that beginning in a single mind, a single will.
The Moses of these books of the exodus is one
who could have unfolded the ideas from which
the nationality of Israel sprang: a man of smaller
mind would have made a people of more ordi-
nary frame. Institutions that grow in the course
of centuries may reflect their perfected form on
the story of their origin; it is, however, certain
this cannot be true of a faith. That does not
develop. What it is at its birth it continues to
be; or, if a change takes place, it will be to the
loss of definiteness and power. Kuenen himself
makes the three universal religions to be
Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity.
The analogy of the two latter is conclusive with
regard to the first — that Moses was the author of
Israel's faith in Jehovah.
And this involves much, both with regard to
the human characteristics and the Divine in-
spiration of the founder, much that an after-age
would have been utterly incapable of imagining.
When we find a life depicted in these Penta-
teuchal narratives, corresponding in all its
features with the place that has to be filled, re-
vealing one who, under the conditions of Israel's
nativity, might have made a way for it into sus-
taining faith, it is not difificult to accept the de-
tails in their substance. The records are cer-
tainly not Moses' own. They are exoteric, now
from the people's point of view, now from that
of the priests. But they present with wonder-
ful fidelity and power what in the life of the
founder went to stamp his faith on the national
mind. And the marvellous thing is that the
shadows as well as the lights in the biography
serve this great end. The gloom that falls at
Meribah and rests on Nebo tells of the character
of Jehovah, bears witness to the Supreme
Royalty which Moses lived and laboured to
exalt. A living God, righteous and faithful,
gracious to them that trusted and served Him,
who also visited iniquity — such was the Jehovah
between whom and Israel Moses stood as
mediator, such the Jehovah by whose command
he was to ascend the height of Abarim to die.
To die, to be gathered to his people — and
what then? It is at death we reckon up the ac-
count and estimate the value and power of
faith. Has it made a man ready for his change,
ripened his character, established his work on a
foundation as of rock? The command which
at Horeb Moses received long ago, and the
revelation of God he there enjoyed, have had
their opportunity; to what have they come?
The supreme human desire is to know the
nature, to understand the distinctive glory of the
Most High. At the bush Moses had been made
aware of the presence with him of the God of
his fathers, the Fear of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. His duty also had been made clear.
But the mystery of being was still unsolved.
With sublime daring, therefore, he pursued the
inquiry: " Behold when I come unto the chil-
dren of Israel, and shall say unto them, The
God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and
they shall say to me. What is His name? what
shall I say unto them? " The answer came in
apocalypse, in a form of simple words: — " I am
THAT I AM." The solemn Name expressed an
intensity of life, a depth and power of personal
being, far transcending that of which man is
conscious. It belongs to One who hai no bt-
ginning, whose life is apart from time, above
the forces of nature, independent of them. Je-
hovah says, " I am not what you see, not what
nature is, standing forth into the range of your
sight; I Am in eternal separation, self-existent,
with underived fulness of power and life," The
remoteness and incomprehensibility of God re-
main, although much is revealed. Whatever
experience of life each man sums up for himself
in saying " I am," aids him in realising the life
of God. Have we aspired? have we loved? have
we undertaken and accomplished? have we
thought deeply? Does any one in saying " I
am " include the consciousness of long and
varied life? — the "I am" of God comprehends
all that. And yet He changes not. Beneath
our experience of life which changes there is
this great Living Essence. " I am that I am,"
profoundly, eternally true, self-consistent, with
whom is no beginning of experience or purpose,
yet controlling, harmonising, yea, originating
all in the unfathomable depths of an eternal Will.
Ideas like these, we must believe, shaped
themselves, if not clearly, at least in dim outline
before the mind of Moses, and made the faith
by which he lived. And how had it proved
itself as the stay of endeavour, the support of a
soul under heavy burdens of duty, trial, and sor-
rowful consciousness? The reliance it gave
had never failed. In Egypt, before Pharaoh,
Moses had been sustained by it as one who
had a sanction for his demands and actions
which no king or priest could claim. At Sinai
it had given spiritual strength and definite au-
thority to the law. It was the spirit of every
oracle, the underlying force in every judgment.
Faith in Jehovah, more than natural endow-
ments, made Moses great. His moral vision
was wide and clear because of it, his power
among the people as a prophet and leader rested
upon it. And the fruit of it, which began to be
seen when Israel learned to trust Jehovah as
the one living God and girt itself for His service,
has not even yet been all gathered in. We pass
by the theories of philosophy regarding the un-
seen to rest in the revelation of God which em-
bodies Moses' faith. His inspiration, once for
all, carried the world beyond polytheism to
monotheism, unchallengeably true, inspiring,
sublime.
There can be no doubt that death tested the
faith of Moses as a personal reliance on the
Almighty. How he found sufficient help in the
thought of Jehovah when Aaron died, and when
his own call came, we can only surmise. For
him it was a familiar certainty that the Judge
of all the earth did right. His own decision
went with that of Jehovah in every great moral
question; and even when death was involved,
however great a punishment it appeared, how-
ever sad a necessity, he must have said, Good is
the will of the Lord. But there was more than
acquiescence. One who had lived so long with
God, finding all the springs and aims of life in
Him, must have known that irresistible power
would carry on what had been begun, would
complete to its highest tower that building of
which the foundation had been laid. Moses
had wrought not for self but for God; he could
leave his work in the Divine hand with absolute
assurance that it would be perfected. And as
for his own destiny, his personal life, what shall
we say? Moses had been what he was through
Numbers xxvi., xxvii.]
A NEW GENERATION.
469
the grace of Him whose name is " I am that I
AM." He could at least look into the dim
region beyond and say, " It is God's will that I
pass through the gate. I am spiritually His,
and am strong in mind for His service. I have
been what He has willed, excepting in my trans-
gression. I shall be what He wills; and that
cannot be ill for me; that will be best for me."
God was gracious and forgave sin, though He
could not suffer it to pass unjudged. Even in
appointing death the Merciful One could not
fail to be merciful to His servant. The thought
of Moses might not carry him into the future of
his own existence, into what should be after he
had breathed his last. But God was His; and
he was God's.
So the personal drai.ia of many acts and scenes
draws to a close with forebodings of the end,
and yet a little respite ere the rurtain falls. The
music is solemn as befits the night-fall, yet has
a ring of strong purpose and inexhaustible suffi-
ciency. It is not the " still sad music of hu-
manity " we hear with the words, " Get thee up
into this mountain of Abarim, and behold the
land which I have given unto the children of
Israel. And when thou hast seen it, thou also
shalt be gathered unto thy people, as Aaron thy
brother was gathered." It is the music of the
Voice that awakens life, commands and inspires
it, cheers the strong in endeavour and soothes
the tired to rest. He who speaks is not weary
of Moses, nor does He mean Moses to be weary
of his task. But this change lies in the way of
God's strong purpose, and it is assumed that
Moses will neither rebel nor repine. Far away,
in an evolution unforeseen by man, will come
the glorification of One who is the Life indeed;
and in His revelation as the Son of the Eternal
Father Moses will share. With Christ he will
speak of the change of death and that faith which
overcomes all change.
The designation of Joshua, who had long been
the minister of Moses, and perhaps for some
time administrator of affairs, is recorded in the
close of the chapter. The prayer of Moses
assumes that by direct commission the fitness of
Joshua must be signified to the people. It
might be Jehovah's will that, even yet, another
should take the headship of the tribes. Moses
spake unto the Lord, saying, " Let Jehovah,
the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man
over the congregation which may go out before
them, and which may come in before them, and
which may lead them out and which may bring
them in: that the congregation of Jehovah be
not as sheep which have no shepherd." One
who has so long endeavoured to lead, and found
it so difficult, whose heart and soul and strength
have been devoted to make Israel Jehovah's
people, can relax his hold of things without
dismay only if he is sure that God will Himself
choose and endow the successor. What aimless
wandering there would be if the new leader
proved incompetent, wanting wisdom or grace'
How far about might Israel's way yet be, in
another sense than the compassing of Edom!
Before the Friend of Israel Moses pours out his
prayer for a shepherd fit to lead the flock.
And the oracle confirms the choice to which
Providence has already pointed. Joshua the
son of Nun, " a man in whom is the spirit," is
to have the call and receive the charge. His
investiture with official right and dignity is to
be in the sight of Eleazar the priest and all
the congregation. Moses shall put of his own
honour upon Joshua and declare his com-
mission. Joshua shall not have the whole
burden of decision resting upon him, for Je-
hovah will guide him. Yet he shall not have
direct access to God in the tent of meeting as
Moses had. In the time of special need Eleazar
" shall inquire for him by the judgment of the
Urim before Jehovah." Thus instructed, he
shall exercise high authority.
" A man in whom is the spirit " — such is the
one outstanding personal qualification. " The
God of the spirits of all flesh " finds in Joshua
the sincere will, the faithful heart. The work
that is to be done is not of a spiritual kind, but
grim fighting, control of an army and of a
people not yet amenable to law, under circum-
stances that will try a leader's firmness, sagacity,
and courage. Yet, even for such a task, alle-
giance to Jehovah and His purpose regarding
Israel, the enthusiasm of faith, high spirit, not
experience — these are the commendations of the
chief. Qualified thus, Joshua may occasionally
make mistakes. His calculations may not
always be perfect, nor the means he employs
exactly fitted to the end. But his faith will
enable him to recover what is momentarily lost;
his courage will not fail. Above all, he will be
no opportunist guided by the turn of events,
yielding to pressure or what may appear neces-
sity. The one principle of faithfulness to Je-
hovah will keep him and Israel in a path which
must be followed, even if success in a worldly
sense be not immediately found.
The priest who inquires of the Lord by Urim
has a higher place under Joshua's administra-
tion than under that of Moses. The theocracy
will henceforth have a twofold manifestation,
less of unity than before. And here the change
is of a kind which may involve the gravest con-
sequences. The simple statement of ver. 21
denotes a very great limitation of Joshua's au-
thority as leader. It means that though on
many occasions he can both originate and exe-
cute, all matters of moment shall have to be re-
ferred to the oracle. There will be a possibility
of conflict between him and the priest with re-
gard to the occasions that require such a refer-
ence to Jehovah. In addition there may be the
uncertainty of responses through the Urim, as
interpreted by the priest. It is easy also to see
that by this method of appealing to Jehovah
the door was opened to abuses which, if not in
Joshua's time, certainly in the time of the
judges, began to arise.
It may appear to some absolutely necessary to
refer the Urim to a far later date. The explana-
tion given by Ewald, that the inquiry was always
by some definite question, and that the answer
was found by means of the lot, obviates this
difficulty.* The Urim and Thummim, which
mean " clearness and correctness," or as in our
passage the Urim alone, may have been pebbles
of different colours, the one representing an
affirmative, the other a negative reply. But in-
quiry appears to have been made by these means
••after certain rites, and with forms which the
priest alone could use. It is evident that abso-
lute sincerity on his part, and unswerving loyalty
to Jehovah, were an important element in the
whole administration of affairs. A priest who
became dissatisfied with the leader might easily
* "Antiquities of Israel " : " The Priesthood."
47°
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
frustrate his plans. On the other hand, a leader
dissatisfied with the responses would be tempted
to suspect and perhaps set aside the priest.
There can be no doubt that here a serious pos-
sibility of divided counsels entered into the his-
tory of Israel, and we are reminded of many
after events. Yet the circumstances were such
that the whole power could not be committed
to one man. With whatever element of danger,
the new order had to begin.
Moses laid his hands on Joshua and gave him
his charge. As one who knew his own infirmi-
ties, he could warn the new chief of the temp-
tations he would have to resist, the patience he
would have to exercise. It was not necessary
to inform Joshua of the duties of his office.
With these he had become familiar. But the
need for calm and sober judgment required to
be impressed upon him. It was here he was de-
fective, and here that his " honour " and the
maintenance of his authority would have to be
secured. Deuteronomy mentions only the ex-
hortation Moses gave to be strong and of a good
courage, and the assurance that Jehovah would
go before Joshua, would neither fail him nor
forsake him. But though much is recorded,
much also remains untold. An education of
forty years had prepared Joshua for the hour
of his investiture. Yet the words of the chief
he was so soon to lose must have had no small
part in preparing him for the burden and duty
which he was now called by Jehovah to sustain
as leader of Israel.
CHAPTER XXIII.
OFFERINGS AND VOWS.
Numbers xxviii.-xxx.
The legislation of chapters xxviii.-xxx. ap-
pears to belong to a time of developed ritual
and organised society. Parallel passages in Exo-
dus and Leviticus treating of the feasts and
oflFerings are by no means so full in their details,
nor do they even mention some of the sacri-
fices here made statutory. The observances of
New Moon are enjoined in the Book of Numbers
alone. In chapter xv. they are simply noticed;
here the order is fixed. The purpose of chapters
xxviii., xxix. is especially to prescribe the num-
ber of animals that are to be ofifered throughout
the year at a central altar, and the quantities of
other oblations which are to accompany them.
But the rotation of feasts is also given in a more
connected way than elsewhere; we have, in fact,
a legislative description of Israel's Sacred Year.
Daily, weekly, monthly, and at the two great
festal seasons, Jehovah is to be acknowledged by
the people as the Redeemer of life, the Giver of
wealth and blessedness. Of their cattle and
sheep, and the produce of the land, they are to
bring continual oblations, which are to be their
memorial before Him. By their homage and
by their gladness, by afflicting themselves and by
praising God, they shall realise their calling as
His people.
The section regarding vows (ch. xxx.) com-
pletes the legislation on that subject supplement-
ing Lev. xxvii. and Numb. vi. It is especially
interesting for the light it throws on the nature
of family life, the position of women and the limi-
tations of their freedom. The link between the
law of ofiferings and the law of vows is hard to
find; but we can easily understand the need for
rules concerning women's vows. The peace of
families might often be disturbed by lavish prom-
ises which a husband or a father might find it
impossible or inconvenient to fulfil.
I. The Sacred Yeah.
Numbers xxviii. -xxix.
Throughout the year, each day, each sabbath,
and each month is to be consecrated by oblations
of varying value, forming a routine of sacrifice.
First the Day, bringing duty and privilege, is to
have its morning burnt offering of a yearling
lamb, by which the Divine blessing is invoked
on the labour and life of the whole people. A
meal offering of flour and oil and a drink offering
of " strong drink " — that is, not of water or
milk, but wine — are to accompany the sacrifice.
Again in the evening, as a token of gratitude
for the mercies of the day, similar oblations are
to be presented. Of this offering the note is
made: " it is a continual burnt offering, which
was ordained in Sinai for a sweet savour, a sacri-
fice made by fire unto the Lord."
In these sacrifices the whole of time, measured
out by the alternation of light and darkness, was
acknowledged to be God's; through the priest-
hood the nation declared His right to each day,
confessed obligation to Him for the gift of it.
The burnt offering implied complete renunciation
of what was represented. No part of the animal
was kept for use, either by the worshipper or
the priest. The smoke ascending to heaven dis-
sipated the entire substance of the oblation, sig-
nifying that the whole use or enjoyment of it
was consecrated to God. In the way of impress-
ing the idea of obligation to Jehovah for the gifts
of time and life the daily sacrifices were valuable;
yet they were suggestive rather than sufficient.
The Israelites throughout the land knew that these
oblations were made at the altar, and those who
were pious might at the times appointed offer
each his own thanksgivings to God. But the
individual expression of gratitude was left to the
religions sense, and that must often have failed.
At a distance from the sanctuary, where the as-
cending smoke could not be seen, men might
forget; or again, knowing that the priests would
not forget, they might imagine their own part to
be done when offering was made for the whole
people. The duty was, however, represented and
kept before the minds of all.
In the Psalms and elsewhere we find traces of
a worship which had its source in the daily sacri-
fice. The author of Psalm cxli., for example,
addresses Jehovah:
" Give ear nnto my voice when I cry unto Thoe.
Let my prayer be set forth as incense before Thee ;
The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."
Less clearly in the fifth, the fifty-ninth, and the
eighty-eighth psalms, the morning prayer appears
to be connected with the morning sacrifice:
"O Lord, in the morning shalt Thou hear my voice ;
In the morning will I order my prayer unto Thee,
and will keep watch " (Psalm v. 3).
The pious Hebrew might naturally choose the
morning and the evening as his times of special
approach to the throne of Divine grace, as every
believer still feels it his duty and privilege to
Numbers xxviii.-xxx.j
OFFERINGS AND VOWS.
471
begin and close the day with prayer. The appro-
priateness of dawn and sunset might determine
both the hour of sacrifice and the hour of private
worship. Yet the ordinance of the daily obla-
tions set an example to those who would other-
wise have been careless in expressing gratitude.
And earnestly religious persons learned to find
more frequent opportunities. Daniel in Babylon
is seen at the window open towards Jerusalem,
kneeling upon his knees three times a day, pray-
ing and giving thanks to God. The author of
Psalm cxix. says:
" Seven times a day do I praise Thee,
Because of Thy righteous judgments."
The grateful remembrance of God and confes-
sion of His right to the whole of life were thus
made a rule with which no other engagements
were allowed to interfere. It is by facts like
these the power of religion over the Hebrews
in their best time is explained.
We pass now to the Sabbath and the sacrifices
by which it was distinguished. Here the number
seven which recurs so frequently in the statutes
of the sacred year appears for the first time.
Connection has been found between the ordin-
ances of Israel and of Chaldea in the observance
of the seventh day as well as at many other
points. According to Mr. Sayce, the origin of
the Sabbath went back to pre-Semitic days, and
the very name was of Babylonian origin. " In
the cuneiform tablets the sabbatu is described as
a ' day of rest for the soul.' . . . The Sabbath
was also known, at all events in Accadian times,
as a dks nefastus, a day on which certain work
was forbidden to be done; and an old list of
Babylonian festivals and fast-days tells us that
on the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-
first, and twenty-eighth days of each month the
Sabbath rest had to be observed. The king him-
self, it is stated, ' must not eat flesh that has been
cooked over the coals or in the smoke, he must
not change the garments of his body, white robes
he must not wear, sacrifices he may not offer,
* in a chariot he must not ride.' " The soothsayer
was forbidden on that day " to mutter in a secret
place." In this observance of a seventh day of
rest, specially sacred, for the good of the soul,
ancient Accadians and Babylonians prepared the
way for the Sabbath of the Mosaic law.
But while the days of the Chaldean week were
devoted each to a separate divinity, and the
seventh day had its meaning in relation to poly-
theism, the whole of time, every day alike, and
the Sabbaths with greater strictness than the
others, were, in Israel's law, consecrated to Je-
hovah. This difference also deserves to be
noticed, that, while the Chaldean seventh days
were counted from each new moon, in the He-
brew year there was no such astronomical date
for reckoning them. Throughout the year, as
with us. each seventh day was a day of rest.
While we find traces of old religious custom and
observance that mingled with those of Judaism
and cannot but recognise the highly humane, al-
most spiritual character those old institutions
often had, the superiority of the religion of the
One Living and True God clearly proves itself
to us. Moses, and those who followed him, felt
no need of rejecting an idea they met with in
the ancient beliefs of Chaldea, for they had the
Divine light and wisdom by which the earthly
and evil could be separated from the kernel of
good. And may we not say that it was well to
maintain the continuity of observance so far as
thoughts and customs of the far past could be
woven into the worship of Jehovah's flock?
Neither was Israel nor is any people to pretend
to entire separation from the past. No act of
choice or process of development can effect it.
Nor would the severance, if it were made, be for
the good of men. Beyond the errors and ab-
surdities of human belief, beyond the perversions
of truth due to sin, there lie historical and con-
stitutional origins. The Sabbaths, the sacrifices,
and the prayers of ancient Chaldea had their
source in demands of God and needs of the hu-
man soul, which not only entered into Judaism,
but survive still, proving themselves inseparable
from our thought and life.
The special oblations to be presented on the
Sabbath were added to those of the other days
of the week. Two lambs of the first year in the
morningand two in the evening were to be offered
with their appropriate meal and drink offerings.
It may be noted that in Ezekiel where the Sab-
bath ordinances are detailed the sacrifices are
more numerous. After declaring that the eastern
gate of the inner court of the temple, which is to
be shut on the six working days, shall be opened
on the Sabbath and in the day of ine new moon,
the prophet goes on to say that the prince, as
representing the people, shall offer unto the Lord
in the Sabbath day six lambs without blemish
and a ram without blemish. In the legislation of
Numbers, however, the higher consecration of
the Sabbath as compared with the other days
of the week did not require so great a difference
as Ezekiel saw it needful to make. And, indeed,
the law of Sabbath observance assumes in Ezekiel
an importance on various grounds which passes
beyond the high distinction given it in the
Pentateuch. Again and again in chapter xx.
the prophet declares that one of the great sins of
which the Israelites were guilty in the wilder-
ness was that of polluting the Sabbath which
God had given to be a sign between Himself and
them. The keeping holy of the seventh day
had become one of the chief safeguards of re-
ligion, and for this reason Ezekiel was moved
to prescribe additional sacrifices for that day.
We find as we go on that the week of seven
days, ended by the recurring day of rest, is an
element in the regulations for all the great
feasts. Unleavened bread was to be eaten for
seven days. Seven weeks were then to be
counted to the day of the firstfruits and the feast
of weeks. The feast of tabernacles, again, ran
for seven days and ended on the eighth with
a solemn assembly. The whole ritual was in
this way made to emphasise the division of time
based on the fourth commandment.
The New Moon ritual consecrating the months
was more elaborate. On the day when the new
moon was first seen, or should by computation be
seen, besides the continual burnt offering two
young bullocks, one ram, and seven lambs of the
first year, with meal and drink offerings, were
to be presented. These animals were to be
wholly offered by fire. In addition, a sin offer-
ing was to be made, a kid of the goats. Why
this guilt sacrifice was introduced at the new
moon service is not clear. Keil explains that
" in consideration of the sins which had been
committed. in the course of the past month, and
had remained without expiation," the sin offering
472
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
was needed. But this might be said of the week
in its degree, as well as of the month. It is cer-
tain that the opening of each month was kept
in other ways than the legislation of the Penta-
teuch seems to require. In Numbers it is pre-
scribed that the silver trumpets shall be blown
over the new moon sacrifices for a memorial be-
fore God, and this must have given the observ-
ances a festival air. Then we learn from i
Sam. XX. that when Saul was king a family feast
was observed in his house on the first day of the
month, and that this day also, in some particular
month, was generally chosen by a family for the
yearly sacrifice to which all were expected to
gather d Sam. xx. 5, 6). These facts and the
festal opening of Psalm Ixxxi., in which the
timbrel, harp, and psaltery, and joyful singing
in praise of God, are associated with the new
moon trumpet, imply that for some reason the
occasion was held to be important. Amos (viii.
5) implies further that on the day of new moon
trade was suspended; and in the time of Elisha
it seems to have been common for those who
wished to consult a prophet to choose either the
Sabbath or the day of new moon for enquiring
of him (2 Kings iv. 23). There can be little
doubt that the day was one of religious activity
and joy, and possibly the offering of the kid for
expiation was intended to counteract the freedom
the more thoughtless might permit themselves.
There are good reasons for believing that in
pre-Mosaic times the day of new moon was cele-
brated by the Israelites and all kindred peoples,
as it is still among certain heathen races. Orig-
inally a nature festival, it was consecrated to
Jehovah by the legislation before us, and gradu-
ally became of account as the occasion of do-
mestic gatherings and rejoicings. But its re-
ligious significance lay chiefly in the dedication
to God of the month that had begun and ex-
piation of guilt contracted during that which had
closed.
We come now to the great annual festivals.
These were arranged in two groups, which may
be classed as vernal and autumnal, the one
group belonging to the first and third months,
the other to the seventh. They divided the year
into two portions, the intervals between them
being the time of great heat and the time of rain
and storm. The month Abib, with which the
year began, corresponded generally to our April;
but its opening, depending on the new moon,
might be earlier or later. One of the ceremonies
of the festival season of this month was the pres-
entation, on the sixteenth day, of the first sheaf
of harvest; and seven weeks afterwards, at Pente-
cost, cakes made from the first dough were
offered. The explanation of what may appear to
be autumnal offerings in spring is to be found
in the early ripening of corn throughout Pales-
tine. The cereals were all reaped during the
interval between Passover and Pentecost. The
autumnal festival celebrated the gathering in of
the vintage and fruits.
The Passover, the first great feast, a sacrament
rather, is merely mentioned in this portion of
Numbers. It was chiefly a domestic celebration
— not priestly — and had a most impressive sig-
nificance, of which the eating of the lamb with
bitter herbs was the symbol. The day after it,
the " feast of unleavened bread " began. For
a whole week leaven was to be abjured. On the
first day of the feast there was to be a holy con-
vocation, and no servile work was to be done.
The closing day likewise was to be one of holy
convocation. On each of the seven days the
offerings were to be two young bullocks, one
ram, and seven yearling he-lambs, with their
meal and drink offerings, and for sin one he-goat
to make atonement.
The week of this festival, commencing with
the paschal sacrament, was made to bear pecu-
liarly on the national life, first by the command
that all leaven should be rigidly kept out of the
houses. As the ceremonial law assumed more
importance with the growth of Pharisaism, this
cleansing was sought quite fanatically. Any
crumb of common bread was reckoned an ac-
cursed thing which might deprive the observance
of the feast of its good effect. But even in the
time of less scrupulous legalism the effort to ex-
tirpate leaven from the houses had its singular
effect on the people. It was one of the many
causes which made Jewish religion intense.
Then the daily sacrificial routine, and especially
the holy convocations of the first and seventh
days, were profoundly solemnising. We may
picture thus the ceremonies and worship of these
great days of the feast. The people, gathered
from all parts of the land, crowded the outer
court of the sanctuary. The priests and Levites
stood ready around the altar. With solemn
chanting the animals were brought from some
place behind the temple where they had been
carefully examined so that no blemish might
impair the sacrifice. Then they were slain one
by one, and prepared, the fire on the great altar
blazing more and more brightly in readiness for
the holocaust, while the blood flowed away in a
red stream, staining the hands and garments of
those who officiated. First the two bullocks,
then the ram, then the lambs were one after an-
other placed on the flames, each with incense
and part of the meal offering. The sin offering
followed. Some of the blood of the he-goat was
taken by the priest and sprinkled on the inner
altar, on the veil of the Holy of Holies, and on
the horns of the great altar, around which the
rest was poured. The fat of the animal, including
certain of the internal parts, was thrown on the
fire; and this portion of the observances ended
with the pouring out of the last drink offering
before the Lord. Then a chorus of praise was
lifted up, the people throwing themselves on
the ground and praying in a low, earnest mono-
tone.
To this followed in the later times singing of
chants and psalms, led by the chorus of Levites,
addresses to the people, and shorter or longer
prayers to which the worshippers responded.
The officiating priest, standing beside the great
altar in view of all, now pronounced the ap-
pointed blessing on the people. But his task was
still not complete. He went into the sanctuary,
and, having by his entrance and safe return from
the holy place shown that the sacrifice had been
accepted, he spoke to the assembly a few words
of simple and sublime import. Finally, with
repeated blessing, he gave the dismissal. On
one or both of these occasions the form of bene-
diction used was that which we have found
preserved in the sixth chapter of this book.*
It is evident that celebrations like these, into
which, as time went on, the mass of worshippers
entered with increased fervour, gave the feast of
unleavened bread an extraordinary importance
♦ See Ewald's " Antiquities," p. 131, Solly's translation.
Numbers xxviii.-xxx.J
OFFERINGS AND VOWS.
473
.in the national life. The young Hebrew looked
forward to it with the keenest expectancy, and
was not disappointed. So long as faith remained,
and especially in crises of the history of Israel,
the earnestness that was developed carried every
soul along. And now that the Israelites bewail
the loss of temple and country, reckoning them-
selves a martyred people, this feast and the more
solemn day of atonement nerve them to endur-
ance and reassure them of their hope. They are
separate still. They are Jehovah's people still.
The covenant remains. The Messiah will come
and bring them new life and power. So they
vehemently cling to the past and dream of a
future that shall never be.
" The day of the firstfruits " was, according to
Lev. xxiii. 15, the fiftieth day from the morrow
after the passover sabbath. The special harvest
offering of this "feast of weeks" is thus enjoined:
" Ye shall bring out of your habitations two
wave loaves of two tenth parts of an ephah; they
shall be of fine flour, they shall be baken with
leaven, for firstfruits unto the Lord " (Lev. xxiii.
17). According to Leviticus one bullock, two
rams, and seven lambs; according to Numbers
two bullocks, one ram, and seven lambs, were to
be sacrificed as whole ofiferings; the difference
being apparently that of varying usage at an
earlier and later time. The sin offering of the
he-goat followed the burnt offerings. The day
of the feast was one of holy convocation; and
it has peculiar interest for us as the day on which
the Pentecostal effusion of the Spirit came on the
gathering of Christians in the upper room at
Jerusalem. The joyous character of this festival
was signified by the use of leaven in the cakes or
loaves that were presented as firstfruits. The
people rejoiced in the blessing of another harvest.
the fulfilment once more by Jehovah of His
promise to supply the needs of His flock. It will
be seen that in every case the sin offering pre-
scribed is a single he-goat. This particular sac-
rifice was distinguished from the whole offerings,
the thank offerings, and the peace offerings,
which were not limited in number. " It must
stand," says Ewald, " in perfect isolation, as
though in the midst of sad solitude and desola-
tion, with nothing similar or comparable by its
side." Why a he-goat was invariably ordered
for this expiatory sacrifice it is difficult to say.
And the question is not made more easy by the
peculiar rite of the great day of atonement,
when besides the goat of the sin offering for Je-
hovah another was devoted to " Azazel." Per-
haps the choice of this animal implied its fitness
in some way to represent transgression, wilful-
ness, and rebellion. The he-goat, more wild and
rough than any other of the flock, seemed to be-
long to the desert and to the spirit of evil.
From the festivals of spring we now pass to
those of autumn, the first of which coincided with
the New Moon of the seventh month. This was
to be a day of holy convocation, on which no
servile work should be done, and it was marked
by a special blowing of trumpets over the sacri-
fices. From other passages it would appear that
the trumpets were used on the occasion of every
new moon; and there must have been a longer
and more elaborate service of festival music to
distinguish the seventh. The offerings pre-
scribed for it were "nmerous. Those enjoined
for the opening of the other months were two
bullocks, one ram, seven he-lambs, and the he-
goat of the sin offering. To these were now
added one bullock, one ram, and seven he-lambs.
Altogether, including the daily sacrifices which
•were never omitted, twenty-two animals were
offered; and with each sacrifice, except the he-
goat, fine flour mingled with oil and a drink
offering of wine had to be presented.
There seems no reason to doubt that the
seventh month was opened in this impressive way
because of the great festivals ordained to be held
in the course of it. The labour of the year was
practically over, and more than any other the
month was given up to festivity associated with
religion. It was the seventh or sabbsrth month,
forming the " exalted summit of the year, for
which all preceding festivals prepared the way,
and after which everything quietly came down to
the ordinary course of life." The trumpets
blown in joyful peals over the sacrifices, the
offering of which must have gone on for many
hours, inspired the assembly with gladness, and
signified the gratitude and hope of the nation.
But the joy of the seventh month thus begun
did not go on without interruption. The tenth
day was one of special solemnity and serious
thought. It was the great day of confession, for
on it, in the holy convocation, the people were to
" afflict their souls." The transgressions and
failures of the year were to be acknowledged with
sorrow. From the evening of the ninth day to
the evening of the tenth there was to be a rigid
fast — the one fast which the law ordained. Be-
fore the full gladness of Jehovah's favour can be
realised by Israel all those sins of neglect and
forgetfulness which have been accumulating for
twelve months must be confessed, bewailed, and
taken away. There are those who have become
unclean without being aware of their defilement;
those who have unwittingly broken the Sabbath
law; those who have for some reason been unable
to keep the passover, or who have kept it imper-
fectly; others again have failed to render tithes of
all the produce of their land according to the
law; and priests and Levites called to a high con-
secration have come short of their duty. With
such defects and sins of error the nation is to
charge itself, each individual acknowledging his
own faults. Unless this is done a shadow must
lie on the life of the people; they cannot enjoy
the light of the countenance of God.
For this day the whole offerings are, one
young bullock, one ram, seven he-lambs; and
there is this peculiarity, that, besides a he-goat
for a sin offering, there is to be provided another
he-goat, " for atonement." Maimonides says
that the second he-goat is not that " for Azazel,"
but the fellow of it, the one on which the lot had
fallen " for Jehovah." Leviticus again informs
us that Aaron was to sacrifice a bullock as a sin
offering for himself and his house. And it was
the blood of this bullock and of the second he-
goat he was to take and sprinkle on the ark and
before the mercy-seat. Further, it is prescribed
that the bodies of these animals are to be carried
forth without the camp and wholly burned — as
if the sin clinging to them had made them unfit
for use in any way.
The great atonement thus made, the reaction
of joy set in. Nothing in Jewish worship ex-
ceeded the solemnity of the fast, and in contrast
with that the gladness of the forgiven multitude.
Another crisis was past, another year of Jeho-
vah's favour had begun. Those who had been
474
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
prostrate in sorrow and fear rose up to sing their
hallelujahs. " The deep seriousness of the Day
of Atonement," saj's Delitzsch. "was transformed
on the evening of the same day into lighthearted
merriment. The observance in the temple was
accomplished in a significant drama which was
fascinating from beginning to end. When the
high priest came forth from the Most Holy
Place, after the performance of his functions
there, this was for the people a consolatory,
gladsome sight, for which poetry can find no ade-
quate words: " Like the peace-proclaiming arch in
painted clouds; like the morning star, when he
arises from the eastern twilight; like the sun,
when opening his bud, he unfolds in roseate hue.'
When the solemnity was over, the high priest
was escorted with a guard of honour to his dwell-
ing in the city, where a banquet awaited his more
immediate friends." The young people repaired
to the vineyards, the maidens arrayed in simple
white, and the day was closed with song and
dancing.*
This description reminds us of the mingling of
elements in the old Scottish fast-days, closing as
they did with a simple entertainment in the
manse.
The feast of tabernacles continued the gladness
of the ransomed people. It began on the fif-
teenth day of the seventh month, with a holy
convocation and a holocaust of no fewer than
twenty-nine animals, in addition to the daily sacri-
fice, and a he-goat for a sin offering. The num-
ber of bullocks, which was thirteen on this open-
ing day of the feast, was reduced by one each
day till on the seventh day seven bullocks were
sacrificed. But two rams and fourteen he-lambs
were offered each day of the feast, and the he-
goat for expiation, besides the continual burnt
offering. The celebration ended, so far as sac-
rifices were concerned, on the eighth day with a
special burnt offering of one bullock, one ram,
and seven he-lambs, returning thus to the number
appointed for New Moon.
It will be noticed tl.at on the closing day there
was to be a " solemn assembly." It was " the
great day of the feast " (John vii. 37). The
people who during the week had lived in the
booths or arbours which they had made, now
dismantled them and went on pilgrimage to the
sanctuary. The opening of the festival came to
be of a striking kind. " One could see," says
Professor Franz Delitzsch, " even before the
dawn of the first day of the feast, if this was not
a Sabbath, a joyous throng pouring forth from
the Jaffa Gate at Jerusalem. The verdure of the
orchards, refreshed with the first showers of the
early rain, is hailed by the people with shouts of
joy as they scatter on either side of the bridge
which crosses the brook fringed with tall poplar-
osiers, some in order with their own hands to
pluck branches for the festal display, others to
look at the men who have been honoured with
the commission to fetch from Kolonia the festal
leafy adornment of the altar. They seek out
right long and goodly branches of these poplar-
osiers, and cut them off, and then the reunited
host returns in procession, with exultant shouts
and singing and jesting, to Jerusalem, as far as
the Temple hill, where the great branches of
poplar-osier are received by the priests and set
upright around the sides of the altar, so that they
bend over it nrith their tins. Priestlv trumpet-
♦ Expositor y 3d Series, vol. iv., p. 88.
clang resounded during this decoration of the al-
tar with foliage, and they went on that feast day
once, on the seventh day seven times, around
the altar with willow branches, or the festive
posy entwined of a palm branch and branches
of myrtles and willows, amidst the usual festive
shouts of Hosanna; exclaiming after the com-
pleted encircling, ' Beauty becomes thee, O
Altar! Beauty becomes thee, O Altar! ' " So, in
later times, the festival began and was sustained,
each worshipper carrying boughs and fruit of tlie
citron and other trees. But the eighth day
brought all this to a close. The huts were taken
down, the worshippers sought the house of God
for prayer and thanksgiving. The reading of
the Law which had been going on day by day
concluded; and the sin offering fitly ended the
season of joy with expiation of the guilt of the
people in their holy things.
The series of sacrifices appointed for days and
weeks and months and years required a large
number of animals and no small liberality. They
did not, however, represent more than a small
proportion of the offerings which were brought
to the central sanctuary. Besides, there were
those connected with vows, the free-will offer-
ings, meal offerings, drink offerings, and peace
offerings (xxix. 39). And taking all to-
gether it will be seen that the pastoral
wealth of the people was largely claimed.
The explanation lies partly in this, that
among the Israelites, as among all races, " the
things sacrificed were of the same kind as those
the worshippers desired to obtain from God."
The sin offering, however, had quite a different
significance. In this the sprinkling of the warm
blood, representing the life blood of the wor-
shipper, carried thought into a range of sacred
mystery in which the awful claim of God on men
was darkly realised. Here sacrifice became a
sacrament binding the worshippers by the most
solemn symbol imaginable — a vital symb/al — to
fidelity in the service of Jehovah. Their faith
and devotion expressed in the sacrifice secured
for them the Divine grace on which their well-
being depended, the blood-bought pardon that
redeemed the soul. Among the Israelites alone
was expiation by blood made fully significant
as the center of the whole system of worship.*
2. The Law of Vows.
Numbers xxx.
The general command regarding vows is tliat
whosoever binds himself by one. or takes an oath
in regard to any promise, must at all hazards keep
his word. A man is allowed to judge for himself
in vowing and undertaking by oath, but he is
to have the consequences in view, and especially
keep in mind that God is his witness. The mat-
ter scarcely admitted of any other legislation,
and neither here nor elsewhere is any attempt
made to lay penalties on those who broke their
vows. To use the Divine Name in an oath which
was afterwards falsified brought a man under the
condemnation of the third commandment, a
spiritual doom. But the authorities could not
give it effect. The transgressor was left to the
judgment of God.
With regard to vows and oaths the sophistry
* Ewald's "Antiquities," p. 40.
Numbers xxxi.]
WAR AND SETTLEMENT.
475
of the Jews and their rabbis led them so far astray
that our Lord had to lay down new rules for
the guidance of His followers. No doubt cases
arose in which it was exceedingly difficult to
decide. One might vow with good intention
and find himself utterly unable to keep his prom-
ise, or might find that to keep it would involve
unforeseen injury to others. But apart from
circumstances of this sort there came to be such
a net-work of half-legalised evasions, and so
many unseemly discussions, that the purpose of
the law was destroyed. Absolution from vows
was claimed as a prerogative by some rabbis;
against this, others protested. One would say
that if a man vovv^ed by Jerusalem or by the Law
he had said nothing; but if he vowed by what is
written in the Law, his words stood. The " wise
men " declared four kinds of vows not .binding —
incentive vows, as when a buyer vows that he will
not give more than a certain price in order to
induce the seller to take less; meaningless vows;
thoughtless and compulsory vows. In such ways
the practice was reduced to ignominy. It even
came to this, that if a man wished to neutralise
all the vows he might make in the course of a
year he had only to say at the beginning of it,
on the eve of the Day of Atonement, " Let every
vow which I shall make be of none efifect," and
he would be absolved. This immoral tangle was
cut through by the clear judgment of Christ:
" Ye have heard that it was said to them of old
time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt
perform unto the Lord thine oaths: but I say
unto you. Swear not at all; neither by the heaven,
for it is the throne of God; nor by the earth, for
it is the footstool of His feet; nor by Jerusalem,
for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt
thou swear by thy head, for thou canst not make
one hair white or black. But let your speech be.
Yea, yea; Nay, nay.: and whatsoever is more
than these is of the evil one." In ordinary con-
versation and dealings Christ will have no vows
and oaths. Let men promise and perform, de-
clare and stand to their word. He lifts even
ordinary life to a higher plane.
With regard to women's vows, four cases are
made the subject of enactment. First, there is
the case of a young woman living in her father's
house, under his authority. If she vow unto the
Lord, and bind herself by a bond in the hearing
of her father and he do not forbid, her vow
shall stand. It may involve expense to the
father, or put him and the family to inconveni-
ence, but by silence he has allowed himself to be
bound. On the other hand, if he interpose and
forbid the vow, the daughter is released. The
second case is that of a woman who at the time
of marriage is under a vow; and this is decided
tn the same way. Her betrothed husband's si-
nce, if he hears the promise, sanctions it; his
refusal to allow it gives discharge. The third
instance is that of a widow or a divorced woman,
who must perform all she has solemnly engaged
to do. The last case is that of the married wo-
man in her husband's house, concerning whom
it is decreed: " Every vow and every binding oath
to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it,
or her husband may make it void. ... If he
shall make them null and void after he hath
heard them, then he shall bear her iniquity."
These regulations establish the headship of the
father and the husband in regard to matters
which belong to religion. And the significance
of them lies in this, that no intrusion of the
priest is permitted. If the " Priests' Code " had
been intended to set up a hierocracy, these vows
would have given the opportunity of introducing
priestly inllaence into family life. The provi-
sions appear to be designed for the very purpose
of disallowing this. It was seen that in the
ardour of religious zeal women were disposed
to make large promises, dedicating their means,
their children, or perhaps their own lives to
special service in connection with the sanctuary.
But the father or husband was the family head
and the judge. No countenance whatever is
given to any official interference.
It would have been well if the wisdom of this
law had ruled the Church, preventing ecclesias-
tical dominance in family affairs. The promises,
the threats of a domineering Church have in
many cases introduced discord between daughters
and parents, wives and husbands. The amen-
ability of women to religious motives has been
taken advantage of, always indeed with a plausible
reason, — the desire to save them from the world,
— but far too often, really, for political-ecclesias-
tical ends, or even from the base motive of re-
venge. Ecclesiastics have found the opportunity
of enriching the Church or themselves, or under
cover of confession have become aware of secrets
that placed families at their mercy. No practice
followed under the shield of religion and in its
name deserves stronger reprobation. The
Church should, by every means in its power,
purify and uphold family life. To undermine the
unity of families by laying obligations on women,
or obtaining promises apart from the knowledge
of those to whom they are bound in the closest
relationship, is an abuse of privilege. And the
whole custom of auricular confession comes
under the charge. It may occasionally or fre-
quently be used with good intention, and lonely
women without trusted advisers among their
kindred may see no other resource in times of
peculiar difficulty and trial. But the submission
that forms part of it is debasing, and the secrecy
gives priesthood a power that should belong to
no body of men in dealing with the souls of their
fellow-creatures, and fellow-sinners. At the
very best, confession to a priest is a weak ex-
pedient.
CHAPTER XXIV.
WAR AND SETTLEMENT.
I. The War with Midian.
Numbers xxxi.
The command to vex and smite the Midianites
(xxv. i6) has already been considered. Israel
had not the spiritual power which would have
justified any attempt to convert that people. De-
grading idolatry was to be held in abhorrence,
and those who clung to it suppressed. Now the
time comes for an exterminating war. While
hordes of Bedawin occupy the hills and the
neighbouring desert, there can be no security
either for morals, property, or life. Balaam i.'^
among them plotting against Israel; and his rest-
less energy, we may suppose, precipitates the
conflict. Moses conveys the command of God
that the attack on Midian shall be immediately
made, and himself directs the campaign.
The details of the enterprise are given some-
476
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
what fully. A thousand fighting men are called
from each tribe. The religious purpose of the
war is signified by the presence in the host of
Phinehas, whose zeal has ^iven him a name
among the warriors. He is allowed to carry with
him the "'vessels of the sanctuary"; and the
silver trumpets are to be sounded on the march
and in the attack. The Midianitish clan appar-
ently gives way at once before the Hebrews, and
either makes no stand or is totally defeated in a
single battle. All the men are put to the sword,
including Balaam and five chiefs, whose names
are preserved. The women and children are
taken; the whole of the cattle and goods becomes
the prey of the victors; the cities and encamp-
ments are burned with fire. On the return of
the army with the large band of captives, Moses
is greatly displeased. He demands of the offi-
cers why the women have been spared, — the very
women who caused the children of Israel to tres-
pass against the Lord. Then he orders all above
a certain age, and the male children, to be put to
death. The young girls alone are to be kept
alive.
The purification of those who have been en-
gaged in the war is next commanded. For seven
days the army must remain outside the camp.
Those who have touched any dead body and all
the captives are to be ceremonially cleansed on
the third and seventh days. Every article of
raiment, everything made of skins and goats'
hair, and all woollen articles, are to be purified
by means of the water of expiation. Whatever
is made of metal is to be passed through the
fire.
Details of the quantity and division of the prey,
and the voluntary oblations made as an " atone-
ment for their souls " by the officers and soldiers
out of their booty, occupy the rest of the chapter.
The numbers of oxen, sheep, and asses are great
— six hundred and seventy-five thousand sheep,
seventy-two thousand beeves, sixty-one thou-
sand asses. No mention is made of horses or
camels. The girls saved alive are thirty-two thou-
sand. The army takes one half, and those who
remained in the camp receive the other. But of
the soldiers' portion, one in five hundred both of
the persons and of the animals is given to the
priests, and of the people's portion one in fifty to
the Levites. The jewels of gold, ankle-chains,
bracelets, signet-rings, earrings and armlets
offered by the men of war as their " atonement,"
not one of them having fallen in the battle,
amount in weight to sixteen thousand seven hun-
dred and fifty shekels, the value of which may
be estimated at some thirty thousand of our
pounds. The gold is brought into the tent of
meeting for a memorial before the Lord.
Now here we have to deal with an accumula-
tion of statements, every one of which raises
some question or other. The war of national
and moral antipathy is itself easily understood.
But the slaughter of so many in battle and so
many others in cold blood, the statement that
not a single Israelite fell, the number and kinds
of the animals captured, the order given by
Moses to put all the women to death, the quan-
tity of gold taken, of which the offering appears
only to have been a part — all of these points have
been criticised in a more or less incredulous
spirit. In apology it has been said, with regard
to the slaughter of the women, that when
brought as captives by the soldiers they could
not be received into the camp, and there was only
this way of dealing with them, unless indeed they
had been sent back to their ruined encampments,
where they would have slowly died. Again, it
has been explained that the Midianites were so
debased and enfeebled as to have no power to
withstand the onset of the Hebrews. The droves
of oxen, sheep, and asses are held to be not
greater than a wealthy nomadic clan, numbering
perhaps two hundred thousand, would be likely
to own; and the quantity of gold is likewise ac-
counted for by the well-known fact that among
Orientals the wealth represented by precious
metals is fashioned into ornaments for the wo-
men.
In detail the difficulties may thus be partly
overcome; yet the whole account remains so
singular, both in its spirit and incidents, that
Wellhausen has roundly declared it to be ficti-
tious, and others have had no resource but to
fall back, even for the slaughter of the women,
on the Divine command. It is true there were
other peoples, the Moabites, for instance, as
idolatrous, and almost as degraded. But a ter-
ror of Jehovah's name had to be created for the
moral good of the whole region, and the Midian-
ites, it is said, who had so grossly assailed the
purity of Israel, were fitly selected for Divine
chastisement. The opinion that the whole ac-
count is an invention of the " Priests' Code " may
be at once dismissed. The ideas of national
purity that prevailed after the exile and are in-
sisted upon in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah
would not have countenanced the dedication of
any spared from the slaughter, even young girls,
as a tribute to Jehovah. The attack and the is-
sue of it were, no doubt, recorded in the ancient
documents of which the compilers of the Book
of Numbers made use. And the fact must be
held to stand, that there was a grim slaughter
relentlessly carried out at the command of
Moses in accordance with the moral and theo-
cratic ideas that ruled his mind.
But it remains doubtful whether the numbers
can be trusted, even although they appear to be in
the substance of the narrative. The dispropor-
tion is enormous between the twelve thousand
Israelites sent against Midian and the number
of men who, if we accept the figures given, must
have fallen without striking one effective blow
for their lives. Of these there would have been
some forty thousand at least. Assuming that
somehow the numbers are exaggerated, we find
the story a good deal cleared. It was entirely
in harmony with the spirit of the age that a war
d ontrancc should have been commanded in the
circumstances. If, then, an adequate force of
Hebrews marched against the Midianites and
took them at unawares, perhaps by night, or
when they were engaged in some idolatrous
orgy, their defeat and slaughter would be com-
paratively easy. The Hebrews with Phinehas
among them were, we may believe, filled with
patriotic and religious ardour, assured that they
were commissioned to execute Divine justice
and must not shrink from any work that lay in
their way, however dreadful. Does the thing
they did still seem incredible? Perhaps the rec-
ollection of what took place after the Indian
Mutiny, when Great Britain was in the same
temper, may throw light upon the question. The
soldiers then, bent on punishing the cruelty and
lust of the rebels, partly in patriotism, partly in
revenge, set mercy altogether aside. If we had
the whole history of the war with Midian, in-
Ifumbers xxxi.]
WAR AND SETTLEMENT.
477
stead of the mere outlines preserved in Numbers,
we might find that, apart from figures, the state-
ments are by no means over-coloured. Moses
had the entire responsibility of ordering the wo-
men to be put to death. When he saw the train
of female captives, some of them possibly using
their arts of blandishment not without success,
he might well be afraid that the very end for
which the war had been undertaken was to be
frustrated. He was a man who did not scruple
to shed blood when the law of God and the
purity of morals and religion seemed to be en-
dangered. He knew Jehovah to be gracious-
gracious to those who loved Him and kept His
commandments. But was He not also a jealous
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generations
of them that hated Him? It was this God Moses
sought to serve when in the heat of his indigna-
tion, and not without reason, he gave the terrible
order.
The appropriation of some of the captive girls
to the priests and Levites as " Jehovah's tribute,"
the offering by the soldiers of part of their booty
as an " atonement " for their souls, the presence
en Phinehas with the " vessels of the sanctuary,"
and the sacred trumpets in the ranks — these
manifestly belong to the time to which the his-
tory refers. And it may be said in closing that
circumstances might be well known to Moses on
account of which the attack had to be made
promptly and the dispersion of the Midianites
had to be complete. We cannot tell what
Balaam may have been plotting; but we may be
pretty sure there was nothing too base for him
to scheme and the Midianites to carry into efifect.
They knew themselves to be under suspicion,
perhaps in danger. With what craft and vehe-
mence the Bedawin can act we are well aware.
Life even yet is of no account among them.
Another day, perhaps, and the ark might have
been carried off or Moses put to death in his
tent. But the nature of the wrong done to Is-
rael is a sufficient explanation of the war. And
we can also see that the Hebrews themselves had
a lesson in moral severity when their soldiers
went forth to the massacre and returned red with
blood. They learned that the sin of Midian was
abominable in the sight of God and should be
abominable in theirs. They were taught, whether
they received the teaching or not, that they were
to be enemies for ever of those who practised
idolatry so vile. A deep gulf was made between
them and all who sympathised with the worship
and customs of the tribe they destroyed.
And the whole circumstances, remote as they
are from our own time, may bring home even to
Christians the duty of moral decision and relent-
less war against the vices and lusts with which
too many are inclined to make terms. We
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against
the " wiles of error," the "lusts of deceit,"
against " fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divi-
sions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings
and such like," — the works of the flesh. These
Midianites are with us, would draw our hearts
yway from religion and destroy our souls. Not
only are we to assail the grosser forms of sin
and exterminate them, but we are with equal
severity to strike down the fair-seeming vices
that come with blandishment and insidious ap-
peal. This is our holy war. The old form of it
Jequired the suppression or extermination of
•31— Vol. 1.
those identified with vice, men and women, all
in whom the impurity was rooted. Young girls
alone could be spared, whose character might
still be shaped by a higher morality. Even yet,
to a certain extent, that way of dealing with evil
has to be followed. We imprison felons and put
murderers to death; but the new power that has
come with Christianity enables us to deal with
many transgressors as capable of reformation
and a new life. And this power is far as yet from
being fully developed.
It is the fault of our age to be on one side too
lenient, on another wanting in patience, charity,
and hope. Excuses are found for sin on the
ground that it is useless to fight against nature,
that we must not be hypocritical nor puritanical.
Temptations that come with mincing gait, ca-
jolery, and smiles, are allowed to disport them-
selves untouched. Why, it is asked, should life
be made sombre? A stern religion that would
banish gaiety is declared to be no friend of the
race. Under cover of art-^pictorial, dramatic,
literary — the customs of Midian are not only
admitted but allowed to have authority. And
religion even is invoked. Are not all things
pure to the pure? Should not life be as free and
joyous as the Maker clearly intends in giving us
the capacity for those gratifications to which art
of every kind ministers? Is not full freedom
indispensable to the highest religion? Ought
not genius, in every department, to have com-
plete liberty in guiding and developing the
race ;
Without hypocrisy, without banishing the
sunshine of life or denying the freedom which
is necessary to progress and vigour, we are to be
jealous for morality, severe against all that
threatens it. And here our age is impatient of
direction. The tendency is to a civilisation with-
out morality, that is, a new barbarism. The
strenuous mind of the old theocratic leaders is re-
quired anew, with a difference. Life and thought
have so far advanced under Christianity that
liberty is good in things which once had to be
sternly reprobated; but only the same guidance
will carry us higher. To those who lead in arts
and literature the appeal has to be made in the
name of God and men to regard the fitness of
things The old ideas of Puritanism are not to
be the standard? True. Neither are the tastes
of Greece nor the manners of Pompeii. Every
artist must, it appears, be his own censor. Let
each, then, use his right under a sense of re-
sponsibility to the God who would have all to be
pure and free. There are pictures exhibited, and
poems sent out from the press, and novels pub-
lished, which, for all the skill and charm that are
in them, ought to have been cast into the fire.
In private life, too, the Midianitish talk, the jest,
the anecdote, the innuendo, all but indecent, the
hint, the laugh that breaks down the barriers of
integrity and sobriety, show the license of a
barbarism which is bent on conquest. Every
Christian is called to wage against these immo-
ralities an exterminating war.
On the other hand, charity and patience are
needed. It is difficult to forbear with those who
seem to find their pleasure in what is evil, more
difficult to continue the efforts necessary to win
them to religion, purity, and honour. We feel
it a hard task to track our own unholy desires
to their retreats and slay them there. Proteus-
like they elude us; when we think they have been
destroyed, a passing word or thought revives
478 THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
them. And if in the task of our own purification rest overburdened, Churches often come far short
we need long patience, it is not wonderful that of the success they might attain. When Reuben-
even more should be required in the attempt to ites and Gadites devote themselves to building
set others free from their besetting sins. Much houses, cultivating fields, and rearing cattle,
of our philanthropy, again, is useless because neglecting altogether the command of God to
we try to cover too large a field. Few are en- conquer the territory still in the hands of His
gaged in comparison with the enormous region enemies, the spirit of religion cannot but decay,
over which effort has to extend, and we treat the The selfishness of worldly Christians reacts on
hurt slightly, with too much haste. Then we those who are not worldly, so that they feel its
grow despondent. Impatience, hopelessness, subtle influence, even although they scorn to
should never be known among those who under- yield. And when there is some great task to be
take the Divine work of saving men and women done which requires the personal service and
from their sins. But to cure this, new ideas on contributions of all, withdrawal of the less zeal-
the whole subject of Christian endeavour and ous may in this way make victory impossible.
new methods of work are required. The evil True, we have on the other side the case of
forces, a host arrayed against true life, must be Gideon and his rejection of the great bulk of his
followed into the desert places where they lurk, army, that he might take the field with a few
and there, with the sword of the Spirit, which who were brave and ready. Numbers of half-
is the bright strong word of God, attacked and hearted people do not help an enterprise. Still,
slain. When Christians are brave and loving the duties of the Church of Christ are so great
enough, when they have patience enough, the that all are required for them. It is no apology
gospel of purity will begin to have its power. to say that men are apathetic, and therefore use-
less. They ought to be eager for the Divine
war.
2. Settlement. It was not at all wonderful that the men Qi
Reuben and Gad proposed to settle on the east
Numbers xxxii. of Jordan. The soil of that region, extending
from the Jabbok Valley northwards, and in-
The request of the men of Reuben and Gad eluding the whole district watered by the Yar-
that they should be allowed to settle on the muk and its tributaries, was exceedingly fertile,
eastern side of Jordan in the land of Jazer and the with fine forests of oak, and stretches of meadow
land of Gilead was at first refused by Moses with and arable land. What could be seen of Judaea
warm displeasure. They appeared to wish ex- from the heights of Moab appeared poor and
emption from further military duty, if indeed barren in comparison with that green and fertile
they had not almost formed the intention of country. There was abundance of room there,
parting altogether with the rest of the tribes, not only for the two tribes, but for more; and
Moses asked of them, " Shall your brethren go besides the half of Manasseh which finally joined
to the war and shall ye sit here? And wherefore Reuben and Gad, other clans may have begun
discourage ye the heart of the children of Israel to think that they might rest content without
from going over into the land which the Lord venturing across Jordan. But Moses had good
hath given them?" He recalled the spies and reasons for resisting as far as possible this desire.
the evil report they brought, by which a former There was no natural boundary on the east of
generation had been disheartened and made to Gilead and Bashan. Moab, in a similar situation,
murmur against the Lord. The forty years of was exposed to the attacks and perhaps corrupted
wandering had intervened since that error — a by the influence of the Midianites. If Israel had
long period of suffering and punishment. And taken up its abode in this region which joined on
now with this request the men of Reuben and to the desert, it too would have become half a
Gad were playing the same dangerous part, desert people. The Jordan came, as no doubt
" Behold, ye are risen up in your fathers' stead, Moses foresaw, to be the real boundary of the
an increase of sinful men, to augment yet the nation which maintained the faith of Jehovah
fierce anger of the Lord toward Israel." and carried on His purposes.
It is somewhat surprising to find the proposal In danger of losing all because they had been
met in this way. But Moses had doubtless good too selfish, the men of Reuben and Gad made a
cause for his condemnation of the two tribes, new proposal. They would go with the rest to
For some time, we can believe, the notion had the conquest of Canaan; yea, they would form
been entertained, and already the cattle were the van of the army. If Moses would only allow
driven northwards and scattered over the past- them to provide sheep-folds for their flocks and
ures of Gilead. The people felt that the con- cities for their families, they would take the field
fraternity which had survived the test of the and never think of returning till the other tribes
wilderness journey was now about to break up. had all found settlement. The offer was one
And as the two clans that proposed to settle in which Moses saw fit to accept; but with a caution
Eastern Palestine were strong and could send a to the Reubenites. If they fulfilled the promise,
large number of warriors into the field, there was he said, they should be guiltless before the Lord;
reason to fear that the want of them would make but if they did not, their sin would be written
the conquest of the great tribes beyond Jordan against them. Foreseeing the result of a division
too heavy a task. between the east and west which any such
The circumstances were of a kind resembling faithless conduct would certainly cause, he added
those of a Church when the enjoyment of privi- the warning, " Be sure your sin will find you
lege and of the gains of the past is chosen by out." The time would come when, if they re-
many of its members, and the rest, discouraged fused to do their part in helping the rest, they
by this moral unbrotherliness, have to maintain should find themselves, in some day of extreme
the aggressive work which ought to be shared peril, without the sympathy of their brethren,
by all. The force of unity lost, the Christian the prey of enemies who came from the east and
energy of large numbers lying unemployed, the north.
Numbers xxxii.J
WAR AND SETTLEMENT.
479
Earthly comfort and the means of material
prosperity can never be enjoyed without spiritual
disadvantage, or at least the risk of spiritual loss.
The whole region of ease and wealth lies to-
wards the desert in which the adversaries of the
soul have their lurking-places, from which they
come stealthily or even boldly in open day to
make their assaults. A man who has large means
is exposed to the envy of others: his life may be
embittered by their designs upon him; his nature
may be seriously injured by the flattery of those
who have no power but only the base cunning
to which narrow self-love may descend. These,
however, are not the assailants that are most to
be dreaded. Rather should the man who is rich
fear the danger to his religion and his soul which
draws near in other ways. The wealthy who
have no religion court his friendship and propose
to him schemes for increasing his wealth. Al-
liances are urged upon him which stir and partly
gratify his ambition. He is pointed to honours
that can only be had through abandoning the
great ideas of life by which he should be ruled.
He is served obsequiously, and is tempted to
thmk that the world goes very well because he
enjoys all he desires, or is in the way to obtain
the fulfilment of his highest earthly hopes. The
curse of egotism hangs over him, and to escape
it he needs a double portion of the spirit of
humility. Yet how is that to come to him?
It is well for a man when, before enjoying the
good things of this life in abundance, he has
taken the field with those who have to fight a
hard battle, and has done his share of common
work. But even that is not enough to guard
him against pride and self-sufificiency for the
whole term of his existence. Better is it when by
his own choice the hardness is retained in his
experience, when he never discharges himself
from the duty of fighting side by side with others,
that he may help them to their inheritance. That
and that alone will save his life. He is called as
a soldier of God to maintain the holy war for
human rights, for the social well-being and spirit-
ual good of mankind. Every rich man should
be a friend of the people, a reformer, taking the
part of the multitude against his own tendency
and the tendency of his class to exclusiveness and
self-indulgence. The warning given by Moses
to Reuben and Gad in accepting their proposals
should linger with those who are rich and in
high station. If they fail to do their duty to
the general mass of their fellow-men, if they leave
the rest to fight, at disadvantage, for their hu-
man inheritance, they sin against God's law,
which calls for brotherhood, and that sin will
surely find them out. In the end no sin is more
sure to come home in judgment. And it is not by
some miserable gifts to religious objects or some
patronage of philanthropic schemes the pros-
perous can discharge the great debt laid upon
them. In whatever way the inequalities of life,
the disabilities of privilege and wealth, hinder
the realisation of brotherhood, there lie oppor-
tunity and need for men's personal effort. Would
this imply sacrifice of what are called rights, of
perhaps no small amount of substance? That is
precisely the saving of a rich man's life. To that
Christ pointed the rich young ruler who came to
Him seeking salvation — from that the inquirer
turned away.
And how does the sin of those who neglect
such high duties find them out? Perhaps in the
loss of the possessions they have selfishly
guarded, and their reduction to the level of those
whom they kept at arm's-length and treated as
inferiors or as enemies. Perhaps in the harsh'
ness of temper and bitterness of spirit the proud,
friendless rich man may find growing upon him
in old age, the horrible feeling that he has not
one brother where he should have had thousands,
no one to care — except selfishly — whether he
lives or dies. To come to that, so far as a man
is concerned with his fellow-men, is to be indeed
lost. But these retributions may be artfully es-
caped. What then? Is not One to be reckoned
with who is the Guardian of the human family
and gives men power and wealth only as His
stewards, to be used in His service? The future
life does not obliterate society, but it destroys
the class separations, the factitious distinctions,
that exist now. It brings a man face to face
with the fact that he is but a man, like others, re-
sponsible to God. Is not the result indicated by
our Lord when He says to exclusive Pharisaical
men, " They shall come from the east and west,
and from the north and south, and shall sit down
in the kingdom — ye yourselves cast forth with-
out"? Brotherhood here, not in name, but in
deed and truth, means brotherhood above. De-
nial of it here means unfitness for the society of
heaven.
We learn from ver. 19 that the Reubenites and
Gadites confidently affirmed, even when they
made their request to Moses, that their inherit-
ance had fallen to them on the east side of Jor-
dan. It may be asked how they knew, since the
division was not yet made. And the answer ap-
pears to be that they had made up their minds
on the subject. Without waiting for the lot, they
seem to have said. This is nobody's land now
that the Amorites and Midianites are dispos-
sessed. We will have it. And there was no
sufficient reason for refusing them their choice
when they accepted the conditions. At the same
time, these tribes did not act fairly and honour-
ably. And the result was that, although they
gained the fat land and the good pastures, they
lost the close fellowship with the other tribes
which was of greater value. Reuben, the pre;
mier tribe, could no longer keep its position. It
was by-and-by succeeded by Judah. Neither
Reuben nor Gad made any great figure in the
subsequent history. The half-tribe of Manasseh,
which was settled, not on its own request, but by
authority, in the northern part of Gilead to-
wards the Argob, had greater distinction. Gad
has some notice. We read of eleven valiant men
of this tribe who swam the Jordan at its highest
to join David in his trouble. " But no person,
no incident is recorded to place Reuben before
us in any distincter form than as a member of the
community (if community it can be called) of
the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe
of Manasseh. The very towns of his inheritance
— Heshbon, Aroer, Kiriathaim, Dibon, Baal-
meon, Sibmah, Jazer — are familiar to us as
Moabite, not as Israelite, towns." The Reuben-
ites, in fact, under the influence of their wild
neighbours, gradually lost touch with their
brethren and fell away from the religion of Je-
hovah.
It is a parable of the degeneration of life. —
Earthly choice rules and heavenly faith is haz-
arded for the sake of a temporal advantage. Men
have their will because they insist upon it. They
do not consult the prophet, but make terms with
him, that they may gain their end. But as they
48o
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
place themselves, so they have to live, not on the
soil of the promised land, no integral part of Is-
rael.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE WAY AND THE LOT.
Numbers xxxiii., xxxiv.
I. The itinerary of xxxiii. 1-49 is one of the
passages definitely ascribed to Moses. It opens
with the departure from Rameses in Egypt on
the morrow after the passover, when the children
of Israel " went out with an high hand in the
sight of all the Egyptians." The exodus is
made singularly impressive in this narrative by
the addition that it took place " while the Egyp-
tians were burying all their firstborn, which the
Lord had smitten among them." The Divine
salvation of Israel begins when the dark shadow
of loss and judgment rests on their oppressors.
The gods of Egypt are discredited by the triumph
of Jehovah's people. -They can neither save
their own worshippers nor prevent the servants
of another from obtaining liberty.
From Rameses, the place of departure, to Abel-
shittim, in the plains of Moab, forty-two stations
in all are given at which the Israelites pitched.
Of these about twenty-four are named either in
Exodus, in other parts of the Book of Numbers,
or in Deuteronomy. Some eighteen, therefore,
are mentioned in this passage and nowhere else.
Of the whole number, comparatively few have
as yet been identified. The Egyptian localities,
at least Rameses and Succoth, are known. With
the exit from Egypt, at the crossing of the Red
Sea difficulty begins. Our passage says that the
Israelites went three days' journey into the
wilderness of Etham; Exodus calls it the wilder-
ness of Shur. Then Marah and Elim bring the
travellers, according to chap, xxxiii., to the
Red Sea, the Yam Suph. Ordinarily, this is sup-
posed to be the Gulf of Suez, alongside which
the route would have lain from the day it was
crossed. There are, however, the best reasons
for believing that this " Red Sea " is the eastern
gulf, the Elanitic, as it must be in xiv. 25, where,
after the evil report of the spies, the Divine com-
mand is given: "To-morrow turn ye, and get
you into the wilderness by the way to the Red
Sea." From this identification of the Yam
Suph many things follow. And one is the rejec-
tion of the ordinary opinion regarding the posi-
tion of Sinai. The mountain of the law-giving
is always described as situated in Midian. Now,
Midian is beyond Elath, on the eastern side of
the Yam Suph, not in the peninsula between the
Gulfs of Suez and Akabah. Elim and Elath,
or Eloth, appear to be names for the same place,
at the head of the Gulf of Akabah. We have
therefore to look for Sinai either among the
southern hills of Seir or those lying more south-
ward still, towards the desert. In Deborah's
song (Judg. v. 4, 5) occur the following verses:
" Lord, when Thou wentest out of Seir,
When Thou marchedst out of the field of Edom,
The earth trembled, the heavens also dropped,
Yea, the clouds dropped water ;
..The mountains flowed down at the presence of the Lord,
Even yonSinai at the presence of the Lord, the God of
Israel."
In the same direction the " Prayer of Hab-
bakkuk " points (iii. 3, 7) :
"God came from Teman,
And the Holy One from Mount Paran.
His glory covered the heavens,
And the earth was full of His light. . .
I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction.
The curtains of the land of Midian did tremble."
The tradition which places Sinai in the south
of the peninsula between the two gulfs " is of
later origin than the lifetime of St. Paul, and
can claim no higher authority than the interested
fancies of ignorant coenobites. It throws into
confusion both the geography and the history
of the Pentateuch, and contradicts the definite
statements of the Old Testament." So the most
recent inquiry.
If Mount Sinai was somewhere to the south of
Edom, the journey thence to Kadesh by way of
Kibroth-hattaavah and Hazeroth, localities men-
tioned both in Num. xi. and xxxiii., may have
had other stations; and these may be named in
ver. ig of our passage and onward. But identi-
fication of the places is exceedingly doubtful till
we come to Ezion-geber, in the Arabah, and
Mount Hor. Deut. x. places the scene of
Aaron's death at Mosera, which seems to be the
same as Moseroth, and is there given along with
other stations named in the itinerary — Bene-
jaakan, Gudgodah (= Hor-haggidgad), Jot-
bathah. And this seems to prove that these
localities were in or near the Arabah, Moseroth
being in the region of Mount Hor. But where
Kadesh is to be found between Rithmah and
Moseroth, and under what name, it is impossible
to say. Keil argues for Rithmah itself. Palmer
reckons twenty stations to the first arrival at Ka-
desh. His map, however, shows a Mount Sheraif,
which may be the same as Shepher, not far from
Gadis, which he identifies with Kadesh. For the
rest we are left in great ignorance, relieved only
by this, that at the most there are but eighteen
stations given, more probably thirteen, for the
whole thirty-seven years between the first arrival
at Kadesh and the death of Aaron at Mount Hor;
and five or six of these were on the Arabah.
During the whole of that long period there were
only a few removals of the tabernacle, and those
apparently within a limited area near Kadesh.
A list of names with only three historical
notes appears a singular memorial of the forty
years. Time was, no doubt, when the places
named were all well known, and any Israelite
desiring to satisfy himself as to the route by
which his forefathers went could make it out by
help of this passage. To us the interest of the
subject is partly the same as that which might
have been found by a Hebrew, say, of the time of
Hezekiah, for whom the verification of the
wilderness journey might be a help to faith. But
the impossibility of identifying the localities
shows that there are matters in the history of
Israel which are of no particular importance now.
There is more danger in seeking to gratify mere
curiosity, than profit in any possible discoveries.
Why should not the mountain of the law-giving
be hid in the bhadows as well as the grave in
which Moses was laid? Why should not the
places at which Israel encamped be to us mere
names, since, if we could identify them, it might
only be to add fresh difficulties instead of clear-
ing away those that exist? The Israelites who
entered Canaan had not seen all the way by
which Jehovah led His people. When they
Numbers xxxiii., xxxiv.]
THE WAY AND THE LOT.
481
crossed the Jordan, present duty was to engage
them, not the mere names that belonged to the
past. They were to forget the things behind,
and stretch forward to the things which were
before. And duty is the same still. Our back-
ward glance, especially on the actual path from
one spot of earth to another by which men have
gone in trial and anticipation, must not hinder
the efforts called for by the circumstances of our
own time. The way of the desert, especially,
may well lie half obliterated in the distance, since
we know the spiritual fruit of the dealings of
God with Israel, and can bear it with us as we
follow our own road.
The ideas of change and urgency are in our
passage. The wilderness journey was taken by
a people on whom Divine influences had laid
hold, who of themselves would have remained
content in Egypt, but were not suffered, because
God had some greater thing in store for them.
The urgency throughout was His. And so is
that which we ourselves feel hurrying us from
change to change, from place to place. We may
noi be in the wilderness, but in a spot of shelter
and comfort; and it may be no house of bondage,
but a vantage-ground for generous effort. Even
when we are thus happily settled, as we imagine,
the call comes, and we must strike our tents.
At other times our own anxiety anticipates the
command. But we know that always, whether
we pass into sterner conditions of life or escape
to more pleasant circumstances, the times and
changes that happen to us are of God's appoint-
ing, that His providence urges us toward a goal.
And this means that our reaching the goal must
be by His way, although pfoperly we endeavour
to find it for ourselves.
The number of the stations at which Israel
encamped in the course of forty years can
scarcely be taken as representing the number of
changes from dwelling to dwelling any pilgrim
through this world shall have to make. But if
we think of halting-places and movements of
thought, we shall have a fruitful parallel. From
the twentieth to the sixtieth year — may we not
say? — is the time of journeying that takes the
mind from its first freedom to comparative rest.
Not far on the Divine law-giving impresses itself
on the conscience; and hence a direct road may
appear to lead into the peace of obedience. But
the stations successively reached, Kibroth-
hattaavah, Hazeroth, Rithmah, and the rest, rep-
resent each a peculiar difficulty encountered, a
barrier to our steady progress towards the set-
tled mind. St. Paul indicates one he found when
he says: " I had not known coveting, except
the law had said, Thou shalt not covet." An-
other halt is imposed when it is found that the
law appears to forbid what is according to na-
ture; still another when obedience requires sepa-
ration from those who have been valued friends
and pleasant companions. These hindrances left
behind as the soul, still confiding and hopeful,
is urged on towards the goal, a great trial like
that of Kadesh follows. We are not far from
the frontier of promisej and anticipations are
formed of many delights for heart and life. Is
not obedience to bring felicity, an easy salvation
from doubt and fear? But it becomes plain that
there are enemies to faith and peace beyond the
border as well as in the region already crossed.
Complete conformity to the Divine will has not
been achieved. Will it ever be achieved? We
begin to doubt the result of law-keeping. There
is perhaps a backward look to Sinai, implying
a question whether God spoke there, or beyond
Sinai, to the old traditional way of life. And so
another term of difficult inquiry begins.
In this way many find themselves held for a
long period of middle life. Their minds move
from one point to another without seeming to
make any progress. But neither does rest come.
It is seen that partial obedience, a measure of
nearness to the perfection once dreamed of, will
not suffice. Then arises the question whether
obedience can ever save. There is return al-
most to Sinai itself, at least to a place from
which its peak is seen and the mind is confirmed
as to the inexorability of law. So the urgency of
the Divine will is felt, and the way is fixed. If
the soul would make its own way into peace,
it is driven back. For, perhaps, it would have
the difficulty solved by taking the way of a.
Church, accepting-a creed — as Israel would have
passed through the territory of Edom. This
also is forbidden. Trusted helpers fall by the
way, as Aaron died at Hor, and there is sorrow-
ful delay. But movement is enforced; and,
finally, it is by a road that reveals Sinai and the
law in quite another aspect, showing vital faith,
not mere obedience, to be the means of salvation,
our progress is made. Round the borders of
Edom, not by trust in creed or Church, but by
confidence in God Himself, the soul must ad-
vance. Then strength comes. Point after point
is reached and passed. Self-righteousness, pride,
and Pharisaism — Amorites of the mountain land
— are overcome. At length through the faith of
Christ peace is found, the peace that is possible
on this side of the river.
It is our high privilege to be urged and led on
thus by Him who knows the way we should take,
who tries us that we may come forth purified as
gold. Without Divine pressure we should con-
tent ourselves in the desert and never see the
real good of life. So many lose themselves be-
cause they will not admit that to be of the truth
is necessary to salvation. There is a way of
thinking, or rather refusing to think, of spiritual
verities which keeps the soul unaware of the
purpose God would carry into effect, or indiffer-
ent to it. The mind refuses its duty; and in the
midway of life the spiritual goal fades from view.
To guard against this taking place in the case of
any one is the office of the Gospel ministry. If
evangelical preaching does not keep thought
awake and attentive to Divine inspirations, if it
does not speak to those who are in every stage
of perplexity, at every possible camping-ground,
it fails of its high purpose.
2. Commandment is given that when the Is-
raelites pass over Jordan they shall use effectual
means for establishing themselves as the people
of Jehovah in Canaan. They are, for one thing,
to drive out before them all the inhabitants of
the land. Nothing is here said of putting them
all to the sword; only they are not to be left even
in partial occupation. The plan of Israel's settle-
ment in its new territory requires that it shall be
subject to no alien influence, and shall have the
field entirely to itself for the development of
customs, civilisation, and religion. And in this
there is nothing either impossible or, as the ideas
of the time went, strange and cruel. We do not
need to take refuge in the command of God and
defend it by saying that He had absolute right
over the lives of the Canaanites. The tides of
482
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
war and population were continually flowing and
receding. When the Israelites reached Canaan,
they had the same right as others to occupy it,
jjrovided they could make their right good at the
point of the sword. Yet for their own special
consciousness the command given by Moses in
Jehovah's name was most important. It was
only as His people they were to advance, and as
His people they were to dwell separate in
Canaan.
To drive out all the inhabitants of the land
was, however, a difficult task; and even Moses
might not intend the order to be literally obeyed.
We have seen that he did not require the destruc-
tion of the Midianites to be absolute. In the
wars of conquest in Canaan cases of a similar
kind would necessarily arise. When a tribe was
driven out of its cities many would be left behind,
some of whom would conceal themselves and
gradually venture from their hiding-places. The
command was general, and could scarcely be sup-
posed to require the putting to death of all chil-
dren. And again, as we know, there were fort-
resses which for a long time defied attempts to
reduce them. The Israelites were not so faithful
to God that Moses could expect their success to
be insured by supernatural aid. It is the con-
stant purpose they are to have in view, to sweep
the land clear of those presently in occupation.
As they establish themselves, this will be carried
out; and if they fail, allowing any of the tribes
to remain, these will be as pricks in their eyes
and as thorns in their sides.
The will of God that Israel, called to special
duty in the world, was to keep itself separate,
is here strongly emphasised. It was the only way
by which faith could be preserved and made
fruitful. For the Canaanites, already civilised
and in many of the arts superior to the Hebrews,
had gross polytheistic beliefs imbedded in their
customs, and a somewhat elaborate cultus which
was observed throughout the whole land.
" Figured stones," which by their shape or in-
cised emblems conveyed religious ideas; molten
images, probably of bronze, like those found at
Tel el Hesy, which were for household use, or of
a larger size for tribal adoration; " high places "
crowned by altars and sacrificial stones, were es-
pecially to be destroyed. The tendency to poly-
theism required to be carefully guarded against,
for the gods of Canaan represented the powers
of nature, and their rites celebrated the fruitful-
ness of earth under the lordship of Baal or Bel,
and the mysterious processes of life associated
with the influence of Astarte, the moon. The
divinities of Egypt also appear to have had their
worshippers; and, indeed, the mixed population
of the land had drawn from every neighbouring
region symbols, rites, and practices supposed to
propitiate the unseen powers on whose favour
human life must depend. Israel could prosper
only by rejecting and extirpating this idolatry.
Allowed to survive in any degree, it would be
the cause of physical suffering and spiritual
decay.
The command thus ascribed to Moses was
again one which he must have known the Is-
raelites would find difficult to carry out, even if
they were cordially disposed to obey it. The
sacred places of a country like Canaan tend to
retain their reputation even when the rites fall
into disuse: and however expeditiously the work
of sv/eeping away the original inhabitants might
be done, there was no small danger that knowl-
edge of the cult as well as veneration for the
high places would be learned by the Hebrews.
The command was made clear and uncompromis-
ing so that every Israelite might know his duty;
but the difficulty and the peril remained. And
as we know from the Book of Judges and subse-
quent history, the law, especially in regard to the
demolition of high places, became practically a
dead letter. Jehovah was worshipped at the an-
cient places of sacrifice; and so far were even
pious Israelites of the next few centuries from
thinking they did wrong in using those old altars,
that Samuel fell in with the custom. It was true
in regard to this commandment as it is with
regard to many others, — the high mark of duty
is presented, but few aim at it. Expediency
rules, the possible is made to suffice instead of
the ideal. There is reason to believe, not only
that the images and stone symbols of Canaan
were venerated, but that Jehovah Himself was
worshipped by many of the Hebrews under the
form of some animal. And the Canaanites be-
came to those who fraternised with them as
pricks in their eyes. Spiritual vision failed; faith
fell back on the coarse emblems used by the old
inhabitants of the land. Then the vigour of the
tribes decayed and they were judged and pun-
ished.
3. The boundaries of the land in which the
Israelites were to dwell are laid down in ch.
xxxiv. ; but, as elsewhere, there is difficulty in fol-
lowing the geography and identifying the old
names. The south quarter is to be " from the
wilderness of Zin along by the side of Edom "
— that is to say, it 'is to include the region of
Zin near Kadesh and extend to the mountains
of Seir. The " ascent of Akrabbim " is appar-
ently the Ghor rising southwards from the Dead
Sea. The line then runs along the Arabah for
some distance, say fifty miles, across by the
south of the Azazimeh hills and of Kadeslr
Barnea towards the stream called the river or
brook of Egypt, which it followed to its debouch-
ment in the Mediterranean. The western bound-
ary was the Mediterranean or Great Sea for a
distance of perhaps one hundred and sixty miles.
The northern boundary is exceedingly obscure.
They were to keep in view a " mount Hor " as a
landmark; but no two geographers can be said
to agree where it was. The " entering in of
Hamath " is also a locality greatly disputed.
Most likely it was some well-known part of the
road leading along the Leontes valley to that of
the Orontes. If wc take the mount Hor here in-
dicated to be Hermon. a line running west and
striking the Mediterranean somewhere north of
Tyre would be a natural boundary, and would
correspond fairly with the actual partition and
occupation of the country. It is certain, how-
ever, that both the Philistines and Phoenicians,
especially the latter, were so strongly established
in the southern and northern parts of the sea-
board that any attempt to dispossess them was
soon discovered to be futile. And even in the
limited central range from Kedesh Naphtali to
Beersheba the settlement was only eflfected
gradually.
The Canaan of the Divine promise marked out,
yet never fully possessed, is a symbol of the
region of this life which those who believe in
God have assigned to them, but never entirely
enjoy. There are boiuidaries within which
there is abundant room for the development of
Numbers xxxv., xxxvi.]
THE CITIES OF REFUGE.
483
the life of faith. It is not, as the world reckons,
a district of great resources. As Canaan had
neither gold nor silver, neither coal nor iron
mines, as its seaboard was not well supplied with
harbours, nor its rivers and lakes of great use for
inland navigation, so we may say the life open
to the Christian has its limitations and disabili-
ties. It does not invite those who seek pleasure.
wealth, or dazzling exploits. Within it, disci-
pline is to be found rather than enjoyment of
earthly good. The " milk and honey " of this
land are spiritual symbols, Divine sacraments.
There is room for the development of life in every
branch of study and culture, but in subordination
to the glory of God, and for the testimony that
should be borne to His majesty and truth.
Many of us affect to despise so narrow a range
of thought and endeavour, and persist in believing
that something more than discipline may be
looked for in this world. Is there not a proper
kingdom of humanity better than any kingdom of
God? May not the race of men, apart from any
service paid to an Unseen God, attain dignity of
its own, power, gladness, magnificence? It is
supposed that by rejecting all the limitations of
religion and refusing the outlook to another life
the united labour of men will make this life free
and this earth a paradise. But it remains true
that men must limit their hopes with regard to
their own future here as individuals and the
future of the race. We must accept the bound-
aries God has fixed, on one side the swift Jordan,
on the other the Great Sea. There are seem-
ingly rich fields beyond, wide regions that in-
vite the tastes and senses, but these are no part
of the soul's inheritance; to explore and reduce
them would bring no real gain.
The range that lies open to us as servants of
God, and affords ample space for the discipline
of life, is often not used and therefore not
enjoyed. When people will not accept the in-
evitable fixed limits within which their time and
vigour can be occupied to the best advantage,
when they look covetously to districts of experi-
ence not meant for them, as Israel did at certain
periods of her history, their life is spoiled. Dis-
content begins, envy follows. Where in seeking
and reaching moral gains, purity, courage, love,
there would have been a continual sense of ade-
quate result and encouraging prospect, there is
now no gain, no pleasure. The appointed lot
is despised, and all it can yield held in contempt.
How many there are who, with a full river of
Divine bounty on one side their life, and the
great ocean of the Divine faithfulness ebbing and
flowing on the other, with the pastures and olive-
groves of the Word of God to nourish their soul,
with access to His city and sanctuary, and an out-
look from summits like Tabor and Hermon to a
transfigured life in the new heavens and earth,
speak nevertheless with scorn and bitterness of
their heritage! They might be reaching "the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."
but they remain graceless and discontented to the
end. Israel, understanding its destiny and using
its opportunities aright, might well say — and so
may every one who knows the truth as it is in
Jesus Christ — " the lines are fallen unto me in
pleasant places: yea, I have a goodly heritage."
But this gladness of heart has its root in believing
content. The restricted land is full of God's
promise: "Thou maintainest my lot." The se-
curity of Jehovah's word encompasses the man
of faith.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE CITIES OF REFUGE.
Numbers xxxv., xxxvi.
I. The inheritance of the Levites. The
order relating to the Levitical cities may be said
to describe an ideal settlement. We have, at all
events, no evidence that the command was ever
fully carried out. It was to the effect that in
forty-eight cities, scattered throughout the whole
of the tribes in proportion to their population,
dwellings were to be allotted to the Levites, who
were also to have the suburbs of those cities;
that is to say, the fields lying immediately about
them, " for their cattle, and for their substance,
and for all their beasts." It is assumed that
closely surrounding each of the cities there shall
be pasturage, and that a regular or fairly regular
boundary can be made at the distance of one
thousand cubits from the city. Singularly, noth-
ing whatever is said as to the duties of the Le-
vites thus distributed throughout the land on
both sides Jordan, from Kedesh Naphtali in the
north, to Debir in the south, according to Josh.
xxi. It is not said that they were to perform
any ecclesiastical functions or instruct the people
in the Divine Law. Yet something of the kind
must have been intended, since many of them
were at a great and inconvenient distance from
Shiloh and other places at which the ark was
stationed.
According to this statute, there is, for one
thing, to be no seclusion of the Levites from the
rest of the people. If clergy and laity, as we say,
are distinguished, the distinction is made as
small as possible. From the terms of the pres-
ent order (xxxv. 2, ff.) it might appear that the
towns given to the Levites were to be occupied
by them exclusively. In parallel passages, how-
ever, it is clear that the Levites dwelt along with
others in the cities; and in this way, as well as
by engaging in pastoral work, they were kept
closely in touch with the men of the tribes. The
land allotted to them was not sufficient for farms;
but the tithes and offerings were to a large ex-
tent for their support. And the arrangement
thus sketched is held with some reason to be an
ideal for every order of men called to similar
duty. The Levites, indeed, were not at first
spiritual. Neither the nature of their work at the
sanctuary, nor the conditions of their life, im-
plied any special consecration of heart. But the
general tone of a religious ministry advances;
and even in David's time there were Levites who
served God in no mere routine, but with earnest
mind, with a measure of inspiration. The ordin-
ance here is in behalf of a consecrated order de-
voted to the service of God.
The suburbs, or pasture lands about the cities,
are measured a thousand cubits broad, and are
to be two thousand cubits along each of the
four boundaries. If the figures given are correct
it would seem that, although the wall of the city
is spoken of, the measurement must really have
begun in the centre of the city: otherwise there
could never have been a square of land, cities
not taking that form; nor could a boundary of
two thousand cubits on each aspect, north, south,
east, and west, be made out. The cities must
often have been small, a cluster of poor huts
built of clay or rude brick, with a wall of similar
484
THE BOOK OF NUMBERS.
material. We need imagine no stately dwellings
or fine pleasure grounds when we read here of
the provision for the Levites. Within the wall
they had their bare, mean cottages; outside, there
might be a breadth of perhaps four hundred
yards of poor enough ground which they could
claim. But as the tithes were not always paid,
so the dwellings and the pasturage may not al-
ways have been allotted. There is not much
reason to wonder that in a short time after the
settlement in Canaan the Levites, finding no
special work at the sanctuary, and obtaining little
support from the ofiferings, gradually became
part of the tribes in which they happened to have
their abode. Hence we read in Judges (xvii.
7) of " a young man out of Bethlehem-judah, of
the family of Judah, who was a Levite."
The main purpose of the present statute, so far
as it refers to the dwellings of the Levites, would
appear to have been economic, not religious. It
was that all the tribes might have their share of
maintaining the servants of the sanctuary. But
it seems likely that a class half priestly would, in
lack of other duty, attach itself to the high places,
and set up a worship not contemplated by the
law. And if this is to be regarded as a mis-
fortune, the choice of -the Levitical cities is in
some cases difficult to account for. Kedesh in
Naphtali had been a famous holy place of the
Canaanites; so probably were others, as Gibeon,
Shechem, Gath-rimmon. The special symbol of
Jehovah was the ark; and where the ark was the
principal national rites were always performed.
But in a time of pioneer work and constant
alarms the central sanctuary could not always
be visited, and the Levites appear to have lent
themselves to worship of a local kind.
An ecclesiastical order needs great faithfulness
if it is not to become irreligious through poverty,
or proud and domineering through assumption of
power with God. To live poorly as those Le-
vites were expected to live, without the oppor-
tunity of earthly gain, while often the share of
national support which was due fell to a very low
and wholly inadequate amount, would try the
fidelity of the best of them. No large claim need
be made in behalf of men specially engaged in
the work of the Christian Church; and great
wealth seems inappropriate to those who repre-
sent Christ. But what is their due should at least
be paid cheerfully, and the more so if they give
earnest minds to the service of God and man.
With all faults that have at various periods of the
Church's history stained the character of the
clergy, they have maintained a testimony on be-
half of the higher life, and the sacredness of duty
to God. A materialistic age will make light of
that service, and point to ecclesiastical pride and
covetousness as more than counterbalancing any
good that is done. But a broad and fair survey
of the course of events will show that the wit-
ness-bearing of a special class to religious ideas
has kept alive that reverence on which morality
depends. True, the ideal of a theocracy would
dispense with an order set apart to teach the
law of God and to enforce His claims on men.
But for the times that now are, even in the most
Christian country, the witness-bearing of a gos-
pel ministry is absolutely needful. And we may
take the statute before us as anticipating a
general necessity, that necessity which the apos-
tles of our Lord met when they ordained pres-
byters in every Church, and gave them com-
mission to feed the flock of God.
2. The Cities of Refuge. Among the forty-
eight cities that provide dwellings for the Le-
vites, six are to be cities of refuge, " that the
man-slayer which killeth any person unwittingly
may flee thither." Three of these cities are to be
on the east and three on the west side of Jordan.
According to other enactments they are to be
distributed so as to be reached quite easily from
all parts of the country. They were sanctuaries
for any one fleeing from the " avenger of
blood"; but the protection found in them was
not by any means absolute. Only if there ap-
peared to be good cause for admitting a fugitive
was he afforded refuge even for a time, and his
trial followed as soon as possible. The laws of
protection and judgment are here laid down not
fully, though with some detail.
We notice first that the statutes regarding the
manslayer are frankly based on the primitive
practice of blood revenge. It was the duty of the
nearest male relation of one who had been slain
to seek the blood of the man who slew him.
The duty was held to be one which he owed to
his brother, to the community, and to God; and
the principle of retribution in such cases was
embodied in the saying, " Whoso sheddeth man's
blood, by man shall his blood be shed." The
goel, or redeemer, whose part it was to recover
for a family land that had been alienated, or a
member of the family who had fallen into slavery,
had it also laid on him to seek justice on behalf
of the family when one belonging to it had been
killed. The evils of this method of punishing
crime are very evident. All the heat of personal
affection for the man put to death, the keen de-
sire to maintain the honour of family or clan,
and the bitter hatred of the tribe to which the
homicide belonged, made the pursuit of the crim-
inal swift and the stroke fierce and unrelenting.
A goel put on a false track might easily strike to
the ground an innocent person; and he would
feel himself bound to incur all risks in avenging
his kinsman. Often whole tribes of Arabs are
involved in the blood feud beginning in a single
stroke, and wherever the custom prevails there is
the gravest danger of wide and sanguinary strife.
The enactments of our passage are intended to
counteract in part these abuses and dangers.
We may wonder that the Hebrew law, enlight-
ened on many points, did not wholly abolish the
practice of blood revenge. Justice is not the
private affair of any man, even the nearest kins-
man of one who has been injured. We have
learned that the administration of law, especially
in cases of murder or supposed murder, is best
taken out of the hands of a private avenger,
whose aim is to strike as soon and as eflFectually
as possible. It remains of course for those
whose friend has died by violence to institute in-
quiries and do their utmost to bring the criminal
to justice. But even when a man's guilt seems
clear his trial is before an impartial judge by
whom all relevant facts are elicted. In Hebrew
law there was no complete provision for such an
administration of justice. The ancient custom
could not be easily set aside, for one thing; the
passionate Oriental nature would cling to it.
And for another, there was no organisation for
repressing disorder and dealing with crime. A
certain risk had to be run. in order that the
sanctity of human life might be clearly kept
before a people too ready to strike as well as to
curse. But if the man-slayer was able to reach
a city of refuge he had his trial. The old custom
Numbers xxxv., xxxvi.]
THE CITIES OF REFUGE.
485
was checked by the right of the fugitive to claim
sanctuary and to have his case investigated.
As for the sanctuary cities, there may also
have been some imperfect custom which antici-
pated them. In Egypt there certainly was- and
the Canaanites, who had learned not a little from
Egypt, may have had sacred places that aflforded
protection to the fugitive. But the Mosaic law
prevented abuse of the means of evading justice.
He who had killed another was a criminal be-
fore God. The blood of the brother he had slain
defiled the land and cried to Heaven. No sanc-
tuary must protect a man who had with homi-
cidal purpose struck another. There was to be
neither priestly protection, nor sanctuary, nor
ransom for him. The Divine principle of justice
took up the cause.
In vv. 16 flf. there are examples of cases which
are adjudged to be murder. To smite one with
an instrument of iron, or with a stone grasped
in the hand presumably large enough to kill, or
with a weapon of wood, a heavy club or bar, is
adjudged to be deliberate homicide. Then if
hatred can be proved, and one known to have
cherished enmity towards another is shown to
have thrust him down, or hurled at him, lying in
wait, or to have smitten him with the hand, such
a one is to be allowed no sanctuary. On the
other hand, the cases of inadvertent homicide are
defined: " if he thrust him suddenly without
enmity, or hurled upon him anything without
lying in wait, or with any stone, whereby a man
may die, seeing him not." These, of course, are
simply instances, not exhaustive categories.
It is not here stated, but in Josh. xx. 4 the
statute runs that the man-slayer who fled to a
sanctuary city was to state his cause before the
elders, no doubt at the gate. Their preliminary
decision had to be given in his favour before
he could be admitted. But the real trial was by
the " congregation," Numb. xxxv. 24, some as-
sembly representing the tribe within whose ter-
ritory the crime has been committed, or more
likely a gathering of headmen of the whole na-
tion. Further, at ver. 30 it is enacted that the
charge of the avenger of blood against any one
must be substantiated by two witnesses at least.
These provisions form the basis of a sound judi-
cial method. The rights of refuge and of revenge
stand opposed to each other, and between the
two a large and authoritative court gives judg-
ment. It will be observed, moreover, that the
judiciary was not ecclesiastical. Where power
was to be exercised in the name of God, the
priests were not to wield it, but the people. The
form of government is far nearer a democracy
than a hierocracy.
A singular point in the law is the term during
which the unwitting man-slayer who had been
acquitted by the court of justice must remain in
sanctuary. He is in danger of being put to
death by the avenger of blood until the acting
high priest dies. Till that event he must keep
within the border of his city of refuge. And
here the idea seems to be that the official memory
of the crime which had ceremonially defiled the
land rested with the high priest. He was sup-
posed to keep in mind, on God's behalf, the
bloodshed which even though unintentional was
still polluting. His death accordingly obliterated
the recollection that kept the man-slayer under
peril of the goel's revenge. The high priest had
no power to acquit or condemn a criminal, nor
to enforce against him the punishment of his
fault. But he was the guardian of the sacredness
of the land in the midst of which Jehovah dwelt.
With regard to the symbolical meaning of the
cities of refuge, it is needful to exercise great
care at every point. The man-slayer, for in-
stance, fleeing from the avenger of blood, is not
a type of the sinner fleeing for his life from the
justice of God. If guilty of murder, a man
could find no safety even in the city of refuge.
It was only if he was not guilty of premeditated
crime that he found sanctuary. The refuge cities,
however, represented Divine justice as in contrast
to the justice or rather the vengeance of man —
that Divine justice which Christ came to reveal,
giving Himself for us upon the cross. Human
righteousness errs sometimes by excess, some-
times by defect. Certain offences it would never
condemn, others it would passionately and re-
morselessly punish. The sanctuary cities show
a higher idea of justice. But all men are guilty
before God. And there is mercy with Him not
only for the unwitting transgressor, but for the
man who has to confess deliberate sin, the for-
feiture of his life to Divine law.
The singular opinion has been expressed that
the death of the high priest was expiatory. This
is said to be " unmistai.ably evident " from the
addition of the clause, " who has been anointed
with the holy oil " (ver. 25). The argument is
that as the high priest's life and work " acquired
a representative signification through this anoint-
ing with the Holy Ghost, his death might also be
regarded as a death for the sins of the people
by virtue of the Holy Ghost imparted to him,
through which the unintentional man-slayer re-
ceived the benefits of the propitiation for his sins
before God, so that he could return cleansed to
his native town without further exposure to the
vengeance of the avenger of blood." And thus,
it is said, " The death of the earthly high priest
became a type of that of the Heavenly One, who
through the eternal Spirit offered Himself with-
out spot to God, that we might be redeemed from
our transgressions." But although many of the
Rabbins and fathers held this view as to the
expiatory nature of the high priest's death, there
is absolutely nothing in Scripture or reason to
support it. All the expiation, moreover, which
the Mosaic law provided for was ceremonial. If
the death of the high priest was efhcacious only
so far as his functions were, then there could be
no atonement or appearance of atonement for
moral guilt, even that of culpable homicide for
instance. The death of the high priest was there-
fore in no sense a type of the death of Christ,
the whole meaning of which lies in relation to
moral, not ceremonial, offences.
While it cannot be said that " light is thrown
by the provisions regarding cities of refuge on
the atonement of Christ "—for that would be the
morning star shedding light on the sun— still
there are some points of illustration; and one
of thtLC liiay be noted. As the protection of the
sanctuary city extended only to the boundaries
or precincts belonging to it, so the defence the
sinner has in Christ can be enjoyed only so far
as life is brought within the range of the influence
and commands of Christ. He who would be safe
must be a Christian. It is not mere profession of
faith—" Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in
Thy name?"— but hearty obedience to the laws
of duty coming from Christ that gives safety.
" Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God s
elect?"— and the elect are those who yield the
486
THE BOOK LF NUMBERS.
fruit of the Spirit, who are lovers of God and
their fellow-men, who show their faith by their
works. It is a misrepresentation of the whole
teaching of Scripture to declare that salvation
can be had, apart from life and practice, in some
mystical relation with Christ which is hardly
even to be stated in words.
3. Tribal Inheritance. Already we have
heard the appeal of the daughters of Zelophehad
to be allowed an inheritance as representing their
father. Now a question which has arisen re-
garding them must be solved. The five women
have not cared to undertake the work of the up-
land farm allotted to them, somewhere about the
head waters of the Yarmuk. They have, in fact,
as heiresses been somewhat in request among the
young men of diflferent tribes; and they are al-
most on the point of giving their hands to hus-
bands of their choice. But the chiefs of the
family of Manasseh to which they belong find
a danger here. The young women may perhaps
choose men of Gad, or men of Judah Then
their land, which is part of the land of Manasseh
will go over to the tribes of the husbands.
1 here will be a few acres of Judah or of Gad in
the north of Manasseh's land. And if other
young women throughout the tribes, who happen
to be heiresses, marry according to their own
liking, by-and-by the tribe territories will be all
confused. Is this to be allowed? If not how
IS the evil to be prevented.^
The national centre and general unity of Is-
rael could not in the early period be expected to
suthce. Without tribal coherence and a sense of
corporate life in each family the Israelites would
be lost among the people of the land. Especially
would this tend to take place on the eastern side
of Jordan and in the far north. Now the clan
unity went with the land. It was as those dwell-
ing in a certain district the descendants of one
progenitor realised their brotherhood. Hence
there was good reason for the appeal of the
Manassites and the legislation that followed.
VVomen who succeeded to land were to marry
within the families of their fathers. Men were
apparently not forbidden to marry women of
another tribe if they were not heiresses. But the
possession of land by women carried with it a
responsibility and deprived them of a certain part
of freedom. Every daughter who had an inherit-
ance was to be wife to one of her near kin; so
should no inheritance remove from one family
to another; the tribes should cleave every one to
his own inheritance.
The exigencies of the early settlement appear
to have required this law; and it was maintained
5J= tTir as possible, so that he who lived in a
certain region might know himself not only a
Reubenite or a Benjamite as the case might be
but a son of Hanoch of the Reubenites, or a son
of Ard aniong the Benjamites. But we may
doubt whether the unity of the nation was not de-
ayed by the nieans used to keep the land for each
tribe and each tribe on its own land The ar-
rangement was perhaps inevitable; yet it cer-
tainly belonged to a primitive social order The
homogeneity of the people would have been
helped and the tribes held more closely together
by interchange of land. In every law made at
an early stage of a people's development there is
involved something unsuitable to after periods
And perhaps one error made by the Israelites was
to cling too long and too closely to tribal descent
and make too much of genealogy. The enact-
ment regarding the marriage of heiresses within
their own families was an old one, bearing the
authority of Moses. There came a time when it
should have been revoked and everything done
c .* u^^ possible to weld the tribes together
u. ^,?'^ ^."stoms held; and what was the re-
sult? The tribes east of Jordan, as well as Dan
and Asher, were well-nigh lost to the Con-
tederacy at an early date. Subsequently a divi-
sion began between the northern and southern
peoples We cannot doubt that partly for want
ot tamily alliances between Judah and Ephraim
and subordination of tribal to national senti-
ment, there came the separation into two king-
doms. ®
For the tribe idea and the other of making in-
heritance of land a governing matter, the Israel-
ites would seem to have paid dearly. And there
IS danger still in the attempt to make a nation
cohere on any mere territorial basis. It is the
spirit, the fidelity to a common purpose, and
the pervasive enthusiasm that give real unity
It these are wanting, or if the general aim is low
and material, the security of families in the soil
may be exceedingly mischievous. At the same
time the old feeling is proved to have a deep root
in fact. Territorial solidarity is indispensable to
a nation; and the exclusion of a people from
large portions of its land is an evil intolerable
Christianity has not done its work where the
Church, the teacher of righteousness, is uncon-
cerned for this great matter. How can religion
flourish where brotherhood fails? And how can
brotherhood survive in a nation when the right
of occupying the soil is practically denied? First
among the economic questions which claim
Christian settlement is that of land tenure, land
right. Christianity carries forward the principles
of the Mosaic law into higher ranges, where
justice is not less, but more— where brotherhood
has a nobler purpose, a finer motive.
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
PREFACE.
An adequate exposition of Deuteronomy requires the discussion of many topics.
The author has endeavoured to keep these various claims in view : at the same time
the limits of the volume have dictated selection and compression. In particular, a
chapter on miracle in the Old Testament has been wholly omitted. That topic
cannot be said to have a pecuHar or exclusive relation to Deuteronomy. Yet the
writer would have wished to include in the volume a reasoned statement of the
grounds on which he owns and asserts the supernatural in Old Testament history ;
all the more because he admits critical views which have sometimes been assDciated,
and still oftener supposed to be associated, with rationalistic views generally. For
the present this discussion ic postponed. In some instances, also, the waiter has
been obliged to content himself with statements on critical questions more brief than
he could have desired ; but it is hoped that enough has been said to explain the
position assumed, and to make clear the main lines of argument.
The task of adjusting the matter to the space would have been easier if it had
seemed legitimate to omit the critical and archaeological questions on the one hand,
or, o» the other, to leave untouched the bearing of the thoughts and Laws of
Deuteronomy on the religious history of the race, and on the dangers and duties of
our own age. But an exposition of Deuteronomy must endeavour to open the appro-
priate outlooks in all these directions.
48q
COl^TEMTS.
» •
Chapter I.
The Authorship and Age of Deuteronomy,
Chaptkk II.
Tiie Historic Setting of Deuteronomy
Chapter III.
The Divine Governnient,
Chapter IV.
The Decalogue - its Form,
• •
• •
PAGE
Chapter XIV,
. 493 Laws of Sacrifice,
Chapter V.
The Decalogae — Its Substance,
Cf*APTER VI.
The Mediaiorship of Moses, . . .
Chapter VII.
Love to God the Law of Life, . . .
CHAPTER VIII.
Education — Mosaic V»ew,
Chapter IX.
The Ban, ......
Chapter X.
The Ban in Modern Life,
Chapter XI.
The Bread of the Soul, ....
Chapter XII.
Israel's Election, and Motives for Faithfulness,
PAGE
561
Chapter XIII.
Law and Religion,
• •
503
505
509
S^r
. 5»I
52<»
53*
538
542
547
551
557
Chapter XV.
The Relation of Old Testament Sacrifice to
Christianity,
Chapter XVI.
Laws Against Idolatrous Acts and Customs,
Chapter XVII.
The Speakers for God — I. The King,
Chapter XVIII.
Speakers for God — ^Tl. The Pnest
Speakers for God — III. The Prophet,
Chapter XX.
The Economic Aspects of Israelite Life,
Chapter XXI.
Justice in Israel, ....
Chapter XXII.
Laws of Purity (Chastity and Marriage^,
Chapter XXIII.
Laws of Kindness, ....
Chapter XXIV.
Moses' Farewell Speeches,
Chapter XXV.
The Song and Blessing of Moses,
Chapter XXVI.
Moses' Character and Death, . .
5(^5
568
573
576
5S3
5S9
595
601
605
611
6it
621
49:
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
BY ANDREW HARPER, B. D.
CHAPTER I.
THE AUTHORSHIP AND AGE OF
DEUTERONOMY.
The debate concerning the critical views of the
Old Testament has reached a stage at which it
is no longer confined to the professed teachers
and students of the Old Testament. It has fil-
tered down, through magazines first, and then
In approaching a book so spiritually great as through newspapers, into the public mind, and
Deuteronomy, it might seem superfluous to opinions are becoming current concerning the
allude to the critical questions which have been results of criticism which are so partial and ill-
raised concerning it. On any supposition as to informed that they cannot but produce evil re-
origin and authorship, its spiritual elevation and suits of a formidable kind in the near future.
the moral impulse it gives are always there; and By those who are sceptically inclined, as well as
it might consequently seem sufificient to ex- by those who cling most closely to the teaching
pound and illustrate the text as we have it. of the Churches, it is loudly proclaimed that the
Minute and vexatious inquiry into details, such acceptance of the critical view — viz. that the Le-
as any adequate treatment of the critical ques- vitical law, as a written code, came into exist-
tion demands, tends to draw away the mind in ence after the Exile, and that Deuteronomy,
a disastrous way, from the spiritual and moral written in the royal period of Israelite history,
purpose of the book. That, however, is pre- occupies a middle position between the first
cisely what the expositor has to elucidate and legislation (Exod. xx.-xxiii.) and this latest —
apply; and so it might seem to be an error in destroys the character of the Old Testament as
method to enter upon extraneous matters such a record of Revelation, and underrnines Chris-
as those with which criticism has mainly to do. tianity itself. The former class rejoice that this
On the other hand, this has to be taken into should be so, and think their scepticism is
account. The truth about the composition of thereby justified. The latter, on the contrary,
a book, about the authorities it is founded on, reject the critical conclusions with vehemence,
about the times in which and the circumstances They have found God through the Scripture,
under which it was composed, if it be attainable, and, resting upon this experience, they turn away
often throws a very welcome light upon the from theories which they believe to be in direct
meaning. It clears up obscurities, removes conflict with it. To write an exposition of
chances of error, and often, when two or three Deuteronomy therefore, without correcting the
possible paths have opened before us, it shuts false impression that the critical view as to its
us up to the right one. But if that is the case age, etc., is incompatible with faith in a Divine
when no special conflict of opinion has arisen, it revelation, would be to miss one of the great
is much more so when a revolution of opinion opportunities which fall to writers on the Old
concerning the whole religious life of a nation Testament in our day. Questions regarding the
has been caused by the critical view of a book age, authorship, and literary form of the books
adopted by able men. Now that is plainly the of Scripture cannot ultimately be so decided as
case here. Deuteronomy has been the key of to nullify the testimony borne to them by the
the position, the centre of the conflict, in the experience of so many generations of Christian
battle which has been waged so hotly as to the men and women. Whatever makes itself ulti-
growth of religion in Israel. The attack upon mately credible to the human mind in regard to
the views hitherto generally held within the such matters, will always be capable of being
Church in regard to that matter has rested more held along with a belief in the manifestation of
upon the character and date of Deuteronomy Himself which God has given in the history
than upon anything else. Consequently every and literature of Israel. But nothing will make
part of the book has been the object of intense that fact so readily apprehensible, nothing will
and microscopic scrutiny, and there is scarcely a make it stand out so clearly, as an exposition of
cardinal point in it which must not be regarded a book like Deuteronomy, which takes account
differently, according as we accept or reject the of all that seems established in the critical view,
strictly Mosaic origin of the book as a whole, Even the most extreme critical positions, when
or even of the legal portions. The difference is separated from the totally irrelevant assump-
probably never absolutely fundamental. • On tion (which too often accompanies them) that
either supposition, as we have said, the spiritual miracle is unhistorical, are compatible with a
and moral teaching remains the same; but the real faith in Revelation arhd Inspiration. It is
mind is apt to be clouded with harassing doubt not the fact of Revelation, but the common con-
as to many important points, until clear views ception of its method, which is challenged by
on the critical question have been attained, the critical theories. We shall therefore only
This is felt more or less acutely by all readers try to meet a clamant need of our time, if we
of the Old Testament who are touched by take with us into the explanation of the Deu-
recent debates, and they expect that any new teronomic teaching a definite conclusion as to
exposition shall help them to a clearer view, the authorship, age, and literary character of
Many will even demand that some efifort in that the book.
direction should be made; and, as we think. As regards authorship, the ordinary opinion
they rightly demand it. still is that Deuteronomy was written by Moses.
But there is still another reason for dealing This was the view handed over to Christianity
with the questions gathering round the author- in pre-critical ages by the Jews, and accepted as
ship and age of our book, and it is decisive, the natural one. But if the Mosaic authorship
32-Vol. I.
493
494
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
of the whole contents of the other books of the
Pentateuch is now given up, much more should
it be given up in the case of Deuteronomy. For
Deuteronomy does not even claim to be written
by Moses. It is not merely that in it Moses is
often spoken of in the third person; that, if it
were carried out consistently, as it is, for in-
stance, in Csesar's Commentaries, would be
compatible with Mosaic authorship. But what
we find is that the author, " whenever he speaks
himself, purports to give a description in the
third person of what Moses did or said," * while
Moses, when he speaks, always uses the first
person. The book, consequently, falls naturally
into two portions: the subsidiary, introductory
framework of statement, in which Moses is al-
ways spoken of in the third person, together
with the historical portions and the utterances
of Moses himself, which these introduce and
hold together, and in which Moses always uses
the first person. t Again, wherever the expres-
sion " beyond Jordan " is used in the portions
where the author speaks for himself, it signifies
the land of Moab.t Wherever, on the contrary,
Moses is introduced speaking in the first person,
" beyond Jordan " denotes the land of Israel. §
The only_ exception is iii. 8, where at the begin-
ning of a long archaeological note, which cannot
have originally formed part of the speech of
Moses, and consequently must be a comment
of the writer, or of a later editor of Deuter-
onomy, " beyond Jordan " signifies the land of
Moab. If, consequently, the book be taken at
its word, there can be no doubt that it professes
to be an account of what Moses did and said on
a certain day in the land of Moab, before his
death, written by another person, who lived to
the west of the Jordan. The author must con-
sequently have lived after Moses' day; and he
has taken pains by his use of language to dis-
tinguish himself from Moses in a most unmis-
takable way. It is no doubt possible, though
not probable, that Moses might have written of
himself in the third person in the connecting
passages, and in the first person in the re-
mainder of his book: but that he should have
made the anxious distinction we have seen as to
the phrase " beyond Jordan " does not seem
possible.
But if our book, as we have it, is not by Moses,
but is an account by another person of what
Moses did and said on a certain occasion, that
fact has a very important bearing upon the
speeches reported as Mosaic. For the style of
the whole book up to the end of the twenty-
eighth chapter is, for all practical purposes, one.
The parts where the author speaks, and the
parts where Moses speaks, are all alike in style,
and that style is in all respects different from
the style of the speeches attributed to Moses in
other parts of the Pentateuch. Consequently we
cannot accept the speeches and laws as being in
the very words of Moses. They may contain
the exact ideas of Moses, but these have mani-
festly passed through the mind and clothed
themselves in the vocabulary of the author of
Deuteronomy. Even Delitzsch is quite decisive
on this point-ll In the tenth of his " Pentateuch
* Driver. " Introduction," 5th Ed., p. 84.
\ Cf. Deut. i. 1-5, iv. 41-43, iv. 44, v. i, xxvii. i, 9-11, xxix.
I, xxxi. I-:io.
X Cf. Deut. i. I, 5, iv. 41, 46, 47. 49.
§iii. 20, 25, and xi. 30.
\\Cf. "Pentateuch Kritische Studien," in Luthardt's
Zeitschrift, 1880.
Kritische Studien " after distinguishing the Deu-
teronomist from Moses, he continues thus: " The
addresses are freely reproduced, and he who
reproduces them is the same who also con-
tributed the historical framework and the his-
torical details between the addresses. The same
colouring, though in a less degree, may also be
remarked in the repetition of the law in chap-
ters xii.-xxvi. to which the book owes its name.
All the component parts of Deuteronomy, not
excepting the legal prescriptions, are woven
through and through with the favourite phrases
of the Deuteronomist."
Under these circumstances, the question im-
mediately suggests itself to what degree this
representation of Moses' legislation can be re-
garded as purely and unmixedly Mosaic. Was
this legislation given in the main or entirely by
Moses, and, if it was so given, may there not be
mingled with what he gave inferences drawn by
the author in whose style the book is written,
and adaptations demanded by the exigencies of
his later times? A full discussion of this point
would, of course, be out of the question here,
and it would, moreover, be superfluous. In Dr.
Driver's article on " Deuteronomy " in Smith's
" Dictionary of the Bible," and in his " Introduc-
tion to Hebrew Literature," detailed discussions
will be found. All that is necessary here is that
one or two large and salient aspects of the ques-
tion should be looked at.
In the first place, it is important to know
whether the author of Deuteronomy can have
been a contemporary of Moses, or a younger
contemporary of his contemporaries. If he
were, the relation between the speeches and
legislation in his book and that which Moses
actually uttered would be similar to that between
the speeches of Christ reported by St. John in his
Gospel and the actual words of our Lord. They
might, in fact, be taken to be in all respects a
reliable, though not a verbal, representation of
what Moses actually said or commanded. If.
on the contrary, it should be proved, either from
the character of the legislation itself, or from
the evidence we have as to the date of the au-
thorities whom the Deuteronomist quotes, and
upon whom he relies, that he must have lived
centuries later, then any such confidence would
be materially weakenedr Now there can be no
doubt, to take the last point first, that Deuter-
onomy, taken as a legal code, though not want-
ing in laws which have been first formulated by
its author, is mainly intended to be a repetition
and a reinforcement of what we find in the
book of the Covenant (Exod. xx.-xxiii.). The
result of Driver's careful tabulation of the sub-
jects' dealt with in the two codes is " that the
laws in JE,* viz. Exod. xx.-xxiii. (repeated
partially in xxxiv. 10-26) and the kindred section
xiii. 3-16, form the foundations of the Deuteronomic
legislation. This is evident as well from the
numerous verbal coincidences as from the fact
that nearly the whole ground covered by Exod.
♦ It is scarcely necessary to remind readers tliat. ircin
the point of view of the critics, J sig'nifies one of the cirn-
stituent documents of the Pentateuch which uses the name
Yahweh for God. Its date is about 850 B. C. E is tliat
document which uses the name Elohim, and may be dated
about the same period as J. I) is the author of Deuter-
onomy, who wrote, it is supposed, in the reign of Manas-
seh, perhaps about 670 B. c. P is the Priestly document,
which Dillmann dates before Deuteronomy, but which
most critics think was brought substantially into its pres-
ent shape by Ezra. The portions of the Pent.'iteucli
assigned to these various documents will te found in
Driver's " Introduction."
THE AUTHORSHIP AND AGE OF DEUTERONOMY,
495
xx.-xxiii. is included in it; almost the only ex-
ception being the special compensations to be
paid for various injuries (Exod. xxi. i8, xxii.
15), which would be less necessary in a manual
intended for the people." This is also the con-
clusion of other scholars, and indeed is plainly
demanded by the facts. It is, moreover, what
may be called the Biblical hypothesis, for Moses
is supposed to have been renewing the covenant
made at Horeb, and repeating its conditions.
But in the present condition of our knowledge,
the fact of Deuteronomy's dependence upon the
Book of the Covenant brings into view unex-
pected consequences. It is true, certainly, that
the laws of the latter code existed before they
were incorporated in the text where we now
find them. Consequently no verbal coincidences
would give us the assurance that the Deuterono-
mist had before him the actual book in which
these laws have come down to us. But a con-
clusion may be reached in another way. A
comparison of the historical portions of Deu-
teronomy with the corresponding narrative in
the previous four books of our Bible shows
that for his history also the author of Deuter-
onomy relies upon these earlier narratives, and
that he must have had portions at least of them
before him in the same text as we have now.
The verbal coincidences tabulated in Driver, pp.
75 f., as well as the general and exact agreement
in the events recorded in Deuteronomy with
those recorded in the earlier books, show that
the author has not only drawn his information
from the same sources as those of the earlier
books, but that he must have had before him at
least that section which contains the laws.
Now, as it happens, in the course of the analy-
sis of the Pentateuch it has come to be all but
universally acknowledged that Exod. xx.-xxiii.
form part of a document which can be traced,
dovetailed into others, from Genesis to Joshua,
and perhaps beyond it. This document has been
called by Wellhausen the Jehovist document,
and in all critical books it is referred to as JE,
as being made up of two sections, one of which
uses Yahweh for the Divine name, and the other
Elohim. The only generally known scholar who
denies the existence of JE is Professor Green,
of Princeton in America, who, rightly enough,
sees that the Mosaic authorship of the Penta-
teuch cannot be held, if these separate com-
ponent documents are acknowledged. But the
separate existence and character of JE may be
regarded as demonstrated, and also that it has
been interwoven with another narrative, largely
parallel, but which deals of preference with
priestly matters, and has consequently been
called the Priest codex, or P. Together these
make up the first four books of the Pentateuch;
and the remarkable thing is that, both as re-
gards law and history, Deuteronomy is depend-
ent upon JE. " Throughout the parallels just
tabulated," says Driver,* " (as well as in the
others occurring in the bookj, not the allusions
only, but the words cited, will be found, all but
uniformly, to be in JE, not in P. An impor-
tant conclusion follows from this fact. Inas-
much as, in our existing Pentateuch, JE and P
repeatedly cross one another, the constant ab-
sence of any reference to P can only be rea-
sonably explained by one supposition, viz. that
when Deuteronomy was composed JE and P
were not yet united into a single work, and JE
* Driver, " Introduction," p. 76.
alone formed the ba»is of Deuteronomy." And
this is not Driver's conclusion only. Dillmani\,
who argues with splendid ability against Well-
hausen for the dating of P in the ninth century
B. c. instead of after the Exile, and consequently
considers that it was in existence before Deu-
teronomy, still holds that in general JE is the
Deuteronomist's authority both for law and his-
tory, contenting himself with affirming that D
shows undoubted acquaintance with laws, etc.,
known to us only in P. Clearly, therefore, Deu-
teronomy must have been written after JE had
been made public, or at least after J and E had
been written. .
The question therefore arises, what is their
date? An answer can be gradually approached
in this way. As JE reappear as an element
in the Book of Joshua,* and contribute to it
an account of Joshua's death and burial, they
cannot have been written by him, nor before his
death. That is the first fixed point. Then we
may proceed a step further. In various parts of
JE there occur phrases which cannot all be
later glosses, and which imply that the land,
when the writer lived, had long ceased to be in
possession of the Canaanites, if some of them do
not even presuppose a time when the original
inhabitants had been absorbed into Israel, as
Solomon attempted to absorb them by making
them slaves of the State. Such passages are
Gen. xii. 6. " And the Canaanite was then in
the land"; Gen. xiii. 7, " Moreover the Canaan-
ites and the Perizzites dwelled then in the land ";
Gen. xl. 15, in which Joseph says of himself, " I
was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews,"
a name which the country could not have ac-
quired till some little time at least after the con-
quest. Further, in Numbers xxxii. 41, which
belongs to J or E, probably the latter, we have
an account of the rise of the name Hawwoth
Jair. Now in Judges x. 3-5 we are informed
that the Jair from whom the Hawwoth Jair
had their name was a judge in Israel after the
time of Abimelech, who made new conquests
for his tribe east of the Jordan. Unless, there-
fore, the unlikely hypothesis be accepted that
both the district bearing this name in Judges
and its conqueror are other than those men-
tioned in Numbers, the verse brings down JE at
least to the period of Abimelech, which
Kautzsch in his " View of the History of the
Israelites," appended to his translation of the Old
Testament, states as about 1120 b. c, i. e., two
hundred years after the Exodus.
The next step is suggested by Gen. xxxvi.
31-39, a passage from JE in which a list of
Edomite kings is given with this heading:
" These are the kings that reigned in the land of
Edom before there reigned any king over the
children of Israel." That sentence clearly can-
not have been written before kings arose in
Israel; consequently JE must be later than the
days of Saul, and probably than David, since the
Israelite kingship appears to the author's mind
here as a firmly established institution. The
author of Deuteronomy must have lived and
written at a still later date, and we are thus
gradually brought down to the time of Solomon,
or perhaps even later.
And the literary indications of date confirm
this conclusion. For instance, two books are
quoted occasionally in JE as authorities, which
must consequently have existed before that work
* Josh. xxiv. 30.
496
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
— the Book of the Wars of Yahweh (Numb. xxi.
14, 15), and the Book of Yashar (Josh. x. 12 f.).
The former has indeed been declared by Geiger
to be the product of false punctuation; but
soberer critics have accepted it and date it in
Solomon's day. However that may be, there
can be no doubt that the latter actually existed,
and was probably a collection of songs, since
from it the verses describing the standing still
of the sun and moon are quoted. But we learn
from 2 Sam. i. 18 that David's beautiful lament
for Saul and Jonathan was contained in this
book, and was quoted from it by the sacred his-
torian. The book must therefore have been
compiled, or at least completed, after David's
lament. As it was manifestly a compilation, and
the poems it contained may have been of very
various ages, much stress in our search for
dates cannot be laid upon it. It is still of some
weight, however, that this post-Davidic book is
quoted by JE; so far as it goes, that fact con-
firms the conclusion arrived at from other in-
dications.
In the same way, the linguistic indications,
though not of themselves conclusive, point to-
wards the same period. It is, of course, true
that we are as yet far from having a general
agreement as to the history of the Hebrew lan-
guage. That can only be established along with
the history of the Hebrew literature and the He-
brew people; and perhaps we never shall be able
to fix any definite stages in the growth and de-
cay of the language. Nevertheless no careful
reader of JE will deny what Professor Driver
says regarding them: "Both belong to the
golden period of Hebrew literature. They re-
semble the best parts of Judges and Samuel
(much of which cannot be greatly later than
David's own time); but whether they are actu-
ally earlier or later than these, the language and
style do not enable us to say. There is at least
no archaic flavour perceptible in the style of
JE." * That is an admirably balanced judg-
ment, and we may rely upon the indication it
gives as an additional confirmation of what we
have already seen to be probable.
It is impossible that these various lines of in-
quiry should converge, as they have done, to-
wards the early centuries of the kingship as the
date of JE, if Moses had written Deuteronomy,
in which JE is drawn upon at every moment.
We may consequently dismiss that view finally,
and admit that tl^e author of Deuteronomy can-
not well have written before the middle of the
kingly period. But we have still to inquire what
the character of the Mosaic speeches and the
Mosaic writings given in Deuteronomy is in
that case. Had the author lived and written near
the time of Moses, we might, as has been said,
have accepted them as the Church generally ac-
cepts the Johannine speeches of Christ. But if
the Deuteronomist wrote four, or five, or six
centuries after Moses, what are we to say? In
one view it must be granted that his account may
be as accurate as if it had been written within
fifty years of Moses' death. For an author of
our own day, by keeping close to original writ-
ten authorities, and strenuously endeavouring
to keep out of his mind any information he
may have as to later times, may reproduce with
marvellous correctness the actual state of things,
as regards law and other departments of public
life, which existed in England, say, five hun-
• "• Introduction," p. 117.
dred years ago. Similarly the author of Deu-
teronomy may have handed on to us, without
flaw or defect, the information as to Moses' say-
ings and doings in the plains of Moab which
he had received from the written accounts of
Moses' contemporaries. He may have done so;
but when we consider that his authorities may
have been in part not much earlier than his own
time, that the critical sifting of history was then
unknown, and finally and most important of all,
that the Deuteronomist has hortatory much
more than purely historical aims, we cannot
evade the question whether a good deal that is
here set down to Moses may not turn out to be
additions to and deductions from the original
Mosaic germs of law, made by inspired law-
givers and prophets who took up and carried on
Moses' work. Many assert that this is so, and
we must face and try to settle the question they
raise.
The theory held by those who most strenu-
ously deny this assertion is that all the laws in
the Pentateuch are Mosaic in the strict sense,
that the codes were given by Moses in the order
in which they now stand in the Pentateuch, and
that they were enacted with all their modifica-
tions in a period of not more than forty years,
all of which was spent in the desert. In order
to ascertain whether this view is tenable, we
shall take one or two of the more important
matters, such as the place of worship, the agents
of worship, and the support of the cultus; and
we shall compare the provisions of the various
codes in order to see whether they can be sup-
posed to belong to so short a period, or to have
been all enacted by one man.
Let us take first the place of worship. The
three codes — that called the Book of the Cove-
nant (Exod. xx.-xxiii.), that contained in Le-
viticus and Numbers and called the Levitical
code, and that in Deuteronomy — all contain di-
rections about this. In the first the prescrip-
tions are (Exod. xx. 24): "An altar of earth
shalt thou make to Me, and thou shalt sacrifice
upon it thy burnt offerings and thy peace offer-
ings, thy sheep and thy oxen. In every place
where I cause My name to be remembered 1
will come unto and bless thee." In the Leviti-
cal law " the altar " is to be of Shittim or acacia
wood overlaid with copper, and the place for it
is to be in the court of the Tabernacle. There
all sacrifices are to be offered, and thither every
slaughtered animal is to be brought (Lev. xvii.
I fif.), and this is to be a statute for ever unto
them throughout their generations. In Deu-
teronomy again (chap, xii.) it is enacted that
all sacrifices are to be brought " unto the place
which Yahweh your God shall choose out of
all your tribes to put His name there," and ver.
21, " If the place which Yahweh thy God hath
chosen to put His name there be too far from
thee, then thou shalt kill of thy herd and of thy
flock " and eat them as game was eaten without
bringing it to the Sanctuary. But Moses is not
represented as ordering this law to be intro-
duced immediately. It is only when they go
over Jordan and dwell in the land which Yah-
weh their God giveth them, and when He
giveth them rest from all their enem.ies roimd
about so that they dwell in safety, that they are
to do this. Nay, according to ver. 20 the new
order is to be fully introduced only when Yah-
weh their God shall enlarge their border as He
had promised, i. e., when their boundaries should
THE AUTHORSHIP AND AGE OF DEUTERONOMY.
497
be (xi. 24) the wilderness on the south and
Lebanon on the north, the Euphrates on the
east and the Mediterranean on the west. Now
these boundaries were attained only in David's
day, and the rest from all their enemies round
about was, as Dillmann says, given as a matter
of fact only in the times of David and Solornon
(cf. 2 Sam. vii. 11 and i Kings v. 18), notwith-
standing Josh xxi. 42. Consequently the
Temple at Jerusalem must have been the place
referred to. This is distinctly the view of i
Kings iii. 3 and viii. 16. The latter passage is
peculiarly emphatic. Solomon says, at the dedi-
cation of the Temple, " Since the day that I
brought forth My people Israel out of Egypt, 1
chose no city out of all the tribes of Israel to
build an house that My name might be therein."
The Deuteronomic view consequently is that
the law requiring sacrifice at one sole altar was
intended by Moses to be enforced only after the
Temple at Jerusalem had been built.
These are the provisions of the three codes.
Can they have been the successive ordinances of
a man legislating under the influence of Divine
inspiration within a period of less than forty
years? Let us see. The first legislation was
given at Sinai, in the third month after the
Exodus: the Levitical legislation on the matter
was given about nine months later when the
Tabernacle was finished, and during that time
they had not removed from Sinai: thirty-eight
years afterward the Deuteronomic code was
given in the plains of Moab. Let us look at the
character of the legislation given first of all at
Sinai. The meaning of the decisive phrase, " In
every place where I cause My name to be re-
membered I will come unto thee and bless thee,"
has been much discussed; yet taken as it stands,
without reference to laws which on any suppo-
sition are later, it cannot mean that sacrifices
were to be offered only at one central shrine.
It specially provides for sacrifices being offered
at different places, but restricts them to places
which Yahweh Himself has chosen. At every
such place He promises to come to them and
bless them. So much, men of all schools ad-
mit; difference of opinion arises only as to
whether these places are meant to be successive,
or whether they , may be simultaneous. The
view of those who accept all the legislation of
the Pentateuch as Mosaic in the strict sense is
that the places could only be successive, since
otherwise the words would imply that originally
worship at one altar was not prescribed. De-
litzsch, for example, maintains that these words
imply necessarily only this, that the place of
sacrifice would, in the course of time, be altered
by Divine appointment, and he declares that to
be their meaning. Others, again, suppose that
the command was meant only to justify worship
at the various places where the Tabernacle was
called to halt on the people's journeyings,
whether in the wilderness or in Palestine.
Now it cannot be denied that only on some such
interpretation can Exodus be brought into har-
mony with Leviticus, and that undoubtedly has
influenced, and rightly so, the scholars who
take this view. If it were tenable it would be
by far the most satisfactory interpretation. But
it can hardly be considered tenable if we look
at the time at which this law was given. There
was as yet no other law, and this was given as
soon as the people came to Mount Sinai. The
law in Leviticus was not on any supposition
given till nine months later. Now, if Exod.
XX. 24 was meant for immediate use only, and
was superseded by the Levitical law after so
short a time, it is difficult to understand why it
was given, and still more difficult to conceive
why it was preserved. In any case it cannot
have been understood to command worship at
only one place. It could have no other sense
than that the people, so long as they were at
Sinai, were to sacrifice only at Sinai where Yah-
weh had revealed Himself, or at other places in
the neighbourhood which He should sanctify, or
had sanctified, by revealing His presence at
them. At any such place, if there He had once
revealed Himself. He would continue to meet
them. Without the colour thrown upon them
by succeeding laws, that is surely the only mean-
ing that could be put upon the words, and so
understood they undoubtedly authorise sacrifice
at two or more places simultaneously. If, on
the other hand, this law was meant more for
the future than the present, as some of the laws
in the Book of the Covenant undoubtedly were,
it must have been intended to be in force con-
currently with Lev. i. f. But if so, the " places "
it refers to cannot be the mere halting-places on
the wilderness journey. No doubt these were
determined by Yahweh, and the tabernacle was
set up at places He may be said to have chosen,
but the places themselves were of no conse-
quence at all. The Divine presence is declared
to be always in the Tabernacle. That was cer-
tainly a place where Yahweh caused His name
to be remembered, and without further inquiry
about place, the men of Israel knew that He
would always meet them and bless them in sacri-
fice there. The different character of the altar
in the Book of the Covenant too, a mere heap
of earth or unhewn stone, and that in the Taber-
nacle, made of acacia wood overlaid with copper,
corroborates the view that the altar aimed at in
Exod. xxiv. is not the Tabernacle altar. The
only coherent view, on the supposition of the
concurrence of the two laws, is therefore that
while, as a rule, sacrifice was to be offered at the
Tabernacle, yet if the people came to any place
where Yahweh had caused His name to be re-
membered, sacrifice might be offered there on
an altar of earth or unhewn stone, as well as at
the Tabernacle. Either way therefore there is
permission to worship at more than one place.
But then the difficulty is that Leviticus appears
to denounce upon pain of being " cut off from
the people " absolutely every sacrifice not offered
at the Tabernacle.
Now if so far matters have been far from clear
on the traditional supposition of the date and
order of these codes, a glance at Deuteronomy
will produce absolute confusion in every mind.
As we have seen, Deuteronomy represents Moses
as restricting sacrifice most rigorously to one
altar after the building of the Temple at Jerusa-
lem, but virtually declaring that worship at
various shrines was to be blameless until that
time. We have also seen that that is the view
taken by the author of the Book of Kings. Now
this might be regarded as a temporary relaxation
of the law, intended to meet the difficult circum-
stances of a period of war and conquest, were
it not for one thing. That is, that Moses in
Deut. xii. 8, after prescribing worship at one
altar, adds. " Ye shall not do after all that we
do here this day, every man whatsoever is right
in his own eyes," and as if to render mistake as
498
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
to the meaning impossible, in ver. 13 he explains
ver. 8 thus: " Take heed to thyself that thou offer
not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou
seest." Notwithstanding the efforts of conserva-
tive scholars like Keil and Bredenkamp to ex-
plain ver. 8 as a reference to the intermissions
in, e. g., the daily sacrifice, brought about by the
•desert wanderings, or to the arbitrariness and
illegality of the generation which had brought
judgment upon themselves by refusal to obey
Yahweh in attacking Canaan, it still seems im-
possible to accept that view. Of course if we
knew that Moses was the giver of all these laws,
these words would have to be explained away in
some such fashion. But if they are approached
by an inquirer seeking to discover whether they
all are Mosaic, sound exegesis demands that they
should be taken as Dillmann and others take
them. In the plain sense of words Moses here
admits that, up till the time at which he is
speaking, sacrifices were offered wherever men
chose, and that he had participated in the prac-
tice. And observe, he does not refer to the
Levitical law. He does not say this conduct of
ours is a sin which we must repent of and turn
from at once. He calmly permits this state of
things to continue after Israel is in Canaan, and
looks forward with equanimity to its continuance
till the Temple shall be erected in Jerusalem.
With this passage before us we ask. Can this be
the same inspired legislator who thirty-eight
years before compelled sacrifice at one central
altar on pain of death?
The traditional hypothesis being thus encom-
passed with difficulties, students of the Old
Testament have sought another which would
correspond better with all the data. Relying
upon the fact that the author of Deuteronomy
founds his book almost entirely on JE, and that
if he knows some of the laws and some of the
facts mentioned in P only, there are no proofs
that he knew that book as we have it, they put it
aside in this matter also. Immediately, when
that is done, light breaks in upon our problem.
If we take Exod. xxiv. 20 in the natural sense
given to it above, sacrifice at various altars was
permitted from Sinai onwards, the only limita-
tion being that there should have been, at the
place chosen, authentic proof of a theophany or
some other manifestation of the Divine presence.
That is the state of things out of which Moses
speaks in Deuteronomy. It will be noticed,
however, that there is a slight contradiction of
Exod. XX. 24. The Moses of Deuteronomy
speaks as if every man's arbitrary choice had
been his only guide. Probably, however, with
his mind full of the stringent unity he desires to
see, he speaks hyperbolically of the looseness of
the former law, and means nothing else than the
practice prescribed by it. In all ways this view
is supported by the history. From the patriarchs
till the time of Samuel, the practice was to sacri-
fice at various altars.* Consequently, according
to both the Book of the Covenant and Deu-
teronomy, and according to the history, the wor-
ship of Yahweh at sacred places throughout the
land was legal, until the Temple was erected at
Jerusalem. The centralisation of worship was.
consequently, a new thing when the division of
the kingdoms took place, and was not an ex-
press law till Deuteronomy. If that book was
not written till perhaps Hezekiah's day, the fact
* Cf. for the passages on which this statement is founded
Driver's " Introduction," p. 80, and note in small print.
will account as nothing else will do for Elijah's
words (i Kings xix. 10), " The children of
Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown
down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with
the sword." Even in the presence of Yahweh
he, without rebuke, calls the altars in the North-
ern Kingdom His.
The first attempt we know of to centralise
worship was made by Hezekiah; a second and
more strenuous attempt was made under Josiah,
but the work was not actuallv accomplished till
after the Return from the Captivity. All the
facts taken together suggest that the movement
towards centralisation was an age-long develop-
ment. At first all holy places might be sacri-
ficed at, though a certain primacy belonged to
a central sanctuary, and this may have been
stamped by Moses with approval. When the
Solomonic Temple was built the primacy began
to take the form of a claim for exclusive validity.
The experiences in both kingdoms strengthened
that claim, by showing that if Yahwism was to
be kept pure the worship at the High Places
must be abolished. The inspired writer of Deu-
teronomy then completed Moses' work by em-
bodying that which had been always a tendency
of the Mosaic system, and had now become a
necessity, in his revisal of the Mosaic legislation.
This was adopted by the nation under Josiah,
and the Priest Codex must in that case represent
a later stage of the development, when the cen-
tralisation was neither a tendency nor a demand,
but a realised fact. Such a process accounts
much better for the facts than the traditional be-
lief; and though it is not free from difficulties it
at least releases us from the confusion of mind
which the ordinary supposition forces upon us.
The inquiry as to the agents of the cultus need
not detain us so long. In the Book of the Cove-
nant no priests are mentioned at all. The per-
son addressed, the " thou " of these chapters,
which is either the individual Israelite or the
whole community, has been held by some to
indicate that the individual offerer was the only
agent in sacrifice. But that is to press the word
too far. Even in Leviticus, while the whole
people are addressed, the actions enjoined or
prohibited are such as are done by " any man of
them," and in Deut. xii. 13 we have precisely
the same expression, " Take heed to thyself that
thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place
that thou seest." used at a time when there was
undeniably a priestly tribe and even the High
Places had a regular priesthood. But while in
Exod. xx.-xxiii. there is no evidence to show
whether a priesthood existed, in the previous
chapter (xix. 22, 24) priests who " come near to
Yahweh " are twice mentioned. This would be
a fact of the first importance were it not that the
words occur in a passage which is admitted to
be in its present shape the work of the later
editor. Dilhnann maintains, and with good rea-
son, that he has inserted and adapted here a
fragment of J. If so, then J may have held the
view that there were priests before Sinai was
reached, but under the circumstances we cannot
be certain that the mention of them may not be
an anachronism introduced by the later hand.
In favour of the view that it is so is the fact that
in the account given by JE of the ratification of
the Covenant between Yahweh and the people
(Exod. xxiv. I flf.), Moses erected an altar and
then " sent the young men of the children of
Israel which offered burnt offerings and sacri-
THE AUTHORSHIP AND AGE OF DEUTERONOMY.
499
ficed peace-oflFerings of oxen unto Yahweh."
He himself however performed the specially
priestly act of sprinkling the blood upon the
altar. Had there been priests or Levites accus-
tomed to perform priestly functions, we should
have expected them to act, instead of " the young
men of the children of Israel." But, on the
other hand, we must not omit to notice that the
Levites occupy in all these transactions, as nar-
rated by JE, a very prominent position. Dill-
niann,* as we have seen, separating J and E,
considers that the passages in which priests be-
fore the Sinaitic legislation are spoken of belong
to J, and adds: " Indeed, it appears from Exod.
iv. 14, ' Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? '
and xxiv. i, 9, that for him even then the Le-
vites were the priestly persons." To these
passages Driver adds Exod. xviii. 12: " And
Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took a burnt offer-
ing and sacrifices for God; and Aaron came,
and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with
Moses' father-in-law before God." Further,
Nadab and Abihu are Levites, nay, sons of
Aaron, and in Exod. xxiv. i and 9 they go with
Moses, Aaron, and the seventy elders as the
complete representation of the people, and
Moses, himself a Levite, performs all the
greater priestly acts.f Moreover JE knows of
the ark, and speaks frequently of the " tent of
meeting" (Exod. xxxiii. 7 ff. ; Numb. xi. 24 f.,
xii. 4 f?. and Deut. xxxi. 14 fF.). But a very
notable thing in connection with the inquiry as
to the performers of priestly duties appears in
Exod. xxxiii. 7 flf., where E's account of the
" tent of meeting " is given. When Moses
turned again into the camp " his minister
(mesharetho) Joshua, the son of Nun, a young
man, departed not out of the tent," yet Joshua
was an Ephraimite (i Chron. vii. 22-27). In
Exod. xxxii. 29, however, the same authority
describes the consecration of the Levites to the
priesthood, after the apostasy of the golden calf.
In Deuteronomy, on the contrary, the priests
are very prominent; they are called, however,
the Levitical priests, or priests simply, but never
sons of Aaron. The whole tribe of Levi is re-
garded as priestly in some sense. They con-
-stitute, in fact, a clerical order, though there are
clear indications of ranks, of men being assigned
to special duties. Curiously enough, the tribe
thus highly honoured is spoken of as being
notoriously and all but universally poor. No
sacrifice can legitimately be ofifered without
them; and, though the question of the place of
sacrifice has not yet been finally settled, the posi-
tion of the Levitical priests as sacrificers is so
•entirely established that it is regarHed as need-
ing neither assertion nor justification. Nay, in
one passage. Deut. x. 6 — which there is no valid
reason, except the wish to get rid of its con-
tents, for supposing to belong to another au-
thority than D t — the hereditary succession to
the chief place among the priesthood is assigned
to the family of Aaron. In xviii. 5 also the
hereditary character of the priesthood is asserted
in the words, " For Yahweh thy God hath
chosen him — i. e., the priest — out of all thy
tribes, to stand to minister in the name of Yah-
weh, him and his sons for ever.'" As for the body
of the Levites, their position is somewhat ill-
* Dillmann, " Exodus and Leviticus," p. iqg.
t Josh. iii. 14-17 z-rxA. passim.
i Driver, "Introduction," p. 145: Oettli, "Deuter-
onomy," p. 7 ; Kuenen, " H.K.O.," p. 113.
defined. On the authority of xviii. 6 flf. many
claim that at the date of Deuteronomy every Le-
vite was, at least potentially, a priest, that in fact
Levite and priest were synonymous. But, as
will appear in the exposition of the verses re-
ferred to, that is a very questionable proposi-
tion. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that in
Deuteronomy the line between priests and Le-
vites is a very indistinct one; there is prima
facie reason to believe that it could be passed,
and the gap between the two is certainly not
nearly so wide as it appears to be in the unde-
niably post-exilic literature.
In the Priest Codex again, the priesthood is
confined exclusively to the house of Aaron, with
the high priest at their head. The Levites have
no possible way of entrance into the priesthood.
They are Yahweh's gift to the priests, and are
confined most strictly to the duty of waiting
upon these in the ministration of the Sanctuary.
They have none but the most subordinate share
in the sacrifices; they are shut out from the holy
places of the Tabernacle; and they have assigned
to them cities in which they may dwell together
when they are not on duty at the Sanctuary.
There is no word there of Levites being poor,
and altogether the position of the tribe is,
through the priests, much more dignified and
prosperous in a worldly sense than we found it
to be in Deuteronomy.
Now, taking all these data together, we find
here, just as we did in the previous section, that
the Levitical law is a disturbing element be-
tween Exodus and Deuteronomy. If we take it
out of the way, J, E, and D harmonise well
enough. The main difference is that the latter
shows the same fundamental conditions as we
find in the former, only consolidated and devel-
oped by time, but by a longer time than forty
years. In fact D makes explicit that importance
of the Levites which is only hinted at and fore-
shadowed in JE. They have come to be the only
authorised agents of sacrifice; they have a
hereditary headship in the house of Aaron;
various orders and degrees must be held to exist
(cf. Deut. xviii. i fif.). Compared with this state
of things, the Levitical arrangements of P, sup-
posed to have been given thirty-eight years be-
fore, are very different. In every respect they
are more definite, more detailed, and show a
much more differentiated organisation than those
sketched in Deuteronomy. These latter indicate
a state of matters which would suit admirably as
an embryonic stage of the full-grown Levitical
system, and which can hardly be fitted into their
place otherwise.
It is suggested, in reply, that allusions in Deu-
teronomy imply the existence of a system of a
much more elaborate kind than any that we
could construct from the explicit statements of
the book, and that is certainly true. But no
reasonable interpretation of these allusions can
lead us to a system identical with that in P.
Nor can Deuteronomy's use of the name Levites
(though undoubtedly it has been pressed by
some too far) be held to be consistent with the
public recognition of the " great gulf fixed " in
P between the Aaronic priests and the Levites as
a body. Nor will the fact that Deuteronomy is
the people's book, and is consequently not called
upon to go into technical details, cover the dif-
ference. Indeed nothing will, short of recognis-
ing the fact that, as publicly acknowledged or-
ganisations, the tribe of Levi in P and the tribe
500
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
of Levi in D are different, and that the state of
things in D's day is earlier than that in P. If
this is not so, then the Levitical legislation, con-
ceived as given by Moses, must be held to have
proved impracticable, and Deuteronomy must
then be regarded as an abrogation of it for the
time.
And the same conclusions suggest themselves
if we look more closely into the curious fact that
Deuteronomy alvi^ays speaks of the Levites as
poor. Some have supposed that this poverty is
the result of the centralisation of the cultus which
the author demands, and that the constant in-
sistence that the Levite shall be invited to all
sacrificial feasts, along with the widow and the
orphan, and other helpless classes, is a provi-
sion against the poverty to be brought upon
them by the abolition of the High Places. But
that is not so. We know the manner of the
Deuteronomist when he is providing for contin-
gencies arising from the new state of things he
wishes to bring about, and it is quite different
from his manner here. Clearly, the Levites were
poor before the suppression of the High Places,
and were so, as Deuteronomy tells us, from the
fact that they had no inheritance in the land.
But that poverty is not consistent with their
whole position as sketched in the Levitical legis-
lation. There we have the Levites launched as
a regularly organised priestly corporation, en-
dowed with ample revenues, and ruled and repre-
sented by a high priest of the family of Aaron,
clothed with powers almost royal, surrounded
by a priestly nobility of his own family and by a
bodyguard of tribesmen entirely at his disposal.
Such a body never has remained chronically and
notoriously poor. In the wilderness they would
not be so in contrast with others, for all were
poor, and there was nothing to hinder the Le-
vites having cattle as the other tribes had, and
being on the same level as they. In the prom-
ised land, instead of becoming poor, they would
at once enter upon the enjoyment of their vari-
ous tithes and dues, and would moreover have
such a share in the booty of Canaan as would
more than make up at first for their want of a
heritage. The priests were to receive one five-
hundredth part of the army's half, and the Le-
vites the fiftieth share of the people's half (Numb.
xxxi. 28 fif.). Gradually, too, they would be put
in possession of the priestly cities. Evidently,
therefore, if the Levites were ever poor, it can-
not have been till some time after Israel had
been settled in the land, and then only if P's
laws and organisations of the tribe were not
enforced.
Deuteronomy supports the same argument.
Since want of a heritage was the cause of the
Levites' poverty, they cannot have been excep-
tionally poor in the wilderness. Nor can they
have been poor during the time of the conquest;
for even if the Levitical law was in force and the
tribe was then wholly organised for the priest-
hood, they must have shared in the fighting and
the spoil. But if the order of legislation, as we
maintain, was (i) Exodus xx.-xxiii., (2) Deu-
teronomy, (3) the Priest Codex, then as the
booty from war ceased to be a source of income,
the Levites as a body remaining nomads, while
the other tribes became agricultural, would
necessarily become poor in comparison with
their fellow-countrymen. It is out of that state
of things the Deuteronomist speaks.*
* See further in exposition of chapter xvii.; xviii.
The same conclusions follow when the regula-
tions are examined which bear upon the support
of the priestly tribe. The outstanding matters
in this department are tithes and firstlings.
Space will not admit of a full discussion of these
topics, but if the reader will compare, in regard
to tithes, Numb, xviii. 21-24 and Lev. xxvii. 30,
32, with Deut. xii. 17, and in regard to firstlings
Numb, xviii. 18 with Deut. xii. 6, 17 f., and xv.
19 f., he will see that the application of tithes and
of firstlings according to Deuteronomy is quite
different from that in the Levitical legislation.
The difference is such as will not comport with
the hypothesis of a single legislator and a con-
sistent legislation. Expedients with a view to
solve the difficulty have been suggested by Keil
and others; but each of those expedients is bur-
dened with specific difficulties of its own.
The inevitable conclusion from all this would
seem to be that in the Deuteronomic as in the
Levitical laws we have not the legislation of
Moses or of his age alone. The roots of all the
legislative codes are Mosaic, but in all save per-
haps the Book of the Covenant the trunk and
branches are of much later growth. The authors
of them are not careful to distinguish what came
from Moses himself from that which had been
developed out of it under the influence of the
same inspiration. In both D and P there were
Mosaic elements, and in both there are laws not
given by him. To disentangle these completely
now is impossible, and it is probably best for
expository purposes to take the codes as giving
what the Mosaic legislation had become at the
time of the writer. What we have in Deuter-
onomy therefore cannot be better described than
in Driver's words (" Introduction," p. 85), as
" the prophetic re-formulation and adaptation to
new needs of an older legislation." Its relations
to the other codes are as the same critic states (p.
71): "It is an expansion of that in JE (Exod.
xx.-xxiii.); it is, in several features, parallel to
that in Lev. xvii.-xxvi.; it contains allusions to
laws such as those codified in some parts of P,
while from those contained in other parts of P
it differs widely." And the state of things in
which these various codes originated is more
and more coming to be conceived in the manner
stated by Dr. A. B. Davidson.* " It is evident,"
he says, " that two streams of thought, both
issuing from a fountain as high up as the very
origin of the nation, ran side by side down the
whole history of the people, the prophetic and
the priestly. In the one Jehovah is a moral
ruler, a righteous king and judge, who punishes
iniquity judicially or forgives sins freely of His
mercy. In the other He is a Person dwelling
among His people in a house, a Holy Being or
Nature, sensitive to every uncleanness in all that
is near Him, and requiring its removal by lustra-
tions and atonement. Those cherishing the
latter circle of conceptions might be as zealous
for the Lord of Hosts as the prophets. And the
developments of the national history would ex-
tend their conceptions and lead to the amplifica-
tion of practices embodying them, just as they
extended the conceptions of the prophets. A
growth of priestly ideas is quite as probable as a
growth of prophetic ideas. That the streams
ran apart is no evidence that they were not
equally ancient and always contemporaneous,
for we see Jeremiah and Ezekiel both flourishing
in one age. At one point in the history the
* " Ezekiel," Introduction, p. liv. f.
THE AUTHORSHIP AND AGE OF DEUTERONOMY.
501
prophetic stream was swelled by an inflow from
the priestly, as is seen in Deuteronomy, and
from the Restoration downwards both streams
appear to coalesce."
The actual date of Deuteronomy still remains
to be settled. Already it has been brought down
to post-Solomonic days. How much later must
it probably be put? The book must have been
written before the eighteenth year of Josiah,
621 B. c, fof the Book of the Law which was
then found in the Temple was undoubtedly not
the whole Pentateuch, but approximately Deut.
i.-xxvi. But it can hardly have been produced
in Josiah's reign, because it would never have
been permitted to drop out of sight had it been
known to that pious king and the reforming high
priest Hilkiah. On the other hand, it can hardly
have been written or known before Hezekiah's
reforms, for otherwise it would have been made
the basis of them, as it was made the basis of
Josiah's. Probably, therefore, we may date it
between Hezekiah and Josiah. Indeed we may
with great likelihood affirm, as Robertson Smith
suggests, that it was the need of guidance caused
by Hezekiah's reforms which suggested and
called out this book.*
But, say some, if the body of the book is not
Mosaic, then this is nothing else but forgery,
and no forged or even pseudonymous book can
be inspired! Others again, most gratuitously,
suppose that Hilkiah found the book only be-
cause he had forged it and put it where it was
found. But there is neither need nor room for
such suppositions; and our effort must be to
conceive to ourselves the means by which
such a book could come into existence, and be
found as it was, without fraud on the part of
any one.
To modern, and especially Western notions, it
seems difficult to conceive any legitimate process
by which a book of comparatively modern date
could be attributed, so far as its main part is
concerned, to Moses, and published as Mosaic.
But if we take into account the character of
Deuteronomy as only an extension and adapta-
tion of the Book of the Covenant set in a frame-
work of affectionate exhortation, and that all
men then believed that the Book of the Covenant
was Mosaic, we can see better how such action
might be considered legitimate. Even on
modern and Western principles we can see that;
but at that early time and in the East, literary
methods and literary ideas were so different from
ours that there may have been customs which
made the publication of a book in this way not
only natural but right. An example from
modern India will make this clear. Among the
sacred books of the Hindus one of the most
famous is the " Laws of Manu." This is a col-
lection of religious, moral, and ceremonial laws
much like the Book of Leviticus. It is generally
admitted that it was not the work of any one
man, but of a school of legal writers and law-
givers who lived at very various times, each of
whom, with a clear conscience and as a matter
of course, adapted the works of his predecessors
to the need of his own day. And this practice,
together with the belief in its legitimacy, sur-
vives to this day. In his " Early Law and Cus-
tom " (p. 161) Sir Henry Maine tells us that " A
gentleman in a high official position in India has
a native friend who has devoted his life to pre-
paring a new Book of Manu. He does not,
* "Additional Answer to the Libel," p. 80.
however, expect or care that it should be put in
force by any agency so ignoble as a British-
Indian Legislature, deriving its powers from an
Act of Parliament not a century old. He waits
till there arises a king in India who will serve
God and take the law from the new ' Manu '
when he sits in his Court of Justice." There is
here no question of fraud. This Indian gentle-
man considers that his book is the Book of
Manu, and would be amazed if any one should
question its identity because he had edited it;
and he supposes that the king he looks for, if
he should come in his day, would accept and act
upon it as a Divine authority. So strangely dif-
ferent are Eastern notions from those of the
West. It is legitimate to suppose that this
Eastern book originated in something of the
same fashion. In the evil days of persecution,
when all the prophetic spokesmen were cut off,
and when the priests were occupying the chief
position among the supporters of pure religion,
some pious man, inspired, but not with the pro-
phetic inspiration, set himself, like this modern
Hindu, to re-write and adapt the legislation
which he believed to be Mosaic to the needs of
his own day. Altering the fundamental points
as little as might be, he developed it to meet the
evils which were threatening the Mosaic re-
ligion; and he inspired it with the passion for
righteousness and the love of God which had
already thrilled the hearts of faithful men in
Israel through the ministry of the great prophets.
Hoping for the coming of a king who should
serve God and judge Israel out of this new
Book of Moses, but while the darkness still
clouded the future, he died, committing his book
to some temple chamber where he might hope
that it would be discovered when God's set time
should come. In such a supposition there is
perhaps something to shock the conventional
theories of our time. But, so far as can be seen,
there is nothing to shock any open-minded man
who knows how widely ancient and Eastern
thought differs from modern and Western
thought. It is certain that at this day Eastern
men of the highest character and of the most
burning zeal for religion would act in this man-
ner without a qualm of conscience. We may
well believe, therefore, that in ancient days it
was the same. If so, this was a literary method
which inspii^ation might well use; and the sup-
position that Deuteronomy was so produced is
certainly more consistent with its history and
character than any other. It explains how it so
exactly met the needs of the time and summed
up all its aspirations; and it gives to its claim of
inspiration a new support by laying bare the cir-
cumstances of its birth and its psychological
pre-suppositions.
But it may still be asked, what are we to think
of the Mosaic speeches, which, as has been seen,
contain, to say the least, much non-Mosaic
matter? The answer probably is that in these,
as in the laws, the author relies upon earlier
documents. From the appearance in the codes
of laws which would have little or no meaning
if originated in the time of the Deuteronomist,
it has rightly been concluded that there are very
ancient and Mosaic elements in them. So, in
the speeches there are references and allusions
that suggest an ancient tradition of a final ad-
dress of Moses, and perhaps a written account of
its general purport, in which even a hone that the
worship might be centralised may have been
502
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
contained.* This the author has adapted to his
purpose of inciting his contemporaries to be
faithful to the Mosaic teaching, and has woven
into it all that later experience could suggest as
effective ground of exhortation. So much as
that all ancient historians would have done, and
some moderns would do, without the faintest
intention to deceive, or any feeling of guilt; and
so much may probably have been done here.
Delitzsch,t Robertson Smith,! and Driver § are
all at one as to this, and in the proofs they pro-
duce of the necessity of accepting this view. In
the words of Driver, " It is the uniform prac-
tice of the Biblical historians in both the Old
and New Testaments to represent their char-
acters as speaking in words and phrases which
cannot have been those actually used, but which
they themselves select and frame for them."
The speeches of David in Samuel and Chronicles
serve for examples. In Samuel he speaks in the
language of Samuel, in Chronicles in the lan-
guage of Chronicles. " In some of these cases,"
Driver continues, " the authors no doubt had in-
formation as to what was actually said on the
occasions in question, which they recast in their
own words, only preserving, perhaps, a few char-
acteristic expressions; in' other cases, they
merely gave articulate expression to the thoughts
and feelings which it was presumed that the per-
sons in question would have entertained. In
the Deuteronomic speeches both these charac-
teristic methods have probably been employed,
and we must just accept the inspired record for
what it reveals itself to be, setting aside, with
the inevitable sighs, our own a priori assump-
tions of what it ought to be."
These then are the conclusions regarding Deu-
teronomy on which the exposition offered here
will rest. They have been reached after a care-
ful consideration of the evidence on both sides,
and are stated here not altogether without regret.
For, as Robertson Smith has well said,|| " to the
ordinary believer the Bible is precious as the
practical rule of faith and life in which God still
speaks directly to his heart. No criticism can
be otherwise than hurtful to faith if it shakes
the confidence with which the simple Christian
turns to his Bible, assured that he can receive
every message which it brings to his soul as a
message from God Himself." Now, though it
can be demonstrated that the view of Scripture
which permits of such conclusions as those stated
above is quite compatible with this believing
confidence, there can be little doubt that Chris-
tian people will for a time find great difficulty in
accepting this assurance. The transition from
the old view of inspiration, so complete, com-
prehensible, and effective as it is, to the newer
and less definite doctrine, cannot fail to be try-
ing, and the introduction of it here cannot but
be a disturbing influence which it would have
been greatly preferable to avoid.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that to
the minds of the working ministry and of their
earnest fellow-labourers, who come into constant
contact with the actual needs of men, the change
should be unwelcome. But it cannot now, in my
judgment, be avoided. Even the best and most
^ Cf. Driver, art. "Deuteronomy," Smith's "Diction-
ary." P- 770-
t " Pentateuch Kritische Studien," X. n
X " Answer to the Form of Libel," p. 34. Note : where
Arnold and Masson's " Life of Milton,^' are referred to.
si Art. " Deuteronomj'," Smith's " Bible Diet.," pp. 769 ff.
" Answer," pp. 41 f.
scholarly work of those who still hold the tradi-
tional view does not convince. Rather it is
their writings, more even than those on the
modern side, which make it clear that the tra-
ditional view can no longer be held. These
writers admit the facts upon which their oppo-
nents' case rests, and then explain them all away,
harmonising everything by a crowd of hypothe-
ses, often scholarly, generally acute, but almost
always such as can be accepted only, if we know
beforehand that the view they support is true.
But far too many hypotheses are needed. Each
case has to be set right by a special effort of the
imagination: while the new view has this great
advantage, that it makes room for all the facts,
by a hypothesis, suggested not by one difficulty,
but by almost all the discrepancies and difficul-
ties which are encountered. And, after all, this
view does not move men away from the central
truth of inspiration, even as it was conceived by
the last generation. Apart from any care for
averting errors in detail which can be ascribed
to Divine wisdom according to the old view or
the new, the central thing in both surely is the
revelation of God Himself. It was always God
that was held to be revealed, and this the advo-
cates of the newer view insist upon most strenu-
ously. They hold that chosen men, the wisest,
best, most truthful of their respective genera-
tions, those who travailed most in thought, re-
ceived exceptional impressions of the Divine
nature. They saw God, and their whole being
bore the impress henceforth of this illumination.
In every word and act the light they had re-
ceived found expression for itself. They did not
receive this revelation in mere propositions about
God, which had to be carefully repeated with
minute verbal accuracy. They saw, and their
natures were in their degree uplifted, changed,
and harmonised with the Divine. They could
no more be false in speaking of what they had
thus experienced, than a sincere and tender
nature can be false in speech or thought about
death, when it once has found its love frustrated
and overborne by that dread messenger of God.
The impression in both cases is true as it is
final, and it will triumphantly convey itself to
others with substantial and effective truth, what-
ever the man's knowledge or ignorance other-
wise may be. When a man has received an im-
pression, or a sight of God which has shaken his
very soul, will it be lost in its essential parts be-
cause in the speech in which he utters it he
shows ignorance of science, or accepts as simply
true the historic knowledge of his day? The
thing is impossible. The light that is within
him must shine out, even though the medium
through which it shines be here and there black-
ened by imperfection. In the fundamental
point, therefore, the old school of critics and the
new are entirely at one. On the basis of this
essential harmony it should be possible for each
to speak to the other for edification. This is
what has been attempted here; and if those who
hold by the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy
will tolerate the opposite view, they will find that
in dealing with the Scriptures as a revelation of
God, and as an infallible guide in all that con-
cerns religious and moral truth, there is no dif-
ference. To make the sacred word living and
powerful as an instrument of spiritual regenera-
tion is our common effort; and our common
hope must be that, if in anything we have been
led into error, the mistake may be discovered
THE HISTORIC SETTING OF DEUTERONOMY.
503
and removed, before it has wrought evil in the
Church of God.
CHAPTER II.
THE HISTORIC SETTING OF DEU-
TERONOMY.
Whatever may be the date of the first publi-
cation of Deuteronomy, there can be no doubt
that it was accepted by Josiah and the people of
his time with an energy and thoroughness of
which we find no previous example. Its main
lessons were learnt and put into practice by
them, and from that period the religious concep-
tions of Deuteronomy dominated and formed
the Hebrew mind in a manner of which we have
no earlier trace. For practical purposes, there-
fore, we may say that this was the Deuteronomic
period. The book gathered up and embodied
the higher strivings of that time; and to under-
stand it thoroughly we need to know the history
of which it was, in part at least, the outcome.
Indeed, on any supposition as to age and author-
ship, a study of the history of Judah from the
end of the eighth century b. c. to the end of the
seventh is indispensable if we would adequately
understand our book, for that was the time when
the book is seen entering as a living force into
the history of Israel.
Unfortunately, however, there are few periods
of Israelite history as to which we have less of
reliable information. During much of the period
the main currents of the national life ran con-
trary to all better influences, and in such epochs
the compilers of the Book of Kings took no
interest. For the most part they were content
to " look and pass," gathering up the results of
such times of declension in a few condemnatory
words. It is only when the nation is on the up-
ward slope that they enter into details. They
wrote at a time when the purpose of God in
their national life was becoming clear, and the
splendour of it possessed them so that nothing
else but the increase of this purpose seemed
worthy of any intenser contemplation. Vic-
tories and defeats, successes and failures, and
last of all the tremendous catastrophe of the
Exile, had taught them this discernment; and
they pressed forward so eagerly to record the
deeds and thoughts of those who had learned
the secret of Yahweh that they had eyes for
nothing else. Consequenth'^ the eighty years
after the fall of Samaria, which for our purpose
would be so extremely instructive, are passed
over in all our sources, almost without mention.
But there are some facts and events of which we
can be entirely sure; and from these it is possi-
ble to conceive in outline the way in which
things must have shaped themselves in these
eventful years.
Brought about as it had been by the appeal of
Ahaz to the king of Assyria for help against the
continual aggressions of Syria and Israel, the
fall of Samaria must have come to the king and
people of Judah as a relief. Their enemy had
fallen, and they would henceforth be free from
the anxiety and harassment which Israel's enmity
had caused. But those must have been blind in-
deed with whom this feeling was permanent.
Very soon it must have become apparent to all
thoughtful men in Judah that, if they had been
freed from the worrying and exasperating
enmity of their kindred, their very success had
brought them into the presence of a much more
serious foe. With Assyria on their immediate
frontier, settled in the lands both of Damascus
and Samaria, they must have felt themselves ex-
posed to chances and dangers they had never
hitherto had to face. Under the old conditions,
except during comparatively short periods when
there was actual war between the two kingdoms,
Israel had stood between Judah and any danger
from the North. But now the people of the
Southern Kingdom were summoned from " the
safe glad rear to the dreadful van." Henceforth
no patriot could fail to be haunted by fear of
that ambitious and conquering Assyrian nation.
The whole of Hezekiah's reign was filled with
more or less convulsive efforts to maintain the
independence of Judah. These were giving but
faint promise of success, when the great deliver-
ance of Jerusalem foretold by Isaiah gave the
king a breathing space, and raised the highest
hopes in the minds of his people. It seemed for
a little quite possible that the ancient independ-
ence of Israel might be restored. To many it
seemed that the Messianic times were at hand;
faith in Yahweh carried all before it. But Heze-
kiah died not long after; and in the succeeding
reigns of Manasseh and Amon the whole temper
and policy of Israel underwent a most serious
and reactionary change.
The causes of this are not far to seek. During
the greater part of Hezekiah's reign Isaiah had
received only moderate support. According to
his own vision of his future work, he was to
preach without success; he was to say, " Hear
ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye, but
perceive not"; and, so far as the mass of the
people were concerned, that prevision was justi-
fied. Only the astounding success with which
his opposition to the Assyrians had been crowned
had turned the tide of popular opinion in his
favour. It was probably, therefore, only then
that Hezekiah's reforms were instituted. They
had been too short a time in force at his death
to have sent out their roots into the national life.
But that was not all. One of the most char-
acteristic points in all prophecy was that the
time when the full Messianic Kingdom should
appear was never clearly defined. Neither the
Prophet nor his hearers knew when it would be.
It loomed always as a bright but vague back-
ground to the deliverance which lay immediately
before them; and in almost every case neither
speaker nor hearers had any conception of the
long and weary way which divided those sunlit
mountain peaks from the dark and threatening
pass which they were approaching. Now the
literal interpretation of Isaiah's prophecies with
regard to the deliverance from Assyria had in-
evitably led the mass of the people to believe
that the raising of the siege of Jerusalem would
mean the immediate destruction of Assyria, and
the advent of the Messianic day of peace and
glory for Israel. But the facts completely falsi-
fied that expectation. Instead of being de-
stroyed Assyria only grew more powerful, and
instead of the Messianic time there was only the
old position of vassalage to Assyria. So men
grew weary, and said then as they have said so
often since, " All things are as they have been
from the beginning, and where is the promise
of His coming? " The true-hearted said it with
sadness; and the false-hearted, saying it in
mockery and unbelief, fell back upon the old
504
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
heathenish test, and said, " The gods of Assyria
are stronger than Yahweh, and we must give
them a place in our adoration." With the bulk
of the people this required no really great
change in their point of view. They had believed
in Yahweh and agreed to purify His worship,
because He had proved Himself stronger than
Sennacherib and his gods; and now when, in
the long run, Assyria was triumphing, they must
have seemed to themselves only to be following
the teachings of experience in giving the host
of heaven equal honour with their own ancestral
God. The reaction, therefore, was more in the
outward expression than in principle, and we
can easily understand how it was so swift and so
universal. Manasseh, Hezekiah's son, had prob-
ably opposed his father's policy, as the heir-
apparent has so often opposed the policy of the
reigning monarch; and if, as many suppose, Heze-
kiah lived for sixteen years after the destruction
of Sennacherib's host, Manasseh came to the
throne just when men's minds were most weary
with hope deferred, and when the Assyrian suc-
cess was about to reach its highest point before
its final fall.
Accordingly Manasseh would seem to have
undone at once all that his father and Isaiah had
accomplished. Nay, he went further in the in-
troduction of idolatry than any even of the idola-
trous kings who had preceded him. In the
Book of Kings the charges made against him
are three: — ist, that he introduced the worship
of the host of heaven according to the Assyrian
ritual; 2d, that he took part in the Moloch-wor-
ship; and 3d, that he restored the old semi-
Canaanite worship which it had been Isaiah's
most strenuous effort to root out. And this
policy, evil as it was in the eyes of all who cared
for the higher destinies of Israel, had at once
great and striking external success. For it
meant complete submission to Assyria, a willing
vassalage from which even the wish for inde-
pendence had disappeared. The heart of the old
Israelite independence had been faith in Yah-
weh and confidence in Israel's calling as His
people. Even so late as Isaiah's day it had been
faith in Yahweh which had kept Hezekiah
steady in his opposition to apparently over-
v.'helming force. But now Manasseh and the
people who supported him exalted the gods of
Assyria as an even surer refuge than Yahweh
had been. Having made that admission, there
was nothing left for them but to humble them-
selves under the mighty hand of the great king
and his great gods. And this Israel under Ma-
nasseh did most thoroughly. As Stade has
strikingly said, " The Temple of the one God of
Israel became a Pantheon." The feeble attempts
which Ahaz had made in the same direction were
utterly swept out of men's memory by the com-
pleteness of Manasseh's apostasy. With this
degradation of the religious faith there also came,
naturally, an intellectual degradation. Super-
stition, baser even than idolatry, seized upon the
minds of men, and illegitimate efforts to pry
into the future or to influence the destinies of
^ men by magic and incantations became part of
the popular fashion of the day. The old religion
of Israel had sternly set itself against all such
debasing practices. Alone amid the religions
of the ancient world, it had relentlessly refused
the help of necromancy and magic generally.
But the barrier the religion of Yahweh had
erected fell at once when its purity and unique-
ness had been sacrificed, and Manasseh gave
himself up to " practise augury and to use en-
chantments, and to deal with them that had
familiar spirits and with wizards." And to
superstition he also added cruelty. Not con-
tent with his signal victory over all the best im-
pulses of the past, not content with the applause
of the multitude who gladly followed him to do
evil, he endeavoured to force those whose work
he had destroyed to bow before the gods they
both hated and despised. We know too little of
the circumstances of the time to be sure of his
motives, but his action may have been founded
upon a craven fear that if he did not suppress
the voices of those who spoke for freedom, he
might be visited with the anger of the Assyrian
king. Or it may have been that feeling, so
powerfully expressed in Browning's poem " In-
stans Tyrannus," which makes a tyrant feel that
all his life is made bitter to him if there remain
within his power one free man whom he can-
not bend to his will. In any case it is certain
that he attacked the prophetic party with san-
guinary fury. Though he had the gods of the
great battalions on his side, he was dimly afraid
of the power of ideas; and, so far as faithful
men were concerned, he instituted a " reign of
terror." According to the graphic statement of
the historian, " he filled Jerusalem with inno-
cent blood from lip to lip." and for the time at
least was able to silence righteousness so far as
public utterance was concerned. There is a
tradition that even Isaiah fell a victim to his
fury, being sawn asunder between two planks at
his command. It is perhaps not likely that
Isaiah had survived so long. But, beyond all
doubt, many suffered for their faithfulness to
God; and it seems probable that the wonderful
picture of the Suffering Servant in the Deutero-
Isaiah owes much of its colour to the pathetic
and painful memories of this evil time.
All this apostasy brought with it worldly suc-
cess. Manasseh reigned long, and under him
the land had peace. Assyria could have no quar-
rel with a people and a king who anticipated its
very desire by eager submission. Peace brought
material prosperity. The land was so naturally
fertile that it always grew rich when war was
kept from its borders. We may surmise, too,
that a kind of bastard culture became popular
when the Jewish mind had opened to it, for
good and evil, a world of myth and song and
legend which, if known before, had until now
been barred from complete and triumphant en-
trance by faith in a living God. Once only
would Manasseh appear to have asserted himself,
and, according to the Book of Chronicles, he
was taken prisoner in Jerusalem by the master
he had served so well, and learned to know in
the bitterness of a Babylonian prison that
sycophancy does not always lead to safety. And
the wisdom he learned went further even than
that. At the end of his life he appears to have
wished to undo, at least in some measure, the
evil he had laboured throughout his reign to
establish and make strong. But he found that
to be impossible; and if his repentance was deep
and sincere he must have learned how severely
the heavenly powers can punish, by opening a
man's eyes to the evil he has done when it can-
not be undone. Nor did his late repentance
affect his son, for under Amon all things con-
tinued in their previous evil course. Indeed the
prevailing idolatry had rooted itself so firmly
J)euteronomy i.-iii.]
THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT.
505
that even in the early years of Josiah, when the
prophetic influence was beginning to reappear, it
still retained its hold with unshaken power.
But what of the prophetic party during those
evil days? Precipitated from power in an in-
stant at Hezekiah's death, it had at once become
feeble and obscure. Its leading supporters, we
may well believe, had to seek safety in hiding or
in flight; and after some of its chief speakers
had been cut off, the once dominant party had
to take the position of persecuted remnants for
whom all public work was impossible. Under
such circumstances what could these faithful men
do? They could only wait and pray, and pre-
pare for that better day of whose return their
faith in Yahweh would not suffer them to
despair.
From the position afterwards taken up by the
high priest, it would seem probable that the
Temple clergy were in full sympathy with the
prophetic movement. We need not suppose that
that sympathy arose wholly from the tendency
of prophetic thought and effort towards the sup-
pression of the High Places. We should prob-
ably do the better spirits among the priesthood
grievous wrong if we thought that their personal
interest was their main motive in supporting
even that reform. Notwithstanding the earlier
prophets' denunciation of the priests as a class,
there can be little doubt that they had advanced,
with the better classes of their nation generally,
in their appreciation of spiritual religion. And
we may well believe that the sight of the havoc
which the now degraded worship at the High
Places was working in the popular mind made
them earnest in their endeavours to restore the
true faith. Privileged as they were, they would
naturally be sheltered from the full fury of the
persecution. Consequently, when the time came
for the supporters of true religion to take their
place in public life again, it was natural and in-
evitable that the priests should be at their head.
The fact, too, that Josiah at his accession was a
child, for whose guardian no fitter person could
be found than the chief priest, gave the future
into their hands. But they did* not move pre-
maturely. So long as Josiah was a minor they
contented themselves with instilling their prin-
ciples into the mind of the king. In outward
political life, so far as we can ascertain, they did
not interfere at all, and the ground was moved
away from beneath the feet of the idolatrous
party, while they thought themselves firmly
established. In Josiah's eighteenth year the re-
sults of this quiet preparation appeared. In that
year Hilkiah, the high priest, told Shaphan the
scribe that he had found " the Book of the
Law " in the Temple. That this was Deuter-
onomy, if not altogether, yet practically, as we
have it now, there can be but little doubt; and
it immediately became the text-book of religion
for all that remained of Israel.
Now it is obvious that the whole hopes of the
religious party would naturallv be fixed upon it.
They would turn to it as eagerly as the Re-
formers turned to the Bible, after it had been
rediscovered by Luther at Erfurt. For obvi-
ously, if the people could be got to acknowledge
the law, the axe would be laid at the root of
every evil which they deplored. The High
Places would be destroyed; the primacy of the
Temple at Jerusalem would be secured; and the
prophetic teaching, with its insistence upon
judgment and the love of God as the essentials
of true worship, would, for the first time, be-
come the dominant influence in civil and re-
ligious life. Never since Israel was a nation
had the condition of the people called so loudly
for the enforcement of such a law, and now for
the first time was there hope that it might be
actually enforced. The character of the evils
that afflicted the nation, the history of the last
half-century, and the teachings of the great
canonical prophets had all converged, as it were,
to this one point, and we can understand how all
who strove for the higher life of Israel would
strive that Deuteronomy, whether ancient or
modern, should be neglected no longer. The
result was that the whole power of the State was
thrown into the struggle against idolatry and the
half-heathen Bamoth-worship. The prophets
and the priests joined hands to spread the prin-
ciples of the true religion, as voiced by Deu-
teronomy. Professor Cheyne, in his " Jeremiah,"
conjectures, with consideraljle likelihood, that
the break in that prophet's activity which
occurred at this time is to be accounted for by
the zeal with which he devoted himself to Deu-
teronomic propaganda throughout the land. In
any case, for the moment the purer worship ob-
tained a completer victory than ever before.
Unfortunately it came too late and proved too
evanescent. But in the inward sphere, the Deu-
teronomic view of religion as having its centre
in love to God, the tender, thoughtful evan-
gelical spirit which distinguishes the whole out-
look of its author, laid hold upon all the higher
minds that came after it. To Jeremiah and to
St. Paul alike, it, par excellence, represented the
law of God. Produced, or at any rate first
prized, at a time when Israel had fallen very
low, when evil was triumphant and good perse-
cuted, it recommended and exemplified a cheer-
ful courage, born of faith in the high destiny of
Israel and the truth of God. That, more than
anything else, helped to bear the ark of the
Church over the tumultuous centuries which
separated those two great servants of God, and
when Christ appeared it was seen that this book,
more than any in the Old Testament save per-
haps the Psalms, had anticipated His cardinal
teachings regarding the attitude of man to God
and of man to man. The conflicts and needs of
the seventh century b. c, which are so clearly
reflected in it, gave inspiration the opportunity
it needed to reveal that inner secret of God's
Kingdom. Out of defeat and disaster this reve-
lation came, and through times of defeat and
backsliding it proved its Divine origin by keep-
ing steadfast and calm those who specially waited
for the coming of the Messiah.
CHAPTER in.
THE DIVINE GOVERNl\fENT.
Deuteronomy i.-iii.
After these preliminary discussions we now
enter upon the exposition. With the excep-
tion of the first two verses of chapter i., con-
cerning which there is a doubt whether they do
not belong to Numbers, these three chapters
stand out as the first section of our book. Ex-
amination shows that they form a separate and
distinct whole, not continued in chapter iv. ; but
there has been a great diversity of opinion as to
5o6
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
their authorship and the intention with which
they have been placed here. The vocabulary
and the style so resemble those of the main parts
of the book that they cannot be entirely sepa-
rated from them; yet, at the same time, it seems
unlikely that the original author of the main
trunk of Deuteronomy can have begun his
book with this introductory speech from Moses,
followed it up with another Mosaic speech, still
introductory, in chapter iv., and in chapter v.
begun yet another introductory speech running
through seven chapters, before he comes to the
statutes and judgments which are announced at
the very beginning. The current supposition
about these chapters, therefore, is that they are
the work of a Deuteronomist, a man formed
under the influence of Deuteronomy and filled
with its spirit, but not the author of the book.
This seems to account for the resemblances, and
would also explain to some extent the existence
of such a superfluous prologue. But the hy-
pothesis is, nevertheless, not entirely satis-
factory. The resemblances are closer than we
should expect in the work of dififerent authors;
and one feels that the supposed Deuteronomist
must have been less sensitive in a literary sense
than we have any right to suppose him if he did
not feel the incongruity of such a speech in this
place. Professor Dillmann has made a very
acute suggestion, which meets the whole dififi-
culty in a more natural way. Feeling that the
style and language were in all essentials one
with those of the central Deuteronomy, he seeks
for some explanation which would permit him
to assign this section to the author of the book
himself. He suggests that as originally written
this was a historical introduction leading up to
the central code of laws; a historical preface, in
fact, which the author of Deuteronomy naturally
prefixed to his book. Ex hypothesi he had not
the previous books. Exodus, Leviticus, and
Numbers, before him as we have them. These
now form a historical introduction to Deuter-
onomy of a very minute and elaborate kind; but
he had to embody in his own book all of the
past history of his people that he wished to em-
phasise. But when the editor who arranged the
Pentateuch as we now have it inserted Deuter-
onomy in its present place, he found that he had
a double historical preface, that in the previous
books and this in Deuteronomy itself. As rev-
erence forbade the rejection of these chapters,
he took refuge in the expedient of turning the
originally impersonal narrative into a speech of
Moses; which he could all the more blamelessly
do as the probability is that the whole book was
regarded in his time as the work of Moses. This
hypothesis, if it can be accepted, certainly ac-
counts for all the phenomena presented by these
chapters — the similarity of language, the archaeo-
logical notes in the speech, and the historic
colour in the statements regarding Edom, for
example, which corresponds to early feeling,
not to post-exilic thought at all. It has besides
the merit of reducing the number of anonymous
writers to be taken account of in the Pentateuch,
a most desirable thing in itself. Lastly, it gives
us in Deuteronomy a compact whole more com-
plete in all its parts than almost any other por-
tion of the Old Testament, certainly more so
than any of the books containing legislation.
Moreover, that the Deuteronomic reinforce-
ment and expansion of the Mosaic legislation, as
contained in the Book of the Covenant, should
begin with such a history of Yahweh's dealing?-
with His people, is entirely characteristic of
Old Testament Revelation. In the main and
primarily, what the Old Testament writers give
us is a history of how God wrought, how He
dealt with the people He had chosen. In the
view of the Hebrew writers, God's first and main
revelation of Himself is always in conduct. He
showed Himself good and merciful and gentle
to His people, and then, having so shown Him-
self, He has an acknowledged right to claim
their obedience. As St. Paul has so powerfully
pointed out, the law was secondary, not primary.
Grace, the free love and choice of God, was
always the beginning of true relations with Him,
and only after that had been known and ac-
cepted does He look for the true life which His
law is to regulate. Naturally, therefore, when
the author of Deuteronomy is about to press
upon Israel the law in its expanded form, to call
them back from many aberrations, to summort
them to a reformation and new establishment
of the whole framework of their lives, he turns
back to remind them of what their past had been.
Law, therefore, is only a secondary deposit of
Revelation. If we are true to the Biblical point
of view we shall not look for the Divine voice
only, or even chiefly, in the legal portions of the
Scripture. God's full revelation of Himself
will be seen in the process and the completion of
that age-long movement, which was begun when
Israel first became a nation by receiving Yah-
weh as their God, and which ended with the life
and death of Him who summed up in Himself
all that Israel was called, but failed, to be.
That is the ruling thought in Scripture about
Revelation. God reveals Himself in history;
and by the persistent thoroughness with which
the Scriptural writers grasp this thought, the
unique and effective character of the Biblical
Revelation is largely accounted for. Other
nations, no doubt, looked back at times upon
what their gods had done for them, and those
who spoke for these gods may often have
claimed obedience and service from their people
on the ground of past favour and under threats
of its withdrawal. But earlier than any other
people which has affected the higher races of
mankind, Israel conceived of God as a moral
power with a will and purpose which embraced
mankind. Further, in the belief which appears
in their earliest records, that through them the
nations were to be blessed, and that in the future
One was coming who would in Himself bring
about the realisation of Israel's destiny, they
were provided with a philosophy of history, with
a conception which was fitted to draw into
organic connection with itself all the various
fortunes of Israel and of the nations.
Of course, at first much that was involved in
their view was not present to any mind. It was
the very merit of the germinal revelation made
through Moses that it had in it powers of growth
and expansion. In no other way could it be a
true revelation of God, a revelation which should
have in it the fulness, the flexibility, the aloof-
ness from mere local and temporary peculiari-
ties, which would secure its fitness for universal
mankind. Any revelation that consists only of
words, of ideas even, must, to be received, liave
some kind of relation to the minds that are to>
receive it. If the words and ideas are revealed,
as they must be, at a given place and a given
time, they must be in such a relation to that place-
Deuteronomy i.-iii.]
THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT.
507
and time that at some period of the world's his-
tory they will be found inadequate, needing ex-
pansion, which does not come naturally, and
then they have to be laid aside as insufficient.
But a revelation which consists in acts, which
reveals God in intimate, age-long, constant deal-
ings with mankind, is so many-sided, so varied,
so closely moulded to the actual and universal
needs of man, that it embraces all the funda-
mental exigencies of human life, and must al-
ways continue to cover human experience.
From it men may draw off systems of doctrines,
which may concentrate the revelation for a par-
ticular generation, or for a series of generations,
and make it more potently active in these cir-
cumstances. But unless the system be kept
constantly in touch with the revelation as given
in the history, it must become inadequate, false
in part, and must one day vanish away.
The revelation then in life is the only possible
form for a real revelation of God; and that the
writers of the Old Testament in their circum-
stances and in their time felt and asserted this,
is in itself so very great a merit that it is al-
most of itself sufficient to justify any claims they
may make to special inspiration. The greatest
of them saw God at work in the world, and had
experience of His influence in themselves, so
that they had their eyes opened to His actions as
other men had not. The least of them, again,
had been placed at the true point of view for
estimating aright the significance of the ordi-
nary action of the Divine Providence, and for
tracing the lines of Divine action where they
were to other men invisible, or at least obscure.
And in the records they have left us they have
been entirely true to that supremely important
point of view. All they deal with in the history
is the moral and spiritual effects of God's deal-
ing; and the great interests, as the world reckons
them, of war and conquest, of commerce and art,
are referred to only briefly and often only in
the way of allusion. To many moderns this is
an offence, which they avenge by speaking con-
temptuously of the mental endowment of the
Biblical writers as historians. On the contrary,
that these should have kept their eyes fixed only
upon that which concerned the religious life of
their people, that they should have kept firm
hold of the truth that it was there the central
importance of the people lay, and that they have
given us the material for the formation of that
great conception of supernatural revelation by
history in which God Himself moves as a factor,
is a merit so great that even if it were only a
brilliant fancy they might surely be pardoned
for ignoring other things. But if, as is the truth,
they were tracing the central stream of God's
redemptive action in the world, were laying open
to our view the steps by which the unapproach-
ably lofty conception of God was built up, which
their nation alone has won for the human race,
then it can hardly seem a fault that nothing else
appealed to them. They have given God to
those who were blindly groping for Him, and
they have established the standard by which all
historic estimates of even modern life are ulti-
mately to be measured.
For though there were in the history of that
particular nation, and in the line of preparation
for Christ, special miraculous manifestations of
God's power and love, which do not now occur,
yet no judgment of the course of history is worth
anything, even to-dav; which does not occupy
essentially the Biblical position. Ultimately
the thing to be considered is, what hath God
wrought? If that be ignored, then the stable
and instructive element in history has been kept
out of sight, and the mind loses itself hopelessly
amid the weltering chaos of second causes.
Froude, in his " History of England," has noted
this, and declares that in the period he deals with
it was the religious men who alone had any true
insight into the tendency of things. They meas-
ured all things, almost too crudely, by the Bib-
lical standard; but so essentially true and funda-
mental does that show itself to be, that their
judgment so formed has proved to be the only
sound one. This is what we should expect if
God's power and righteousness are the great
factors in the drama which the history of man
and of the world unfolds to us. That being so,
the suicidal folly of the policy of any Church or
party which shuts the Bible away from popular
use is manifest. It is nothing short of a blind-
ing of the people's eyes, and a shutting of their
cars to warning voices which the providential
government of the world, when viewed on a
large scale, never fails to utter. It renders
sound political judgment the prerogative only
of the few, and sets them among a people who
will turn to any charlatans rather than believe
their voice.
It was natural and it was inevitable, therefore,
that the author of Deuteronomy, standing, as
he did, on the threshold of a great crisis in the
history of Israel, should turn the thoughts of
his people back to the history of the past. To
him the great figure in the history of Israel in
those trying and eventful years during which
they wandered between Horeb, Kadesh-Barnea,
and the country of the Arnon, is Yahweh their
God. He is behind all their movements, im-
pelling and inciting them to go on and enjoy the
good land He had promised to their fathers.
He went before them and fought for them. He
bare them in the wilderness, as a man doth bear
his son. He watched over them and guided their
footsteps in cloud and fire by day and night.
Moreover all the nations by whom they passed
had been led by Him and assigned their places,
and only those nations whom Yahweh chose
had been given into Israel's hand. In the inter-
nal affairs of the community, too. He had
asserted Himself. They were Yahweh's people,
and all their national action was to be according
to His righteous character. Especially was the
administration of justice to be pure and impar-
tial, yielding to neither fear nor favour because
the " judgment is God's." And how had they
responded to all this loving favour on the part
of God? At the first hint of serious conflict
they shrank back in fear. Notwithstanding
that the land which God had given them was a
good and fruitful country, and notwithstanding
the promises of Divine help, they refused to in-
cur the necessary toils and risks of the conquest.
Every difficulty they might encounter was exag-
gerated by them; their very deliverance from
Egypt, which they had been wont to consider
" their crowning mercy," became to their faith-
less cowardice an evidence of hatred for them on
the part of God.
To men in such a state )f mind conquest was
impossible; and though, in a spasmodic revul-
sion from their abject cowardice, they made an
attack upon the people they were to dispossess,
it ended, as it could not but end, in their defeat
5o8
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
and rout. They were condemned to forty years
of wandering, and it was only after all that gen-
eration was dead that Israel was again permitted
to approach the land of promise. But Yahweh
had been faithful to them, and when the time
was come He opened the way for their advance
and gave them the victory and the land. For
His love was patient, and always made a way to
bless them, even through their sins.
That was the picture the Deuteronomist spread
out before the eyes of his countrymen, to the in-
tent that they might know the love of God, and
might see that safety lay for them in a wiUmg
yielding of themselves to that love. The disas-
trous results of their wayward and famt-hearted
shrinking from this Divine calling is the only
direct threat he uses, but in the passage there is
another warning, all the more impressive that it
is vague and shadowy. God is to the Deuter-
onomist the universal ruler of the world. The
nations are raised up and cast down according
to His will, and until he wills it they cannot be
dispossessed. But He had willed that fate for
many, and at every step of Israel's progress they
came upon traces of vanished peoples whom for
their sins He had suffered others to destroy.
The Emim in Moab, the Zamzummim in Am-
mon, the Horites in Seir, and the Awims m
Philistia, had all been destroyed before the
people who now occupied these lands, and the
whole background of the narrative is one of
judgment, where mercy had been of no avail.
The sword of the Lord is dimly seen in the
archeeological notes which are so frequent m
this section of our book and thus the final touch
is given to the picture of the past which is here
drawn to be an impulse for the future. While
all the foregoing represents only God's love
and patience overcoming man's rebellion, the
background is, like the path of the great pilgrim
caravans which year by year make their slow and
toilsome way to Mohammedan holy places,
strewn with the remains of predecessors in the
same path. With stern, menacing finger this
great teacher of Israel points to these evidences
that the Divine love and patience may be, and
have been, outworn, and seems to re-echo in an
even more impressive way the language of
Isaiah: "The anger of Yahweh was kindled
(against these peoples), and He stretched forth
His hand (against them) and smote (them); and
the hills did tremble, and (their) carcasses were
as refuse in the midst of the streets. For all
this His anger is not turned away, but His hand
is stretched out still." Without a word of direct
rebuke he opens his people's eyes to see that
shadovvy outstretched hand. Behind all the
turmoil of the world there is a presence and a
power which supports all who seek good, but
which is sternly set against all evil, ready, when
the moment comes, "to strike once and strike
no more."
Yet another glimpse is given us in these chap-
ters of God's manner of dealing with men. We
have seen how He guides and rules His chosen
ones. We have seen how He punishes those
who have set themselves against the Divine law.
And in chapter ii. 30 we are told how men be-
come hardened in their sin, so as to render de-
struction inevitable. Of Sihon, king of Hesh-
bon, who would not let the Israelites pass by
him, the writer says: " Yahweh thy God hard-
ened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate,
that He might deliver him into thy hand, as ap-
peareth this day." But he does not mean by
these expressions to lay upon God the causation
of Sihon's obstinacy, so as to make the man a
mere helpless victim. His thought rather is.
that as God rules all, so to Him must be ulti-
mately traced all that happens in the world. In
some sense all acts, whether good or bad, all
asfencies, whether beneficent or destructive, have
their source in and their power from Him. But
nevertheless men have moral responsibility for
their acts, and are fully and justly conscious of
ill desert. Consequently that hardening of spirit
or of heart, which at one moment may be at-
tributed solely to God, may at another be as-
cribed solely to the evil determination of man.
The most instructive instance of this is to be
found in the history of Pharaoh, when he was
commanded to let Israel go. In that narrative,
from Exodus iv. to xi., there is repeated inter-
change of expression. Now it is Yahweh hard-
ened Pharaoh's heart; now, as in viii. 15 and 32,
Pharaoh hardened his own heart; and, again,
Pharaoh's heart was hardened. In each case the
same thing is meant, and the varying expressions
correspond only to a difference of standpoint
When Yahweh foretells that the signs He au-
thorises Moses to show will fail of their effect,
it is always " Yahweh will harden Pharaoh[s
heart," since the main point in contemplation is
His government of the world. If, on the other
hand, it is the sinful obstinacy of Pharaoh which
is prominent in the passage, we have the self-
determination of Pharaoh alone set before us.
But it is to be noted, and this is indeed the car-
dinal fact, that Yahweh never is said to harden
the heart of a good man, or a man set mainly
upon righteousness. It is always those who are
guilty of palpable wrongs and acts of evil-doing
upon whom God thus works.
Now we know that the author of Deuteronomy
had two at least of the ancient historical narra-
tives before him which are combined in Exod.
iv.-xi., and he takes up their thinking. Ex-
pressed in modern language, the thought is
this. When men are found following their, own
will in defiance of all law and all the restraints of
righteousness, that is manifestly not the first
stage in their moral declension. This obstinacy
in evil is the result and the wages of former evil
deeds, beginning perhaps only with careless
laxity, but gathering strength and virulence with
every wilful sin. Until near the end of a com-
pleted growth in wickedness no man deliber-
ately says, " Evil, be thou my good." Neverthe-
less each act of sin involves a step towards that,
and the sinner in this manner hardens himself
against all warning. Like the sins which work
this obduracy, this hardening is the sinner's own
act. The ruin which falls upon his moral nature
is his own work. That is the inexorable result
of the moral order of the universe, and from it
no exception is possible. But if so, God too has
been active in all such catastrophes. He has
so framed and ordered the world that indulgence
in evil must harden in evil. This it was which
the Israelite religious mind saw and dwelt upon,
as well as upon man's share in the dread process
of moral decay. We also do well to take heed
to this aspect of the truth. When we do, we
have solved the Scriptural difficulty regarding
the Divine hardening of man's heart. It is
simply the ancient formula for what every mind
that is ethically trained recognises in the world
to-day. Those who recognise themselves as
Deuteronomy v. 1-2 1 ]
THE DECALOGUE— ITS FORM.
5°9
children of God, and acknowledge the obliga-
tions of His law, are dealt with in the way of
discipline with infinite love and patience. Those
who definitely set themselves against the moral
order of the world which God has established
are broken in pieces and destroyed. Between
these two classes there are the morally undeter-
mined, who ultimately turn either to the right
hand or to the left. The process by which these
pass on to be numbered among the rebellious is
pictured in Scripture with extraordinary moral
insight. The only difference from a present-
day description of it is, that here God is kept
constantly present to the mind as the chief factor
in the development of the soul. To-day, even
those who believe in God are apt to forget Him
in tracing His laws of action. But that is an
error of the first magnitude. It darkens the hope
of man; for without a sure promise of Divine
help there is no certainty of moral victory either
for the race or the individual. It narrows our
view of the awful sweep of sin; for unless we
see that sin afTects even the Ruler of the uni-
verse, and defies His unchanging law, its results
are limited to the evil that we do our fellow-men,
which, as we see it, is of little importance.
Further, it degrades moral law to a mere arbi-
trary dictum of power, or to an opinion founded
upon man's purblind experience. The acknowl-
edgment of God, on the contrary, makes morality
the very essence of the Divine nature, and the
unchangeable rule for the life of man.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DECALOGUE— ITS FORM.
Deuteronomy v. 1-21.
As the fourth chapter belongs to the speech
which concludes the legislative portion of Deu-
teronomy both in contents and language (see
chapter xxiii.), we shall pass on now to the fifth
chapter, which begins with a recital of the Deca-
logue. As has already been pointed out, the
main trunk of the Book of Deuteronomy is a
repetition and expansion of the Law of the Cove-
nant contained in Exod. xx. -xxiii.* Now, both
in Exodus and Deuteronomy, before the more
general and detailed legislation, we have the
Decalogue, or the Ten Words, as it is called, in
substantially the same form; and the question
immediately arises as to the age at which this
beautifully systematised and organised code of
fundamental laws came into existence. What-
ever its origin, it is an exceedingly remarkable
document. It touches the fundamental prin-
ciples of religious and moral life with so sure a
hand that at this hour, for even the most civilised
nations, it sums up the moral code, and that so
effectively that no change or extension of it has
ever been proposed. That being its character,
i*: becomes a question of exceeding interest to
iJecide whether it can justly be referred to so
early a time as the days of Moses. In both the
passages where it occurs it is represented as
having been given to the people at Horeb by
Yahweh Himself, and it is made the earliest and
most fundamental part of the covenant between
Him and Israel. It would accordingly seem as
H a claim were made for it as a specially early
* See this brought out in detail in Robertson Smith," Old
Testament in Jewish Church," p. 431.
33— Vol. I.
and specially sacred law. Now, much as critics
have denied, there have been found very few
who deny that in the main some such law as this
must have been given to Israel in Moses' day.
Even Kuenen admits as much as that in his
" History of the Religion of Israel." The only
commandment of the ten he has difficulty in ac-
cepting is the second, which forbids the making
of any graven image for worship. That, he
thinks, cannot have been in the original Deca-
logue, not because of any peculiarity of language,
or because of any incoherency in composition,
but simply because he cannot believe that at that
early day the religion of Yahweh could have
been so spiritual as to demand the prohibition of
images. But his reasons are extremely inade-
quate; more especially as he admits that the Ark
was the Mosaic Sanctuary, and that in it there
was no image, as there was none in the Temple
at Jerusalem. That Yahweh was worshipped
under the form of a calf at Horeb, and after-
wards in Northern Israel at Bethel and else-
where, proves nothing. A law does not forth-
with extinguish that against which it is directed,
for idolatry continued even after Deuteronomy
was accepted as the law. Moreover, if, as
Kuenen thinks, calf-worship had existed in
Israel before Moses, it was not unnatural that
it took centuries before the higher view super-
seded the lower. Even by Christianity the an-
cient superstitions and religious practices of
heathenism were not thoroughly overcome for
centuries. Indeed in many places they have not
yet been entirely suppressed. Nor does Well-
hausen * make a better case for a late Deca-
logue. His hesitation about it is most remark-
able, and the reasons he gives for tending to
think it may be late are singularly unsatisfactory.
His first reason is that " according to Exodus
xxxiv. the commandments which stood upon the
two tables were quite different." He relies on
the words in ver. 28 of that chapter — " And he
(Moses) was there with the Lord forty days and
forty nights; he did neither eat bread nor drink
water. And he wrote upon the tables the words
of the covenant, the ten words " — taking them
to imply that the fmmediately preceding com-
mandments, which are of the same ritual char-
acter with those which follow the Decalogue in
Exodus XX., are here called the ten words. But
it is not necessary to take the passage so. Ac-
cording to ver. I it was Yahweh who was to
write the words on the tables, and we cannot
suppose that so flagrant a contradiction should
occur in a single chapter as that here it should
be said that Moses wrote the tables. Yahweh,
who is mentioned in the previous verse, must
therefore be the subject of wayyikhtobh (ver. 28),
and the ten words consequently are different
from the words (up to ver. 27) which Yahweh
commanded Moses to write, somewhere, but not
on the tables. Besides, every one who attempts
to make ten words of the commands before ver.
27 brings out a different result, and that of itself,
as Dillmann says, is sufficient to show that the
second Decalogue in chapter xxxiv. is entirely
fanciful. Wellhausen's second reason is this:
'■ The prohibition of images was quite unknown
during the other period: Moses himself is said
to have made a brazen serpent, which down to
Hezekiah's time continued to be worshipped as
an image of Jehovah." But the Decalogue does
not prohibit the making of every image; it pro-
• Wellhausen, "Prolegomena," p. 439.
5IO
THE BOOK OF DEUIERONOMY.
hibits the making of images for worship.
Therefore Moses might quite well have made a
figure of a serpent, even though he wrote the
Decalogue, if it was not meant for worship.
But there is nothing said to lead us to believe
that the serpent was regarded as an image of
Yahweh. Indeed the very contrary is asserted;
and if Israel in later times made a bad use of this
ancient relic of a great deliverance, Moses can
hardly be held responsible for that. In the third
place, Wellhausen says: " The essentially and
necessarily national character of the older
phases of the religion of Yahweh completely
disappears in the quite universal code of morals
which is given in the Decalogue as the funda-
mental law of Israel; but the entire series of re-
ligious personalities throughout the period of the
Judges and Kings — from Deborah, who praised
Jael's treacherous act of murder, to David, who
treated his prisoners of war with the utmost
cruelty — make it very difficult to believe that the
religion of Israel was from the outset one of a
specifically moral character." Surely this is
very feeble criticism. On the same grounds we
might declare, because of the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, or on account of Napoleon's
reported poisoning of his own wounded at Acre,
that Christianity was not a religion of a " spe-
cifically moral character " at this present mo-
ment. Surely the facts that people never live
at the level of their ideals, and that the lifting of
a nation's life is a process which is as slow as
the raising of the level of the delta of the Nile,
should be too familiar to permit any one to be
misled by difificulties of this kind. Nor is his
last ground in any degree more convincing.
" It is extremely doubtful," he says, " whether
the actual monotheism which is undoubtedly
presupposed in the universal moral precepts of
the Decalogue could have formed the founda-
tion of a national religion. It was first devel-
oped out of the national religion at the downfall
of the nation." The obvious reply is that this
is a petitio principii. The whole debate in regard
to this question is whether Moses was a mono-
theist, or at least the founder of a religion which
was implicitly monotheistic from the beginning;
and the date of the Decalogue is interesting
mainly because of the light it would throw upon
that question. To decide this date therefore by
the assertion that, being monotheistic, the Deca-
logue cannot be Mosaic, is to assume the very
thing in dispute. Wellhausen himself, elsewhere
(p. 434), seems to favour the opposite view.
In speaking of what Moses did for Israel he
says that through " the Torah," in the sense of
decisions given by lot from the Ark, " he gave
a definite positive expression to their sense of
nationality and their idea of God. Yahweh was
not merely the God of Israel; as such He was
the God at once of Law and of Justice, the basis,
the informing principle, and the implied postu-
late of their national consciousness"; and again
(p. 438), "As God of the nation Yahweh be-
came the God of Justice and of Right; as God
of Justice and Right, He came to be thought of
as the highest, and at last as the only power in
heaven and earth." In the Mosaic conception of
God, therefore, Wellhausen himself being wit-
ness, there lay implicitly, perhaps even explicitly,
the conception of Yahweh as " the only power
in heaven and earth." In that case, is it reason-
able to put the Decalogue late, because being
moral it is universal, and so implies monotheism?
But there is still other, and perhaps stronger
evidence, that the universality of the Decalogue
is no indication of a late date. On the contrery
it would seem, from Professor Muirhead's ac-
count of the Roman fas, that universality in
legal precept may be a mark of very primitive
laws. Speaking of Rome in its earliest stages
of growth, when the circumstances of the people
in very many respects resembled those of the
Hebrews in Mosaic times,* he says: " We look
in vain for, and it would be absurd to expect,
any definite system of law in those early times.
What passed for it was a composite of fas, jus,
and boni mores, whose several limits and char-
acteristics it is extremely difificult to define."
He then proceeds to describe fas: " By fas was
understood the will of the gods, the laws given
by Heaven for men on earth, much of it regula-
tive of ceremonial, but a by no means insignifi-
cant part embodying rules of conduct. It ap-
pears to have had a wider range than jus. There
were few of its commands, prohibitions, or pre-
cepts that were addressed to men as citizens of
any particular state; all mankind came within its
scope. It forbade that a war should be under-
taken without the prescribed fetial ceremonial,
and required that faith should be kept with even
an enemy — when a promise had been made to
him under sanction of an oath. It enjoined hos-
pitality to foreigners, because the stranger guest
was presumed, equally with his entertainer, to
be an object of solicitude to a higher power. It
punished murder, for it was the taking of a God-
given life; the sale of a wife by her husband, for
she had become his partner in all things human
and Divine; the lifting of a hand against a
parent, for it was subversive of the first bond of
society and religion, the reverence due by a child
to those to whom he owed his existence; in-
cestuous connections, for they defiled the altar;
the false oath, and the broken vow, for they were
an insult to the divinities invoked," etc. In
fact, the Roman fas had much the same char-
acter as the Decalogue and the legislation of the
first code (Exod. xx.-xxiii.). Consequently
those who have thought that all early legislation
must be concrete, narrow, particularistic,
bounded at widest by the direct needs of the men
making up the clan, tribe, or petty nationality,
are wrong. The early history of law shows
that, along with that, there is also a demand for
some expression of the laws of life seen from
the point of view of man's relation to God.
That fact greatly strengthens the case for the
early date of the Decalogue. For practically it
is the Hebrew fas. If it has a higher tone and
a wider sweep if it provides a framework into
which human duty can, even now, without un-
due stretching of it, be securely fitted, that is only
what we should expect, if God was working in
the history and development of this nation as
nowhere else in the world. In short, the his-
tory of primitive Roman law shows that, with-
out inspiration, a feeble wavering step would
have been taken to the development of a code
of moral duty, within the scope of which all man-
kind should come. With inspiration, surely this
effort would also be made, and made with a
success not elsewhere attained.
In none of the reasons which have been ad-
vanced, therefore, is there anything to set
against the Biblical statement that the ten words
were older and more sacred than any other por-
*"Ency. Brit.," vol. xx., p. 670.
Deuteronomy v. 1-21.]
'I'HE DECALOGUE— ITS FORM.
5"
tion of the Israelite legislation, and that they
were Mosaic in origin. The universal hesitation
shown by the greater among the most advanced
critics in definitely removing the Decalogue
from the foundations of Israel's history, al-
though its presence there is so great an embar-
rassment to them, lets us see how strong the
case for the Mosaic origin is, and assures us
that the evidence is all in favour of this view.
But if it be Mosaic, at first sight the conclu-
sion would seem to he that the form of the Deca-
logue given in Exodus is the more ancient, and
that the text in Deuteronomy is a later and some-
what extended version of that. Closer examina-
tion, however, tends to suggest that the original-
ten words, in their Mosaic form, differed from
any of the texts we have, and that of these the
Exodus text in its present form is later than
that in Deuteronomy. The great difference in
length between the two halves of the Decalogue
suggests the probability that originally all the
commandments were short, and much the same
in style and character as the last half, " Thou
shalt not steal," and so on. Further, when the
reasons and inducements given for the observ-
ance of the longer commands are set aside, just
such short commands are left to us as we find
in the second table. Lastly, differences between
the versions in Exodus and Deuteronomy occur
in almost every case in those parts of the text
which may be regarded as appendices. In fact
there are only two variations in the proper text
of the commands. In the fourth, we have in
Exodus " Remember the Sabbath day," while in
Deuteronomy we have " Observe the Sabbath
day "; but the meaning is the same in both cases.
In the tenth, in Exodus the command is " Thou
shalt not covet thy neighbour's house"; and
the " house " is explained by the succeeding
clause, " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
wife, nor his manservant," etc., to mean " house-
hold " in its widest sense. In Deuteronomy the
old meaning of " house " as household and
goods has fallen out of use, and the component
parts of the neighbour's household possessions
are named, beginning with his wife. Then fol-
lows the " house " in its narrow meaning, as the
mere dwelling, grouped along with the slaves
and cattle, and with tithaiuweh substituted in He-
brew for tachmodh. Fundamentally therefore the
two recensions are the same. Even in the rea-
sons and explanations there is only one really
important variation. In Exod. xx. 11 the reason
for the observance of the fourth commandment
is stated thus: " For in six days Yahweh made
heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them
is, and rested the seventh day; therefore Yah-
weh blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it."
In Deuteronomy, on the other hand, that rea-
son is omitted, and in its place we find this:
" And thou shalt remember that thou wast a
servant in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh thy
God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand,
and by a stretched out arm; therefore Yahweh
thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath."
Now if the reference to the creation had formed
part of the original text of the Decalogue in
the days of the author of Deuteronomy, if he
had that before him as actually spoken by Yah-
weh, it is difftcult to believe that he would have
left it out and substituted another reason in its
stead. He would have no object in doing so,
for he could have added his own reason after
that given in Exodus, had he so desired. It is
likely, therefore, that in the original text no
reason appeared; that Deuteronomy first added
a reason; while ver. 11 in Exod. xx. was prob-
ably inserted there from a combination of Exod.
xxxi. lyb and Gen. ii. 26, — " For in six days
Yahweh made heaven and earth, and on the
seventh day He rested and was refreshed";
" and He rested on the seventh day from all His
work which He had made." Both these texts
belong to P and differ in style altogether from
JE, with whose language all the rest of the set-
ting of the Decalogue corresponds. On these
suppositiofis Exod. xx. 11 would necessarily be
the latest part of the two texts. Originally,
therefore, the Mosaic commands probably ran
thus:
" I am Yahweh thy God, which brought thee
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage.
" I. Thou shalt not have any other gods before
Me.
" II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image.
" III. Thou shalt not take the name of Yah-
weh thy God in vain.
" IV. Remember {or Keep) the day of rest to
sanctify it.
" V. Honour thy father and thy mother.
"VI. Thou shalt not kill.
" VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
"VIII. Thou shalt not steal.
" IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness
against thy neighbour.
" X. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
house."
In that shape they contain everything that is
fundamentally important, and exhibit the founda-
tions of the Mosaic religion and polity in an
entirely satisfactory and credible form.
But, before passing on to consider the sub-
stance of the Decalogue, it will be worth our
while to consider what the full significance of
these differing recensions of the Decalogue is.
In both places the words are quoted directly as
having been spoken by Yahweh to the people,
and they are introduced by the quoting word
" saying." Now if we do not wish to square
what we read with any theory, the slight diver-
gences between the two recensions need not
trouble us, for we have the substance of what
was said, and in the main the very words, and
that is really all we need to be assured of. But
if, on the contrary, we are going to insist that,
this being part of an inspired book, every word
must be pressed with the accuracy of a maso-
retic scribe, then we are brought into inextrica-
ble difficulties. It cannot be true that at Horeb
Yahweh said two different things on this special
occasion. One or both of these accounts must
be inaccurate, in the pedantic sense of accuracy,
and yet both have the same claim to be inspired.
In fact both are inspired; it is the theory of in-
spiration which demands for revelation this
kind of accuracy that must go to the wall.
It will be seen that this instance is very in-
structive as to the method of the ancient He-
brews in dealing with legislation which was
firmly held to be Mosaic, or even directly
Divine. If we are right in holding that origi-
nally the ten words were, as we have supposed,
limif.d to definite short commands, this example
teacncs us that where there could be no ques*.io'<
of deceit, or even an object for deceiving, addi-
tions calculated to meet the needs and defects
512
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY,
of the particular period at which the laws are
written down, are inserted without any hint that
they did not form part of the original document.
If this has been done, even to the extent we
have seen reason to infer, in a small, carefully
ordered, and specially ancient and sacred code,
how much more freely may we expect the same
thing to have been done in the looser and more
fluid regulations of the large political and cere-
monial codes, which on any supposition were
posterior, and much less fundamental and sacred.
That there is for us something disappointing,
and even slightly questionable, in such action is
really nothing to the purpose. We have to
learn from the actual facts of revelation how
revelation may be, or perhaps even must be,
conveyed; and we cannot too soon learn the
lesson that to a singular degree, and in many
other directions than their notions of accuracy,
the ancient mind differs from the modern mind,
and that at any period there is a great gulf to
be crossed before a Western mind can get into
any intimate and sure rapport with an Eastern
mind.
One other thing is noteworthy. Wellhausen
has already been quoted as to the quite universal
and moral character of the Decalogue; and his
view, that a code so free from merely local and
ceremonial provisions can hardly be Mosaic,
has been discussed. But, while rejecting his
conclusion, we must Adhere to his premisses.
By emphasising the universal nature of the ten
commandments, and by showing that they pre-
ceded the ceremonial law by many centuries,
the critical school have cut away the ground
from imder the semi-antinomian views once so
prevalent, and always so popular, with those
who call themselves advanced thinkers. It is
now no longer possible to maintain that the
Decalogue was part of a purely Jewish law,
binding only upon Jews and passing away at the
advent of Christianity as the ceremonial law
did. Of course this view was never really taken
seriously in reference to murder or theft; but it
has always been a strong point with those who
have wished to secularise the Sunday. Now if the
advanced critical position be in any degree true,
then the ten commandments stand quite separate
from the ceremonial law, have nothing in com-
mon with it, and are handed down to us in a
document written before the conception even of
a binding ceremonial law had dawned upon the
mind of any man in Israel. Nor is there any-
thing ceremonial or Jewish in the command,
Remember or Observe the rest-day to keep it
holy. In the reasons given in Exodus and
Deuteronomy we have the two principles which
make this a moral and univer.^al command — the
necessity for rest, and the necessity of an oppor-
tunity to cultivate the spiritual nature. Nothing
indeed is said about worship; but it lies in the
nature of the case that if secular work was
rigorously forbidden, mere slothful abstinence
from activity cannot have been all that was
meant. Worship, and instruction in the things
of the higher life, must certainly have been prac-
tised in such a nation as Israel on such a day;
and we may therefore say that they were in-
tended by this commandment. Understood in
that way, the fourth commandment shows a deli-
cate perception of the conditions of the higher
life which surpasses even the prohibition of cov-
etousne.ss in the tenth. In the words of a work-
ing man who was advocating its observance, " It
gives God a chance"; that is, it gives man the
leisure to attend to God. But the moral point
of view which it implies is so high, and so diffi-
cult of attainment, that it is only now that the
nations of Europe are awaking to the inestimable
moral benefits of the Sabbath they have despised.
Because of this difficulty too, many who think
themselves to be leaders in the path of improve-
ment, and are esteemed by others to be so, are
never weary of trying to weaken the moral con-
sciousness of the people, until they can steal
this benefit away, on the ground that Sabbath-
keeping is a mere ceremonial observance. So
far from being that, it is a moral duty of the
highest type; and the danger in which it seems
at times to stand is due mainly to the fact that
to appreciate it needs a far more trained and
sincere conscience than most of us can bring to
the consideration of it.
CHAPTER V.
THE DECALOGUE— ITS SUBSTANCE.
That the Decalogue in any of its forms must
have been the work of one mind, and that a
very great and powerful mind, will be evident
on the most cursory inspection. We have not
here, as we have in other parts of Scripture,
fragments of legislation supplementary to a
large body of customary law, fragments which,
because of their intrinsic importance or the
necessities of a particular time, have been writ-
ten down. We have here an extraordinarily
successful attempt to bring within a definite
small compass the fundamental laws of social
and individual life. The wonder of it does not
lie in the individual precepts. All of them, or
almost all of them, can be paralleled in the legis-
lation of other peoples, as indeed could not fail
to be the case if the fundamental laws of society
and of individual conduct were aimed at. These
must be obeyed, more or less, in every society
that survives. It is the wisdom with which the
selection has been made; it is the sureness of
hand which has picked out just those things
which were central, and has laid aside as irrele-
vant everything local, temporary, and purely
ceremonial; it is the relation in which the whole
is placed to God, — these give this small code its
distinction. In these respects it is like the
Lord's Prayer. It is vain for men to point out
this petition of that unique prayer as occurring
here, that other as occurring there, and a third
as found in yet another place. Even if every
single petition contained in it could be unearthed
somewhere, it would still remain as unique as
ever; for where can you find a prayer which, like
it, groups the fundamental cries of humanity to
God in such short space and with so sure a
touch, and brings them all into such deep con-
nection with the Fatherhood of God? In both
cases, in the praj^er and in the Decalogue alike,
we must recognise that the grouping is the work
of one mind; and in both we must recognise also
that, whatever were the natural and human
powers of the mind that wrought the code and
prayer respectively, the main element in the suc-
cess that has attended their work is the extraor-
dinary degree in which they were illumined
by the Divine Spirit. But where, between the
time of Moses and the time when Deuteronomy
first laid hold upon the life of the nation, are we
THE DECALOGUE— ITS SUBSTANCE.
513
to look for a legislator of this pre-eminence?
So far as we know the history, there is no name
that would occur to us. So far as can be seen,
Moses alone has been marked out for us in the
history of his people as equal to, and likely to
undertake, such a task. Everything, therefore,
concurs to the conclusion that in the Decalogue
we have the first, the most sacred, and the fun-
damental law in Israel. Here Moses spoke for
God; and whatever additions to his original ten
words later times may have made, they have not
obscured or overlaid what must be ascribed to
him. He may not have been the author of much
that bears his name, for unquestionably there
were developments later than his time which
were called Mosaic because they were a con-
tinuation and adaptation of his work; but we are
justified in believing that here we have the first
law he gave to Israel; and in it we should be
able to see the really germinal principles of the
religion he taught.
Now, manifestly, a religion which spoke its
first word in the ten commandments, even in
their simplest form, must have been in its very
heart and core moral. It must always have been
a heresy therefore, a denial of the fundamental
Mosaic conception, to place ritual observance
per se above moral and religious conduct, as a
means of approach to Yahwen. On any reading
of the commandments only the third and fourth
(two out of ten) refer to matters of mere wor-
ship; and even these may more correctly be taken
to refer primarily to the moral aspects of the
cultus. All the rest deal with fundamental rela-
tions to God and man. Consequently the
prophets who, after the manner of Amos and
Hosea, denounce the prevailing belief that Yah-
weh's help could be secured for Israel, whatever
its moral state, by offerings and sacrifices, were
not teaching a new doctrine, first discovered by
themselves. They were simply reasserting the
fundamental principles of the Mosaic religion.
Reverence and righteousness — these from the
first were the twin pillars upon which it rested.
Before ever the ceremonial law, even in its most
rudimentary form, had been given, these were
emphasised in the strongest way as the require-
ments of Yahweh; and the people whom the
prophets reproved, instead of being the repre-
sentatives of the ancient Yahwistic faith, had re-
jected it. Whether the popular view was a fall-
ing away from a truer view which had once been
popular, or whether it represented a heathen
tendency which remained in Israel from pre-
Mosaic times and had not even in the days of
Amos been overcome, it seems undeniable that
it was entirely contrary to the fundamental prin-
ciples of Yahwism as given by Moses. Even
by the latest narrators, those who brought our
Pentateuch into its present shape, and who were,
it is supposed, completely under the influence of
ceremonial Judaism, the primarily moral char-
acter of Yahweh's religion was acknowledged
by the place they gave to the ten command-
ments. They alone are handed down as
spoken by Yahweh Himself, and as having
preceded all other commands; and the terrors
of Sinai, the thunder and the earthquake, are
made more intimately the accompaniments of
this law than of any other. Unquestionably
the mind of Israel always was, that here, and not
in the ceremonial law, was the centre of gravity
of Yahwism. In the view of that fact it is some-
what hard to understand how so many writers
of our times, who admit the Decalogue to have
been Mosaic, or at any rate pre-prophetic, yet
deny the prevailingly moral character of the
early religion of Israel. When this law was once
promulgated, the old naturalism in which Israel,
like other ancient races, had been entangled was
repudiated, and the relation between Yahweh
and His people was declared to be one which
rested upon moral conduct in the widest sense of
that term. And the ground of this fact is plainly
declared here to be the character of Yahweh:
" I am the Lord thy God, that brought thee out
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bond-
age." He was their deliverer. He had a right to
command them, and His commands revealed His
nature to His people.
The first four commandments show that Yah-
weh was already conceived as a spiritual being,
removed by a whole heaven from the gods of the
Canaanite nations by whom Israel was sur-
rounded. These were mere representatives of
the powers of nature. As such they were re-
garded as existing in pairs, each god having his
female counterpart; and their acts had all the
indifference to moral considerations which nature
in its processes shows. They dwelt in moun-
tain tops, in trees, in rude stones, or in obelisks,
and they were worshipped by rites so sanguinary
and licentious that Canaanite worship bore every-
where a darker stain than even nature-worship
elsewhere had disclosed. In contrast to all this
the Yahweh of the Decalogue is " alone," in
solitary and unapproachable separation. Amid
all the unbridled speculation that has been let
loose on this subject, no one, I think, has ever'
ventured to join with Him any name of a god-'
dess, and He sternly repudiates the worship of
any other god besides Him. Now, though
there is nothing said of monotheism here, i. c.,'
of the doctrine that no god but one exists, yet,
in contrast to the hospitality which distinguished
and distinguishes nature-worship in all its
forms, Yahweh here claims from His people
worship of the most exclusive kind.' Besides
Him they were to have no object of worship.
He, in His unapproachable separateness, had
alone a claim upon their reverence. Further, in
contrast to the gods who dwelt in trees and'
stones and pillars, and who could be represented
by symbols of that kind, Yahweh sternly for-
bade the making of any image to represent Him.
Thereby He declared Himself spiritual, in so far
as He claimed that no visible thing could ade-
quately represent Him. In contrast to the ethnic
religions in general, even that of Zarathushtra,
the i^oblest of all, where only the natural ele-
ment of fire was taken to be the god or his
symbol, this fundamental command asserts the
supersensuous nature of the Deity, thereby ris-
ing at one step clear above all naturalism.
So great is the step indeed, that Kuenen and
others, who cannot escape the evidence for the'
antiquity of the other commandments, insist that
this at least cannot be pre-prophetic, since we
have such numerous proofs of the worship of
Yahweh by images, down at least to the time -of
Josiah's reform. But, by all but Stade, it is ad-
mitted that there was at Shiloh under Eli, and at
Jerusalem under David and Solomon, no visible
representation of Deity. Now the same writers
who tell us this everywhere represent' the wor-
ship of Yahweh by images as existing among the
people. According to their view, the nation
had a continual and hereditary tendency to slip
5M
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
into image-worship, or to maintain it as pre-
Mosaic custom. And it is quite certain that up
even to the Captivity, and after, when, according
to even the very boldest negative view, this
command had been long known, image-worship,
not only of Yahweh, but also of false gods and
of the host of heaven, was largely prevalent.
Only the Captivity, with its hardships and trials,
brought Israel to see that image-worship was
incompatible with any true belief in Yahweh.
Undeniably, therefore, the existence of an au-
thoritative prohibition does not necessarily pro-
duce obedience; and the Biblical view that the
Decalogue is Israel's earliest law proves to be
the more reasonable, as well as the better
authenticated of the two. If, after the command
beyond all doubt existed in Israel, it needed the
calamities of Israel's last days, and the hardships
and griefs of the Exile, to get it completely ob-
served, and if in Jerusalem and at Shiloh in the
pre-prophetic time Yahweh was worshipped
without images, there can hardly be a doubt that
this command must have existed in the earliest
period. For no religion is to be judged by the
actual practice of the multitude. The true cri-
terion is its highest point; and the imageless
worship of Jerusalem is much more difficult to
understand if the second commandment was not
acknowledged previously in Israel, than it would
be if the Decalogue, essentially as we now have
it. was acknowledged in the days before the
kingship at least.*
The arguments advanced by Kuenen and Well-
hausen for a contrary view, beyond those we
have just been considering, rest on an undue
extension of the prohibition to make any like-
ness of anything. They adduce the brazen ser-
pent of Moses, and the Cherubim, and the brazen
bulls that bore the brazen laver in the court of
the Temple at Jerusalem, and the ornaments of
that building, as a proof that even in Jerusalem
this commandment cannot have been known.
But, as we have seen, the original command
prohibited only the making of a pesel, i. c. of an
image for worship. The making of likenesses
of men and animals for mere purposes of art and
adornment was never included; and the whole
objection falls to the ground unless it be asserted
that the bulls under the basin were actually wor-
shipped by those who came into the Temple!
The supersensuous nature of Yahweh must.
therefore, be taken to be a fundamental part of
the Mosaic religion. But besides being solitary
and supersensuous, Yahweh was declared by
Moses, perhaps by His very name, to be^ not
only mighty, but helpful. The preface to the
whole series of commandments is, " I am Yah-
weh thy God, who brought thee forth out of the
land of Egypt." Now of all the derivations of
YaTiweh, that which most nearly commands
universal acceptance is its derivation from hayah,
to be. And the probabilities are all in favour
of the view that it does not imply mere timeless
existence, as the translation of the explanation
in Exodust has led many to believe. That is a
purely philo.sophical idea entirely outside of
morality, and it can hardly be that the introduc-
tion to this moral code, which announces the
author of it, should contain no moral reference.
If the name be from Qal, and be connected with
♦Granting that the commandment did not exist, one
'isks. IVhat was it in Yahwism which determined the
Jerusalem Sanctuary to be imageless?
ehyeh, then it means, as Dillmann says ('" Exodus
and Leviticus," p. 35), that He will be what He
has been, and the name involves a reference to
all that the God of Israel has been in the past.
.Such He will be in the future, for He is what
He is, without variableness or shadow of turn-
ing. If, on the other hand, it be from Hiphil,
it will mean " He who causes to be," the creator.
In either case there is a clear rise above the
ordinary Semitic names for God, Baal, Molech,
Milkom. which all express mere lordship. No
doubt Yahweh was also called Baal, or Lord,
just as we find Him in the Psalms addressed as
" my King and my God "; but the specially Mo-
saic name, the personal name of the God of
Israel, does undoubtedly imply quite another
quality in God. It is the Helper who has re
vealed Himself to Israel who here speaks.
Hence the addition, "who brought thee out of
the land of Egypt." It is as a Saviour that Yah-
weh addresses His people. By His very name
He lifts all the commands He gives out of the
region of mere might, or the still lower region
of gratification at offerings and precious things
bestowed, into the region of gratitude and love.
Further, by issuing this code under the name
of Yahweh Moses claimed for Him a moral char-
acter. Whether the Hebrew word for holy,
qadhosh, implied more in those days than mere
separateness, may be doubted; but it is impos-
sible that the idea which we now connect with
the word " holy " should not have been held to
be congruous to, and expressive of, the nature
of Yahweh. Here morality in its initial and
fundamental stages is set forth as an expression
of His will. And similarly, righteousness must
also be an attribute of His, for justice between
man and man is made to be His demand upon
men. He Himself, therefore, must be faithful
as well as holy, and His emancipation from the
clinging chain of mere naturalism was thereby
completed. The Yahweh of the Decalogue is
therefore absolutely alone. He is supersen-
suous. He is the Helper and Saviour, and He
is holy and true. These are His fundamental
qualities. Such qualities may be supposed to be
present only in their elements, even to the mind
of Moses himself: yet the fundamental germinal
point was there: and all that has grown out of
it may be justly put to the credit of this first
revelation.
A moment's thought will show how the teach-
ing that Yahweh alone was to be worshipped
broke away from the main stream of Semitic be-
lief, and prepared the way for the ultimate preva-
lence of the belief that God was one. That He
was supersensuous. so that He could not rightly
or adequately be represented by any likeness of
anything in heaven or earth or sea, left no pos-
sible outlet for thought about Him, save in the
direction that He was a Spirit. In essence con-
sequently the spirituality of God was thereby
secured. Still more important perhaps was the
conception of Yahweh as the Helper and De-
liverer, the Saviour of His people; for this at
once suggested the thought that the true bond
between God and man was not mere necessity,
nor mere dependence upon resistless power, but
love — love to a Divine Helper who revealed
Himself in gracious acts and providences, and
who longed after and cared for His people with
a perfectly undeserved afifection. Lastly, His
holiness and faithfulness. His righteousness in
fact, held implicit in it His supremacy and uni-
THE DECALOGUE— ITS SUBSTANCE.
515
Tcrsality. As Welfhausen has said, " As God
of justice and right, Yahweh came to be thought
of as the highest, and at last as the only power
in heaven and earth." Whether that last stage
was present to the mind of Moses, or of any who
received the commandments in the first place, is
of merely secondary importance. At the very
least, the way which must necessarily lead to
that stage was opened here, and the mind of man
entered upon the path to a pure monotheism, a
monotheism which separated God from the
world, and referred to His will all that happened
in the world of created things. God is One,
God is a Spirit, God is Love, and God rules
over all — these are the attributes of Yahweh as
the Decalogue sets them forth; and in principle
the whole higher life of humanity was secured by
the great synthesis.
Like all beginnings, this was an achievement
of the highest kind. Nowhere but in the soul of
one Divinely enlightened man could such a reve-
lation have made itself known; and the solitude
of a lonely shepherd's life, following upon the
stir and training of a high place in the cultured
society of Egypt, gave precisely the kind of en-
vironment which would prepare the soul to hear
the voice by which God spoke. For we are not
to suppose that this revelation came to Moses
without any effort or preparation on his part.
God does not reveal His highest to the slothful
or the debased. Even when He speaks from
Sinai in thunder and in flame, it is only the man
who has been exercising himself in these great
matters who can understand and remember. All
the people had been terrified by the Divine Pres-
ence, but they forgot the law immediately and
fell back into idolatry. It was Moses who re-
tained it and brought it back to them again.
His personality was the organ of the Divine will:
and in this law which he promulgated Moses laid
the foundation of all that now forms the most
cherished heritage of men. The central thing in
religion is the character of God. Contrary to
the prevailing feeling, which makes many say
that they know nothing of God, but are sure of
their duty to man, history teaches that, in the
end, man's thought of God is the decisive thing.
Everything else shapes itself according to that;
and by taking the first great steps, which broke
through the limits of mere naturalism, Moses
laid the foundation of all that was to come.
There was here the promise and the potency of
all higher life: love and holiness had their way
prepared, so that they should one day become
supreme in man's conception of the highest life:
the confused halting between the material and
the spiritual, which can be traced in the very
highest conceptions of merely natural religions,
was in principle done away. And what was
here gained was never lost again. Even though
the multitude never really grasped all that Moses
had proclaimed Yahweh to be; and though it
should be proved, which is as yet by no means
the case, that even David thought of Him as
limited in power and claims by the extent of the
land which Israel inhabited; and though, as a
matter of fact, the full-orbed universality which
the ten commandments implicitly held in them
was not attained under the old covenant at all;
yet these ten words remained always an incite-
ment to higher thoughts. No advance made in
religion or morals by the chosen people ever
superseded them. Even when Christ came. He
came not to destray but to fulfil. The highest
reach of even his thoughts as regards God could
be brought easily and naturally under the terms
of this fundamental revelation to Israel.
The remaining commands, those which deal
with the relations of men to each other, are
naturally introduced by the fifth commandment,
which, while it deals with human relations, deals
with those which most nearly resemble the rela-
tions between God and man. Reverence for
God, the deliverer and forgiver of men, is the
sum of the commandments which precede; and
here we have inculcated reverence for those who
are, under God, the source of life, upon whose
love and care all, at their entrance into life, are
so absolutely dependent. Love is not com-
manded; because in such relations it is natural,
and moreover it cannot be produced at will.
But reverence is; and from the place of the com-
mand, manifestly what is required is something
of that same awful respect which is due to Yah-
weh Himself. The power which parents had
over their children in Israel was extensive,
though much less so than that possessed, for
example, by Roman parents. A father could
sell his daughters to be espoused as subordi-
nate wives; * he could disallow any vows a
daughter might wish to take upon her;t and
both parents could bring an incorrigible rebel-
lious son to the elders of the cityt and have him
stoned publicly to death. But, according to
Moses, the main restraining forces in the home
should be love and reverence, guarded only by
the solemn sanction of death to the openly
irreverent, just as reverence for Yahweh was
guarded.
There was here nothing of the sordid view, re-
pudiated so energetically by Jewish scholars like
Kalisch,§ that we ought " to weigh and measure
filial affection after the degree of enjoyed bene-
fits." No; to this law "the relation between
parents and children is holy, religious, godly, not
of a purely human character"; and it is a mere
profanation to regard it as we in modern times
too often do. In our mad pursuit after com-
plete individual liberty we have fallen back into
a moral region which it was the almost universal
merit of the ancient civilisations to have left be-
hind them. It is true, certainly, that there were
reasons for this advance then which we could
not now recognise without falling back from our
own attainments in other directions; but it was
the saving salt of the ancient civilisations that
the parents in a household were surrounded with
an atmosphere of reverence, which made trans-
gressions against them ^.s rare as they were con-
sidered horrible. The modern freedom may in
favourable circumstances produce more intimate
and sympathetic intercourse between parents
and children; but in the average household it
has lowered the whole tone of family life; and it
threatens sooner or later, if the ancient feeling
cannot be restored, to destroy the family, the
\cry keystone of our religion and civilisation.
This commandment is not conditioned on the
question whether parents have been more or
less successful in giving their children what they
desire, or whether they have been wise and un-
selfish in their dealing with their children. As
parents they have a claim upon their respect,
* Exod. xxi. 7.
t Numb. XXX. 6.
* Deut. xxi. 8.
SKalisch, " Exodus," p. 364 :— yet taught in all Victorian
State schools under the vicious system at present ad-
mitted. ' • •
5i6
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
their tenderness, their observance, which can be
neglected only at the children's peril. Even the
average parent gives quite endless thought and
care to his children, and almost unconsciously
falls into the habit of living for them. That
brings with it for the children an indelible obli-
gation; and along with the new and wiser free-
dom which is permitted in the modern home,
this reverence should grow, just as the love and
reverence for God on the part of those who
have been made the free children of God through
Christ ought far to exceed that to which the best
of the Old Testament saints could attain.
Want of reverence for parents is, in the Deca-
logue, made almost one with want of reverence
toward God, and, in the case of this human
duty alone, there is a promise annexed to its
observance. The duty runs so deep into the
very core of human life, that its fulfilment brings
wholesomeness to the moral nature; this health
spreads into the merely physical constitution,
and long life becomes the reward. But apart
from the quietude of heart and the power of self-
restraint which so great a duty rightly fulfilled
brings with it, we must also suppose that in a
special manner the blessing of God does rest
upon dutiful children. Even in the modern
world, amid all its complexity, and though in
numberless instances it may seem to have been
falsified, this promise verifies itself on the large
scale. In the less complex life of early Israel
we may well believe that its verification was even
more strikingly seen. In both ancient and
modern times, moreover, the human conscience
has leaped up to justify the belief that of all the
sins committed without the body this is the most
heinous, and that there does rest upon it in a
peculiar manner the wrath of Almighty God.
It is a blasphemy against love in its earliest
manifestations to the soul, and only by answer-
ing love with love and reverence can there be any
fulfilling of the law.
After the fifth, the commandments deal with
the purely human relations; but in coming down
from the duties which men owe to God, this law
escapes the sordidness which seems to creep
over the laws of other nations, when they have
to deal with the rights and duties of men. The
human rights are taken up rather into their re-
lation to God, and cease to be mere matters of
bargain and arrangement. They are viewed
entirely from the religious and moral standpoint.
For example, the destruction of human life,
which in most cases was in ancient times dealt
with by private law, and was punished by fines
or money payments, is here regarded solely as a
sin, an act forbidden by God. The will of a
holy God is the source of these prohibitions,
however much the idea of property may extend
in them beyond the limits which to us now seem
fitting. They begin with the protection of a
man's life, the highest of his possessions. Next,
they prohibit any injury to him through his wife,
who next to his life is most dear to him. Then
property in our modern sense is protected; and
lastly, rising out of the merely physical region,
the ninth commandment prohibits any attack
upon a man's civil standing or honour by false
witness concerning him in the courts of justice.
To that crime Easterns are prone to a degree
which Westerns, whom Rome has trained to
reverence for law, can hardly realise. In India,
at this hour, false witnesses can be purchased in
the open market at a trifling price; and under
native government the whole forces of civil jus-
tice become instruments of the most remediless
and exasperating tyranny. So long as the law
has not spoken its last word against the innocent,
there is hope of remedy; justice may at last assert
itself. But when, either by corrupt witnesses or
by a corrupt judge, the law itself inflicts the
wrong, then redress is impossible, and we havt
the oppression which drives a wise man mad.
Both murder and robbery, moreover, may be
perpetrated by false swearing; and the trust, the
confidence that social life demands, is utterly
destroyed by it.
But it is in the tenth commandment especially
that this code soars most completely away be-
yond others. In four short words the whole
region of neighbourly duty, so far as acts are
concerned, has been covered, and with that other
codes have been content. But the laws of Yah-
weh must cover more than that. Out of the
heart proceed all these acts which have been for-
bidden, and Yahweh takes knowledge of its
thoughts and intents. The covetous desire, the
grasping after that which we cannot lawfully
have, that, too, is absolutely forbidden. It has
been pointed out that the first commandment
also deals with the thoughts. " Thou shalt have
no other gods before Me," separated from the
prohibition of idol-worship, can refer only to
the inward adoration or submission of the heart.
And in this last commandment also it is the evil
desire, the lust which " bringeth forth sin,"
which is condemned. In its beginning and end-
ing, therefore, this code transcends the limits
ordinarily fixed for law; it leads the mind to a
view of the depth and breadth of the evil that
has to be coped with, which the other precepts,
taken by themselves and understood in their
merely literal sense, would scarcely suggest.
This fact should guard us against the common
fallacy that Moses and the people of his day
could not have understood these commandments
in any sense except the barely literal one. In
the first and tenth commandments there is in-
volved the whole teaching of our Lord that he
that hateth his brother is a murderer. The evil
thought that first stirs the evil desire is here
placed on the same interdicted level as the evil
deed; and though until our Lord had spoken
none had seen all that was implied, yet here toO'
He was only fulfilling, bringing to perfection,
that which the law as given by Moses had first
outlined. With this in view, it seems difificult to
justify that interpretation of the commandments
which refuses all depth of meaning to them.
The initial and final references to the inner
thoughts of men, the delicate moral perception
which puts so unerring a finger on the sources
of sin, show that such literalism is out of place.
No interpretation can do this law justice which
treats it superficially; and instead of feeling
safest when we find least in these command-
ments, we should welcome from them all the cor-
rection and reproof which a reasonable exegesis^
will sustain.
Some of those who adopt the other view do sa
in the interests of the authenticity of the com-
mandments. They say, We must be careful not
to put into them any idea which transcends what
was possible in the days of Moses; otherwise we
must agree with those who bring down the date
of these marvellous ten words to the middle of
the seventh century b. c. But there is much
ground for distrusting modern judgments as to-
THE DECALOGUE— ITS SUBSTANCE.
517
what men can have thought and felt in earlier
and ruder stages of society. So long as the
naive interpretation of the state of man before
the fall prevailed, which Milton has made so
widely popular, the tendency was to exaggerate
the early man's moral and spiritual attainments.
Now, when the most degraded savages are taken
as the truest representatives of primitive man,
the temptation is to minimise both unduly.
How often have we been told, for example, that
the Australian is the lowest of mankind, and
that he has no other idea of a spiritual world
than that when he dies he will "jump up" a
white man! Yet Mr. A. W. Howitt,* an unex-
ceptionable authority, as having himself been
" initiated " among the Australian blacks, tells
us that they give religious and moral instruction
to their boys when they receive the privileges of
manhood. His words are: "The teachings of
the initiation are in a series of ' moral lessons,'
pantomimically displayed in a manner intended
to be so impressive as to be indelible. There is
clearly a belief in a Great Spirit, or rather an
anthropomorphic Supernatural Being, the
' Master of all,' whose abode is above the sky,
and to whom are attributed powers of omnipo-
tence and omnipresence, or, at any rate, the
power ' to do anything and to go anywhere.'
The exhibition of his image to the novices, and
the magic dances round it, approach very near
to idol-worship. The wizards who profess to
communicate with him, and to be the mediums
of communication between him and his tribe, are
not far removed from an organised priesthood.
To his direct ordinance are attributed the
spiritual and moral laws of the community. Al-
though there is no worship of Daramiilun, as, for
instance, by prayer, yet there is clearly an invo-
cation of him by name, and a belief that certain
acts please while others displease him." To
most it would have seemed absurd to attribute
religious ideas of such a kind to a people in the
social and moral condition of the Australian
aborigines. Yet here we have the testimony of
a perfectly competent and reliable witness, who,
moreover, has no personal bias in favour of
theologic notions, to prove that even in their
present state their theology is of this compara-
tively advanced kind.
Many critics like Stade, and even Kuenen,
would deny to Israel in the days of Moses any
conception of Yahweh which would equal the
Australian conception of Daramiilun! Not to
speak of the " regrettable vivacities " of Renan
in regard to Yahweh, Kuenen would deny to the
Mosaic Yahweh the title of Lord of all; he
would deny to Him the power " to go anywhere
and to do anything," binding Him strictly to
His tribe and His land; he would make His
priests little more than the Australian wizards;
and purely moral laws like the Decalogue Well-
hausen would remove to a late date mainly be-
cause such laws transcend the limits of the
thought and knowledge of the Mosaic time.
But can any one believe that Israel in the Mo-
saic time had lower beliefs than those of the
Australian aborigines? In every other respect
they had left far behind them the social state
and the merely embryonic culture of the Aus-
tralian tribes. Moses himself is an irrefragable
proof of that. No such man as he could have
arisen among a people in the state of the Aus-
tralians. Even the fact that the Hebrews had
* Journal Anthropological Institute, May, 1884, p. 28.
lived in Egypt, and had been compelled to do
forced labour for a long series of years, would
of itself have raised them to a higher stage of
culture. Moreover they built houses, and owned
sheep and cattle, and must have known at least
the rudiments of agriculture. Indeed Deut. xi.
10 asserts this, and the testimony of travellers
as to the habits of the tribes in the wilderness of
the wanderings now confirms it. Further, they
had been in contact with Egyptian religion, and
they had been surrounded by cults having more
or less relation to the ancient civilisations of
Mesopotamia. Under such circumstances, even
apart from all revelation, it could not be assumed
that their religious ideas must needs correspond
to modern notions of the low type of primitive
religions. On the contrary, nothing but the
clearest proof that their religious conceptions
were so surprisingly low should induce us to be-
lieve it. On any supposition, they had in the
Mosaic time the first germs of what is now uni-
versally admitted to be the highest form of re-
ligion. Can we believe that only 1300 years
B. c, in the full light of history, coming out of
a land where the religion of the people had been
systematised and elaborated, not for centuries,
but for millenniums, and only 600 years before
the monotheistic prophets, a people at such a
stage of civilisation as the Hebrews can have had
cruder notions of Deity than the Wiraijuri and
Wolgal tribes of New South Wales!* It may
have been so; but before we take it to have been
so, we have a right to demand evidence of a
stringent kind, evidence which leaves us no way
of escape from a conclusion so improbable.
Moreover the acceptance of the view now
opposed does not get rid of the necessity for
supernatural enlightenment in Israel. It only
transfers it from an earlier to a later time. For
if the knowledge of Israel in Moses' day was
below the Wolgal standard, then it would seem
inexplicable that the ethical monotheism of the
prophets should have grown out of it by any
merely natural process. If there were no inspi-
ration before the prophets, though they believed
and asserted there was, then their own inspira-
tion only becomes the more marvellous. It is
not needful to deny that the Hebrew tribes may
at some time have passed through the low stage
of religious belief of which these writers speak.
But they err conspicuously in regarding every
trace of animistic and fetichistic worship which
can be unearthed in the language, the cere-
monies, and the habits of the Hebrews at the
Exodus, as evidence of the highest beliefs of the
people at that time. As a matter of fact, these
were probably mere survivals of a state of
thought and feeling then either superseded or in
the process of being so. Besides, the mass of
any people alway€ lag far behind the thoughts
and aspirations of the highest thinkers of their
nation; and if we admit inspiration at all as a
factor in the religious development of Israel, the
distance between what Moses taught and be-
lieved himself, and what he could get the mass
of the people to believe and practise, must have
been still greater. If he gave the people the ten
commandments, he must have been far above
them, and dogmatic assertions as to what he
can have thought and believed ought to be
abandoned.
Granting, however, that all we have found in
the Decalogue's conception of Yahweh was
• See Page Renouf, " Hibbert Lectures."
5'8
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
present to the mind of Moses, and granting that
the commands which deal with the relations of
men to each other are not mere isolated prohi-
bitions, but are founded upon moral principles
which were understood even then to have much
wider implications, there still remains a gap be-
tween the widest meaning that early tirne could
put into them, and that which Luther's Cate-
chism, or the Catechism of the Westminster Di-
vines, for example, asserts. The question there-
fore arises whether these wider and more detailed
explanations, which make the Decalogue cover
the whole field of the moral and religious life,
are legitimate, and if so, on what principle can
they be justified? The reply would seem to be
that they are legitimate, and that the ten words
did contain much more than Moses or any of
his nation for many centuries after him under-
stood. For any fruitful thought, any thought
which really penetrates the heart of things, must
have in it wider implications than the first
thinker of it can have conceived. If by any
means a man has had insight to see the central
fact of any domain of thought and life, its appli-
cations will not be limited to the comparatively
few cases to which he may apply it. He will
generally be content to deduce from his dis-
covery just those conclusions which in his cir-
cumstances and in his day are practically useful
and are most clamorously demanded. But those
who come after, pressed by new needs, chal-
lenged by new experiences, and enlightened by
new thoughts in related regions, will assuredly
find that more w^as involved in that first step
than any one had seen. The scope of the fruit-
ful principle will thus inevitably widen with the
course of things, and inferences undreamed of by
those who first enunciated the principle will be
securely drawn from it by later generations.
Now if that be true in regard to truths discov-
ered by the unassisted intellect of man, how
much more true will it be of thoughts which
have first been revealed to man under the in-
fluence of inspiration? Behind the human mind
which received them and applied them to the
circumstances which then had to be dealt with,
there is always the infinite mind which sees that
" Far-off Divine event
To which the whole creation moves."
The Divine purpose of the revelation must be
the true measure of the thoughts revealed, and
the Divine purpose can best be learned by study-
ing the results as they have actually evolved
themselves in the course of ages. Consequently,
while the fundamental point in sound interpre-
tation of a book such as the Bible is to ascer-
tain first what the statements made therein signi-
fied to those who heard them first, the second
point is not to shut the mind to the wider and
more extensive applications of them which the
thought and experience of men, taught by the
course of history, have been induced, or even
compelled, to make. Both the narrower and the
wider meanings are there, and were meant to be
found there. No exposition which ignores
either can be adequate.
That all works of God are to be dealt with in
this way is beautifully demonstrated by Ruskin
(Fors Clavigera, Vol. I., Letter V.). In criticis-
ing the statement of a botanist that '" there is no
such thing as a flower," after admitting that in
a certain sense the lecturer was right, he goes
on to say: " But in tht deepest sense of all, he
was to the extremity of wrongness wrong; for
leaf and root and fruit exist, all of them, only — .
that there may be flowers. He disregarded the
life and passion of the creature, which were its
essence. Had he looked for these, he would
have recognised that in the thought of nature
herself, there is, in a plant, nothing else but
flowers." That means, of course, that the final
perfection of a development is the real and final
meaning of it all. Now any thought given by
God in this special manner which we call " in-
spiration " has in it a manifold and varied life,
and an end in view, which God alone foresees.
It works like leaven, it grows like a seed. It is
supremely living and powerful; and though it
may have begun its life, like the mustard seed,
in a small and lowly sphere, it casts out branches
on all sides till its entire allotted space is filled.
So in the Decalogue; the central chord in all
the matters dealt with has been touched with Di-
vine skill, and all that has further to be revealed
or learned on that matter must lie in the line of
the first announcement.
It is not, therefore, an illegitimate extension
of the meaning of the first commandment to say
that it teaches monotheism, nor of the second
that it teaches the spirituality of God, nor of the
seventh that it forbids all sensuality in thought
or word or deed. It is true that probably only
the separateness of God was originally seen to be
asserted in the first, and the words may pos-
sibly have been understood to mean that the
" other gods " referred to had some kind of
actual life. The second, too, may have seemed
to be fulfilled when no earthly thing that was
made by man was taken to represent Yahweh.
Lastly, those who say that nothing is forbidden
in the seventh commandment but literal adultery
have much to say for themselves. In a polyga-
mous society concubinage always exists. The
absence of the more flagrant of what in monoga-
mous societies are called social evils does not in
the least imply the superior morality, such as
many who wish to disparage our Christian civili-
sation have ascribed, for instance, to Mohamme-
dans. The degraded class of women who are
the reproach and the despair of our large towns
are not so frequent in those societies, because
all women are degraded to nearer their level
than in monogamous lands. Both lust and vice
are more prevalent: and they are so because the
whole level of thought and feeling in regard to
such matters is much lower than with us.
Now, undoubtedly, ancient Israel was no ex-
ception to this rule. In it, as a polygamous
nation, there was a license in regard to sexual
relations with women who were neither married
nor betrothed which would be impossible now
in any Christian community. It may be, there-
fore, that only the married woman was specially
protected by this law. But in none of these
cases did the more rudimentary conception of
the scope of the commandments last. By im-
perceptible steps the sweep of them widened,
until finally the last consequences were deduced
from them, and they were seen to cover the
whole sphere of human duty. It may have been
a long step from the prohibition to put other
gods along with Yahweh to St. Paul's decisive
word " An idol is nothing in the world," but the
one was from the first involved in the other.
Between " Thou shalt not make unto thee a
graven image " and our Lord's declaration " God
is a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and
THE DECALOGUE— ITS SUBSTANCE.
5'9
in truth," there lies a long and toilsome upward
movement; but the first was the gate into the
path which must end in the second. Similarly,
the commandment which afifirmed so strongly
the sacredness of the family, by hedging round
the housemother with this special defence held
implicit in it all that rare and lovely purity which
the best type of Christian women exhibits. The
principles upon which the initial prohibitions
were founded were true to fact and to the nature
both of God and man. They were, therefore,
never found at fault in the advancing stages of
human exoerience; and the meaning which a
modern congregation of Christians finds in these
solemn " words," when they are read before
them, is as truly and justly their meaning as the
more meagre interpretation which alone ancient
Israel could put upon them.
How gradually, and how naturally, the ad-
vancing thoughts and changed circumstances of
Israel aflFected the Decalogue may be seen most
clearly in the differences between its form as
originally given, and as it is set forth in Exodus
and in Deuteronomy. If the original form of
these commandments was what we have indi-
cated (p. 511). they corresponded entirely to the
circumstances of the wilderness. There is no
reference in them which presupposes any other
social background than that of a people dwell-
ing together according to families, possessing
property, and worshipping Yahweli. None of the
commandments involves a social state different
from that. But when Israel had entered upon
its heritage, and had become possessed of the
oxen and asses which were needed in agricultural
labour and in settled life, this stage of their
progress was reflected in the reasons and in-
ducements which were added to the original
commands. In the fourth and tenth command-
ments of Exodus we have consequently the
essential commandments of the earlier day
adapted to a new state of things, i. e., to a
settled agricultural life. Then, even as between
the Exodus and Deuteronomic texts, a progress
is perceptible. The reasons for keeping the
Sabbath which these two recensions give are dif-
ferent, as we have seen, and it is probable that
the reason given in Deuteronomy was first. To
the people in the wilderness came the bare Di-
vine command that this one day was to be sacred
to Yahweh. In both Exodus and Deuteronomy
we have additions, going into details which
show that when these versions were prepared
Israel had ceased to be nomadic and had be-
come agricultural. In Deuteronomy we find
that the importance and usefulness of this com-
mand from a humane point of view had been
recognised, and one at least of the grounds upon
which it should be held a point of morality to
keep it is set forth in the words " that thy man-
servant and thy maidservant may rest as well as
thou." Finally, if the critical views be correct,
in Exodus we have the motive for the observ-
ance of the Sabbath raised to the universal and
eternal, by being brought into connection with
the creative activity of God.
If the progression now traced out be real, then
we have in it a classical instance of the manner
in which Divine commands were given and dealt
with in Israel. Given in the most general form
at first, they inevitably open the way for prog-
ress, and as thought and experience grow in
volume and rise in quality, so does the under-
standing of the law as given expand. Under the
influence of this expansion addition after addi-
tion is made, till the final form is reached; and
the whole is then set forth as having been spoken
by Yahweh and given by Moses when the com-
mand was first promulgated. In such cases
literary proprietorship was never in question.
Each addition was sanctioned by revelation, and
those by whom it came were never thought of.
It would seem, indeed, that nothing but modern
sceptical views as to the reality of revelation,
the feeling that all this movement to a higher
faith was merely natural, and that the hand of
God was not in it. could have suggested to the
ancient Hebrew writers the wish to hand on the
names of those by whom such changes were
made. Yahweh spoke at the beginning, Moses
mediated between the people and Yahweh, and
the law thus mediated was in all forms equally
Mosaic, and in all forms equally Divine.
One other thing remains to be noticed, and
that is the prevailing negative form of the com-
mandments. Of the ten only the fourth and
fifth are in the affirmative. All the others are
prohibitions, and we who have been taught by
Christianity to put emphasis upon the positive
aspects of duty as the really important aspects of
it, may not improbably feel chilled and repelled
by a moral code which so definitely and pre-
vailingly forbids. But the cause of this is plain.
A code like that of the Twelve Tables published
in early Rome is only occasionally negative, be-
cause it rises to no great height in its demands,
and is intent only upon ordering the life of the
citizens in their outward conduct. But this
code, which seeks to raise the whole of life into
the sacredness of a continual service of God
and man, must forbid, because the first condition
of such a life is the renunciation and the restric-
tion of self. Benevolent dreamers and theorists
of all ages, and nitn of the world whose moral
standard is merely the attainment of the average
man, have denied the evil tendency in man's
nature. They have asserted that man is born
good; but the facts of experience are entirely
against them. Whenever a serious effort has
been made to raise man to any conspicuous
height of moral goodness, it has been found
necessary to forbid him to follow the bent of
his nature. " Thou shalt not " has been the pre-
vailing formula; and in this sense original sin
has always been witnessed to in the world.
Hence the Old Testament, in which the most
strenuous conflict for goodness which the world
in those ages knew was being carried on, could
not fail, in every part of it, to proclaim that man
is not born good. However late we may be
compelled to put the writing of the story of the
fall as it stands in Genesis, there can be no ques-
tion that it represents the view of the Old Testa-
ment at all times. Man is fallen; he is not what
he ought to be, and the evil taint is handed on
from one generation to another. Every genera-
tion, therefore, is called, by prophet and priest
and lawgiver alike, to the conflict against the
natural man.
The truth is that all along the leaders of Israel
had a quite overawing sense of the moral great-
ness of Yahweh and of the stringency of His
demands upon them. " Be ye holy, for I am
holy," was His demand; and so among this
people, as among no other, the sense of sin was
heightened, till it embittered life to all who
seriously took to heart the religion they pro-
fessed. This feeling sought relief in expiatory
520
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
sacrifices, like the sin offering and the guilt
offering; but in vain. It then led to Pharisaic
hedging of the law, to seeking a positive pre-
cept for every moment of time, to binding upon
men's consciences the most minute and burden-
some prescriptions, as a means of making them
what they must be if they were to meet the Di-
vine requirements. But that too failed. It be-
came a slavery so intolerable that, when St.
Paul received the power of a new life, his pre-
dominant feeling was that for the first time he
knew what liberty meant. He was set free from
both the bondage of sin and the bondage of
ritual.
To the religious man of the Old Testament
life was a conflict against evil tendencies, a con-
flict in which defeat was only too frequent, but
from which there was no discharge. It was
fitting, therefore, that at the very beginning of
Israel's history, as the people of God, this stern
prohibition of the rougher manifestations of the
natural man should stand.
But it is characteristic of the Old Testament
that it states the fundamental fact, without any
of the over-refinements and exaggerations by
which later doctrinal developments have dis-
credited it. There is no appearance here, or
anywhere in the Old Testament, of the Lutheran
exaggeration that man is by nature impotent to
all good, as a stock or a stone is. Keeping close
to the testimony of the universal conscience, the
Decalogue, and the Old Testament generally,
speaks to men as those who can be otherwise if
they will. There is, further, a robust assertion
of righteous intention and righteous act on the
part of those whose minds are set to be faithful
to God. This may have been partly due to a
blunter feeling in regard to sin, and a less highly
developed conscience, but it was mainly a
healthy assertion of facts which ought not to be
ignored. Yet, with all that, original sin was too
plain a fact ever to be denied by the healthy-
minded saints of the Old Testament. Funda-
mentally, they held that human nature needed to
be restrained, its innate lawlessness needed to be
curbed, before it could be made acceptable to
God.
Among the heathen nations that w^is not so.
Take the Greeks, for instance, as the highest
among them. Their watchword in morals was
not repression, but harmonious development.
Every impulse of human nature was right, and
had the protection of a deity peculiarly its own.
Restraint, such as the Israelite felt to be his first
need, would have been regarded as mutilation
by the Greek, for he was dominated by no
higher ideal than that of a fully developed man.
There was no vision of unattainable holiness
hovering always before his mind, as there was
before the mind of the Israelite. God had not
revealed Himself to him in power and unalloyed
purity, with a background of infinite wisdom
and omnipotence, so that unearthly love and
goodness were seen to be guiding and ruling the
world. As a consequence, the calling and
destiny of man were conceived by the Greeks in
a far less soaring fashion than by Israel. To
put the difference in a few words, man, har-
moniously developed in all his powers and pas-
sions and faculties, with nothing excessive about
him, was made God by the Greeks; whereas in
Israel God was brought down into human life
to bear man's burden and to supply the strength
needed that man might become like God in truth
and mercy and purity. It is of course true that
both conceived of God under human categorico.
They could not conceive God save by attributing
to Him that which they looked upon as highest
in man. It is also true that the higher natures
in both nations, starting thus differently, did in
much approach each other. Still, the immense
difference remains, that the impulse in the one
case was given from the earth by dreams of hu-
man perfection, in the other it came from above
through men who had seen God. The Greeks
had seen only the glory of man; Israel had seen
the glory of God.
The result was that human nature as it is
seemed to the one much more worthy of respect
and much less seriously compromised than it did
to the other. Comparing man as he is, only with
man as he easily might be, the Greeks took a
much less serious view of his state than the He-
brews, who compared him with God as He had
revealed Himself. The former never attained
any clear conception of sin, and regarded it a=
a passing weakness which could without much
trouble be overcome. The latter saw that it
was a .radical and now innate want of harmony
with God, which could only be cured by a new
life being breathed into man from above. And
when Europe became Christian, this difference
made itself felt in very widespread religious and
theological divergences. In the South and
among the Latin races the less strenuous view of
human disabilities — the view which naturally
grew out of the heathen conception of man as,
on the whole, born good, with no very arduous
moral heights to scale — has prevailed, and in
those regions the Pelagian form of doctrine has
mastered the Christian Church. But the Teu-
tonic races have, in this matter, shown a remark-
able affinity with the Hebrew mind and teaching.
The deeper and more tragic view of the state of
man has commended itself to the Teutonic mind,
and the depth of the moral taint in the natural
man has been estimated according to the Biblical
standard. It is not only theologians among the
Northern races who have been thus affected.
The higher imaginative literature of England
gives the same impression; and in our own day
Browning, our greatest poet, has emphasised his
acceptance of the Augustinian view of human
nature by making its teaching as to original sin
a proof of the truth of Christianity.* At the end
of his poem " Gold Hair: a Story of Pornic," in
which he tells how a girl of angelic beauty, and
of angelic purity of nature as was supposed, is
found after her death to have sold her soul to
the most gruesome avarice, he says:
"The candid incline to surmise of late
That the Christian faith may be false, I find ;
For our Essays and Reviews' debate
Begins to tell on the public mind.
And Colenso's words have weight :
I still, to suppose it true, for my part,
See reasons and reasons ; this, to begin :
'Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart
At the head of a lie — taught original sin,
The corruption of man's heart."
But the Pagan view always reasserts itself;
and modern Hellenists especially, in their admi-
ration of the grace which does undoubtedly go
with such conceptions of goodness as the Greeks
could attain, are apt to look askance at the harsh-
ness and strenuousness which they find in the
♦ Browning's " Poetical Works," vol. vi., p. 6q.
Peuteronomy V. 22-23] THE MEDIATORSHIP OF MOSES.
521
Old Testament. For the most pathetic and pure
of the Greek conceptions of the gods are those
which, like Demeter, embody mother's love or
some other natural glory of humanity. Being
thus natural, they are set before us by the Greek
imagination with an unconstrained and graceful
beauty which makes goodness appeal to the
aesthetic sense. To do this seems to many the
supreme achievement. Without this they hold
that Christianity would fail to meet the require-
ments of the modern heart and mind, for to
interest " taste " on the side of goodness is, ap-
parently, better than to let men feel the compul-
sion of duty. Reasoning on such premisses,
they claim that Greek religion gave to Chris-
tianity its completion and its crown. This is
the claim advanced by Dyer in his " Gods of
Greece " (p. 19). " The Greek poets and philos-
ophers," he says, " are among our intellectual
progenitors, and therefore the religion of to-
day has requirements which include all that the
noblest Greeks could dream of, requirements
which the aspirations of Israel alone could not
satisfy. Our complex life had need, not only
of a supreme God of power, universal and irre-
sistible, of a jealous God beside whom there was
no other God, but also of a God of love and
grace and purity. To these ideal qualities,
present in the Diviner godhead of the Gospels,
the evolution of Greek mythology brought much
that satisfies our hearts." The best answer to
that is to read Deuteronomy. The Hebrews had
no need to borrow " a God of love and grace
and purity " from Greek mythology. Centuries
before they came in contact with Greeks, their
inspired men had painted the love and grace and
purity of God in the most attractive colours.
Nor did they ever need to unlearn the belief that
Yahweh was merely a supreme God of power.
tn the course of our exposition we shall have
occasion to see that the worship of mere power
was superseded by the religion of Yahweh from
the first, and that the author of Deuteronomy
gives his whole strength to demonstrate that the
God of Israel is a " God of love and grace and
purity." But perhaps " grace " means to Mr.
Dyer " gracefulness." In that case we would
deny that " the Diviner godhead of the Gospels,"
as revealed in Jesus Christ, had that aesthetic
quality either. There is no word of an appeal
to the sense of the artistically beautiful in any-
thing recorded of Him; but neither in the Old
Testament nor the New is there any want of
moral beauty in the representation given of God.
Moral beauty alone has a central place in re-
ligion; and when beauty that appeals to the
senses intrudes into religion, it becomes a source
of weakness rather than of strength. There may
be a few people who can trust to their taste to
keep them firm in the pursuit of goodness, but
the bulk of men have always needed, and will
always need, the severer compulsion of 'duty.
They need an objective standard; they need a
God, the embodiment and enforcer of all that
duty demands of them; and when they bend
themselves to the yoke of obligation thus im-
posed, they enter into a world of heavenly beauty
which seizes and enraptures the soul. The. mere
aesthetic beauty of Greek mythology pales, for
the more earnest races of mankind at least, be-
fore this Diviner loveliness, and it is the special
gift of the Hebrew as well as of the Teutonic
races to be sensitive to it, just as they fall behind
•thers in aesthetic sensitiveness. Wordsworth
felt this, and has expressed it inimitably in his
" Ode to Duty "—
"Stern Lawgiver ! yet Thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace,
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon Thy face."
That expresses the Hebrew feeling also. Drawn
upwards by the infinite and unchangeable love
and goodness of Yahweh, the Hebrews felt the
clog of their innate sinfulness as no other race
has done. The stern " thou shalt nots " of the
Decalogue consequently found an echo in their
hearts. Won by the beauty of holiness, they
gladly welcomed the discipline of the Divine law,
and by doing so they established human good-
ness on a foundation immeasurably more stable
than any the gracefulness of Greek imaginations
could hope to lay.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MEDIATORSHIP OF MOSES.
Deuteronomy v. 22-23.
After the ten commandments, Deuteronomy,
like Exodus, next indicates that for all of legis-
lation, exhortation, and advice that follows,
Moses was to be the mediator between God and
the people. He is represented as Yahweh's
prophet or speaker in all that succeeds; the
Decalogue alone is set forth as the direct Divine
command. Evidently a great distinction is here
notified, and what it exactly was may be best
explained by reference to the history of Roman
law. In the earliest times that consisted of Fas,
Ills, and Jus moribiis constittttum. In chapter iv.
Professor Muirhead's description of fas has been
given at length, so that we need not repeat it
here. The point to remember is that it consisted
of universal precepts such as the Decalogue con-
tains, given direct by God. Jus again was, ac-
cording to Breal, the Divine will declared by
human agency, and it occupied much the position
which law does in civilised states now. Finally,
jus moribus constitutum, or boni mores, was cus-
tomary law, which had a twofold function. " It
was (i) a restraint upon the law, condemning,
though it could not prevent, the ruthless and un-
necessary exercise of legal right. (2) It was a
supplement to law (jus), requiring things law did
not, e. g., dutiful service, respect and obedience,
chastity, fidelity to engagements, etc." Now it
is a striking fact that, though there can be no
question of imitation here, the legislation of
Deuteronomy falls naturally into these very di-
visions; and that fact of itself gives strong
support to the belief that here in Israel, as there
in Rome, we have the recorded facts of the ear-
liest efforts at the regulation of national life. The
fas, then, corresponds to the Decalogue. The
jus runs exactly parallel with the laws in the
strict sense of the term, those which Moses re-
ceived from Yahweh and afterwards promul-
gated. Lastly, the boni mores are represented in
Deuteronomy by those beautiful precepts which
limited the exercise of legal right, and, going
far beyond law, demanded of Israel that they
should make good their claim to be Yahweh's
people by justice, charity, and purity.
To some it may seem that we do no service to
Scripture by insisting upon such a parallel. They
522
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
will feel as if thereby the unique character of the
religion of Israel as a revealed religion were
obscured, if not obliterated. But nothing can
be imagined which could confirm us in belief of
the substantial accuracy of what we find narrated
of early times in Scripture, more than the dis-
covery that, without any possibility of collusion,
the earliest records of civilisation elsewhere give
us precisely the same account of the forms in
which law first makes its appearance. Surely we
ought now to have learned this lesson at least,
that it is no disparagement to a Divinely given
system of law and religion, that its growth and
development run in the same channels as the
growth and development of similar systems
which have none of the marks of a Divine origin.
Revelation always seizes upon mind as it is, and
makes that a sufficient and effective channel for
itself. However it is to be explained, it is true
that Divine action generally seeks to hide itself
in the ordinary course of human things as
quickly as possible. It is only at the moment of
contact, or at the moment when it has burst forth
in some flower of more than earthly grace and
loveliness, or when it has overturned and over-
turned until that state of things which has a
right to endure has been attained, that the Di-
vine force reveals itself. For the most part it
sinks into the general sum of forces that are mak-
ing for the progress of humanity, and clothes
itself gladly in the uniform of other beneficent
but natural influences. Consequently it ought to
be a welcome fact that so close a parallel exists
between the origins of Roman law and the ori-
gins of Hebrew law. The one great gain already
mentioned, that it explains the early appearance
of the Decalogue, and shows that some such laws
would naturally be among the primary laws of
Israel, would be sufficient to justify that view;
while in addition the distinctions from the early
laws of Rome help us to classify in clear broad
masses the somewhat disordered series of Deuter-
onomic laws.
On one point only does the parallel seem
questionable. If we followed it alone as our
gride, we should have to set down the mediator-
ship of Moses, as a mere part of the method, as
belonging to the formal side only of the great
revelation. In other words, we should have to
ask whether the statement we have in Deut. v.
22-30 is only an emotional and pictorial way of
setting forth the fact that, following and sup-
plementing the elementary and Divinely given
Hebrew fas, there was also a Divinely given but
humanly mediated jus. But clearly it means much
more than that. By the earlier prophets, and
generally in all earlier delineations of him, Moses
is regarded as a prophet who had more direct and
continuous access to the Divine presence than
any other prophet of Israel. Moreover he had
always been represented from the earliest times
as standing between Yahweh and His people,
holding on to the one and refusing to let the
other go. In the great scene, taken from the
earliest constituents of the Pentateuch and nar-
rated in Exod. xxxii., we see him anticipating by
centuries the wonderful picture of the Servant
of God in Isa. liii., and by a still more amazing
stretch of time, that Divinest wish of St. Paul,
that he himself might be accursed even from
Christ for his brethren's sake. He thus stood be-
tween Yahweh and His people both as the organ
of Revelation and as the self-forgetting interces-
sor, who suffered for sins not his own, as well
as for sins which his connection with his nation
had brought upon him; who, instead of repining,
was willing to be blotted out of God's book if
that could benefit his people.
This representation of Moses is not accidental.
It is in complete accord with a characteristic
of Israelite literature from beginning to end. In
the earliest historical records we find that the
chief heroes of the nation are mediators, standing
for God in the face of evil men, and pleading
with God for men when they are broken and
penitent, or even when they are only terrified
and restrained by the terror of the Lord. At the
beginning of the national history we see the
noble figure of Abraham in an agony of supplica-
tion and entreaty before God on behalf of the
cities of the plain. At the end of it, we see the
Christ, the supreme " mediator between God and
man," pouring out His soul unto death for men
" while they were yet sinners,' dying, the just
for the unjust, taking upon Himself the re-
sponsibility for the sin of man, and refusing to let
him wander away into permanent separation
from God. And all between is in accord with
this. For it is not Moses only who is regarded
as having a mediatorial olitice. The very people
itself is set, by the promise given to Abraham, in
the same position. As early at least as the
eighth century it was put before Israel, that their
calling was not for their own sakes only, but
that in them all nations of the earth might be
blessed. And at their highest moments the
prophets and teachers of Israel always recognise
this as their nation's part. Even when they were
being scattered among the heathen, it was that
they might be the means of bringing the knowl-
edge of Yahweh to the nations. From end to
end of Scripture, therefore, this conception is
wrought into the very fibre of its utterances. It
is of the essence of the Biblical conception of
God that He should work among men by media-
tors. In no other way could the primary Divine
message be set forth than by the prophetic voice;
in no other way than by the intercession and the
suffering of those most in harmony with the
Divine will could any effective hold upon God
be given to His people. Only by those who
thus proved that they had seen Yahweh could
His character be expressed. Further, it was in
this way that Moses and the prophets, the rulers
and the saints of Israel, were types of Christ.
They were not mere puppets set forth in certain
crises of Israel's history to go through a certain
career, live a certain life, and pass into and out
of a number of scenes, in order that they might
afford us, upon whom the end of the world has
come, pictorial proofs that all things in this his-
tory were pressing towards and converging upon
Christ. That would be a very artificial way of
conceiving the matter. No, each of these types
was a real man, with real tasks of his own to
accomplish in the world. Not only were they all
real men, they were the leading men of their var-
ious times. They bore the burden of their day
more than others; they were the special organs
of Divine power and grace; and their lives were
spent in giving impulse and direction to the
movements of their people's life towards the
strange, unlooked-for consummation appointed
for it. They were types of Christ, they gave
promise of Him, not because of mere arbitrary
appointment or selection, but because they did
in their day, in a lower degree and at an earlier
stage, the very same work that He did. Further,
Deuteronomy V. 22-23 J IHK MEDIATORSHIP OF MOSES.
5
the whole nation was a type of Christ in so far
as it was true to its calling at all. It was the
prophet and the priest among nations. It
spread abroad the knowledge of Him, and it died
at last as a nation that life might be given to
the world. Both Israel and all the men who
truly represented it were partakers in the labours
and in the sufferings of Christ befbrehand, just
as Christians are said to fill up the measure of
His sufferings now. fhe mediatorial character
of Moses, therefore, was essential. It is no
merely formal thing, nor an afterthought. He
would have been no fit founder of the media-
torial nation had he not been a mediator himself,
for not otherwise could he have helped to realise
the Abrahamic promise.
But there is another subsidiary reason why a
mediator was necessary to Israel at this stage.
Behind all that Moses taught his people lay
necessarily the ancient popular religion of the
Hebrews. Now, except in so far as it may have
been changed in Egypt, that was in its main
features the same as the religion of the other
nomadic tribes of Semitic stock, for the Abra-
hamic faith was, clearly, known but to few. But
the names given to their deities by these people
— such as Baal, Adhonai, Milcom, etc. — " all ex-
pressed submission to the irresistible power re-
vealing itself in nature." just as " Islam," which
means " submission," indicates that Moham-
medanism is a mere perpetuation of this view.*
Consequently the Israelite people were unable to
conceive God save as a devouring presence, be-
fore which no man could live. The Mosaic view
was, in itself, immeasurably higher, and, besides
that, it opened up the path to attainments then
inconceivable. Moses therefore had to stand
alone in his new relation to God, while the peo-
ple cowered away in terror, dominated entirely
by the lower conception. They could not stand
where he stood. They were unable to believe
that power was not Yahweh's only attribute;
while Moses had had revealed to him, in germ
at least, that God was " merciful and gracious,
long-suffering and slow to anger," and that a life
passed in His presence was the ideal life for
man. Both the Yahwistic narrative in Exodus
and the repetition of it in Deuteronomy give the
same representation of the events at Sinai, and
indicate quite clearly that, while the old relation
to God was in itself good so far, it was to be
superseded by that higher relation in which
Moses stood. That is the meaning of the words
in Deut. v. 28, 29: " And Yahweh said unto me,
I have heard the voice of the words of this people
which they have spoken unto thee; they have
well said all that they have spoken. Oh that
there were such a heart in them, that they would
fear Me an(i keep all My commandments, al-
ways, that it might be well with them and with
their children for ever! " The parallel passage
in Exodus is xx. 20: " And Moses said unto the
people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you,
and that His fear may be before you, that ye sin
not." In both, the standpoint of fear is approved
as relatively good and wholesome. It was well
that' the people should have this awestruck fear
of the Divine, for it would act as a deterrent
from sin. But it was not sufficient. It was only
the starting-point for the attainments which
Yahweh by Moses, and in Moses, was about to
call and incite them to. Moses therefore had to
stand between Israel and Yahweh in this too,
* Cf. Schultz, " Alttestamentliche Theologie," p. 92.
that he had entered into and lived in relations
with his God which they were as yet unable
either to conceive or to endure.
It is well to add, also, that in giving approval
of this kind to fear as a religious motive these
early teachers were entirely in accord with the
final development of Israelite religion in the New
Testament. The modern view tliat any appeal to
fear in religion or morality is degrading would
have been simply unintelligible to the Biblical
writers. Even now, the whole fabric of society,
the state with its officials and the law with its
penalties, are a continual protest against it in
the realm of practical morality. In truth the
conflict raised about this matter in modern times
is simply a conflict between superfine theories
and facts. Now the Old Testament is through-
out supremely true to the facts of human nature
and human experience. It is practically
a transcript of them as seen in the light
of revelation. In a time, therefore, when
in morals and religion physical fact is being
allowed to override or pervert psychical fact, the
Old Testament view is peculiarly wholesome.
It helps to restore the balance and to keep man's
thoughts sane.
Another point on which this narrative of Deu-
teronomy corrects and restores that which the
tendency of modern thought has perverted is
an even more important one. We have seen that
the Old Testament view, as stated here, and as it
is interwoven with the central fibres of the Old
Testament conception, is that all men who are
called to the task of permanently raising the
level of human life and thought must give not
only their light to, but their life for, those whom
they seek to win for God. They must ask noth-
ing from mankind but ever widening opportuni-
ties for service and self-sacrifice. But in our
modern day this has been precisely reversed, and
men like Goethe and Schopenhauer, and even
Carlyle, have demanded that mankind should
yield service to them, and then, by the further-
ance and development they thereby attain, they
promise to work out the deliverance of men from
superstition and unreality and the bondage of
ignorance. Goethe in this matter is typical.
He preached and practised in the most uncom-
promising manner the doctrine of self-develop-
ment. He thought that he could serve humanity
in no way so well as by making every one he
met, and all the experiences he encountered,
minister to his own intellectual growth. In-
stead of saying with Moses. " Blot me out of Thy
book," but spare these dim idolatrous masses, he
would have said, " Let them all perish, and let
me become the origin of a wiser, more intel-
lectual, more self-restrained race than they."
He consequently pursued his own ends relent-
lessly from his early years, and attained results
so immense that almost every domain of thought,
speculation, and science is now under some debt
to him. But for all purposes of inspiring moral
and spiritual enthusiasm he is practically use-
less. His selfishness, however high its kind, ac-
complished its work and left him cold, unap-
proachable, isolated. This want of love for men
made him the accurate critic of human nature,
but left him blind in great degree and hopeless
altogether in regard to those possibilities of bet-
ter things which are never wholly wanting to it.
The result is that, notwithstanding his heroic
powers, his influence is to-day rather a minus
quantity in the spiritual and moral life. No one
524
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY^
who has not warmth from other sources pour-
ing in upon him can have much communion with
Goethe without losing vitality, and in his pres-
ence the Divine passion of self-sacrificing love
looks out of place, or even slightly absurd. His
power is fascinating, but it freezes all the sources
of the nobler spiritual emotions, and ultimately
must tend to the impoverishing of human nature
and the lowering of the level of human life. No;
men are not to be reached so if it is wished to
raise them to their highest powers, and all ex-
perience proves that the New Testament was
right in summing up the teaching of the Old by
the words, " He that saveth his life shall lose it,
and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find
It.
"That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true ;
Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.
If you loved only what were worth your love,
Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you ;
Make the low nature better by your throes !
Give earth yourself, go up for gain above ! " *
CHAPTER VH.
LOVE TO GOD THE LAW OF LIFE.
I
Deuteronomy vi. 4, 5.
In these verses we approach " the command-
ments, the statutes, and the judgments " which
it was to be Moses' duty to communicate to the
people, i. e., the second great division of the
teaching and guidance received at Sinai. But
though we approach them we do not come to
them for a number of chapters yet. We reach
them only in chapter xii., which begins with al-
most the same words as chapter vi. What lies
between is a new exhortation, very similar, in
tone and subject to that into which chapters i.-
iii. have been transformed.
To some readers in our d^y this repetition, and
the renewed postponement of the main subject
of the book, have seemed to justify the intro-
duction of a new author here. They are scorn-
fully impatient of the repetition and delay, es-
pecially those of them who have themselves a
rapid, dashmg style; and they declare that the
writer of the laws, etc., from chapter xii. on-
wards cannot have been the writer of these long
double introductions. They would not have writ-
ten so; consequently no one else, however differ-
ent his circumstances, his objects, and his style
may be, can have written so. It is true, they
admit, that the style, the grammar, the vocabu-
lary are all exactly those of the purely legal
chapters, but that matters not. Their irritation
with this delay is decisive; and so they intro-
duce us, entirely on the strength of it, to another
Deuteronomist, second or third or fourth — who
knows? But all this is too purely subjective to
meet with general acceptance, and we may with-
out difficulty decide that the linguistic unity of
the book, when chapters vi. to xii. are compared
with what we find after xii., is sufficient to settle
the question of authorship.
But we have now to consider the possible
reasons for this second long introduction. The
first introduction has been satisfactorily ex-
plained in a former chapter; this second one can,
I think, quite as easily be accounted for. The
object of the book is in itself a sufficient ex-
* Browning, "James Lee's Wife," VII.
planation. To modern critical students of the
Old Testament the laws are the main interest of
Deuteronomy. They are the material they need
for their reconstruction of the history of Israel,
and they feel as if all besides, though it may
contain beautiful thoughts, were irrelevant. But
that was not the writer's point of view at all.
For him it was not the main thing to introduce
new laws. He was conscious rather of a desire
to bring old laws, well known to his fellow-
countrymen, but neglected by them, into force
again. Anything new in his version of them was
consequently only such an adaptation of them
to the new circumstances of his time as would
tend to secure their observance. Even if Moses
were the author of the book this would be true;
but if a prophetic man in Manasseh's day was the
author, we can see how naturally and exclusively
that view would fill his mind. He had fallen
upon evil times. The best that had been attained
in regard to spiritual religion had been deliber-
ately abandoned and trodden under foot. Those
who sympathise with pure religion could only
hope that a time would come when Hezekiah's
work would be taken up again. If Deuteronomy
was written in preparation for that time, the legal
additions necessary to ward ofif the evils which
had been so nearly fatal to Yahwism would seem
to the author much less important than they ap-
pear to us to be. His object was to retrieve what
had been lost, to rouse the dead minds of his
countrymen, to illustrate that on which the
higher life of the nation depended, and to throw
light upon it from all the sources of what then
was modern thought. His mind was full of the
high teaching of the prophets. He was steeped
in the history of his people, which was then re-
ceiving, or was soon to receive, its all but final
touches. He was intensely anxious that in the
later time for which he was writing all men
should see how Providence had spoken for the
Mosaic law and religion, and what the great
principles were which had always underlain it,
and which had now at last been made entirely
explicit.
Under these circumstances, it was not merely
natural that the author of Deuteronomy should
dwell with insistence upon the hortatory part of
his book; it was necessary. He could not feel
Wellhausen's haste to approach his restatement
of the law. To him the exhortation was, in fact,
the important thing. Every day he lived he must
have seen that it was not want of knowledge that
misled his contemporaries. He must have
groaned too often under the weight of Vhe in-
difference even of the well disposed not to be
aware that that was the great hindrance to the
restoration of the better thoughts and ways of
Hezekiah's day.
He had learned by bitter experience, what
every man who is in earnest about inducing
masses of men to take a step backward or for-
ward to a higher life always learns, that nothing
can be accomplished till a fire has been kindled in
the hearts of men which will not let them rest.
To this task the author of Deuteronomy devotes
himself. And whatever impatient theorists of
to-day may say, he Succeeds amazingly. His ex-
hortation touches men from one end of the world
to the other, even to this day, by its aflfectionate
impressiveness, This exhibition of the principles
underlying the law is so true that, when our Lord
was asked. " Which is the first commandment
of all? " He answered from this chapter of
Deuteronomy vi. 4, 5.] LOVE TO GOD THE LAW OF LIFE.
5*5
Deuteronomy: " The first of all the command-
ments is this, The Lord our God is one Lord:
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength. The second is this, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. There is none other com-
mandment greater than these." Now these are
precisely the truths Deuteronomy exhibits in
these prefatory chapters, and it is by them
that the after-treatment of the law is permeated.
The author of Deuteronomy by announcing these
truths brought the Old Testament faith as near
to the level of the New Testament faith as was
possible; and we may well believe that he saw
his work in its true relative proportions. The
hortatory chapters are really the most original
part of the book, and exhibit what was permanent
in it. The mere fact that the author lingers over
it, therefore, is entirely inadequate to justify us
in admitting a later hand. Indeed, if criticism is
to retain the respect of reasonable men, it will
have to be more sparing than it has hitherto
been with the " later hand "; to introduce it here
under the circumstances is nothing short of a
blunder.
In our verses, therefore, we have to deal with
the main point of our book. Coming imme-
diately after the Decalogue, these words render
explicit the principle of the first table of that
law. In them our author is making it clear that
all he has to say of worship, and of the relation
of Israel to Yahweh, is merely an application of
this principle, or a statement of means by which
a life at the level of love to God may be made
possible or secured. This section, therefore,
forms the bridge which connects the Decalogue
with the legal enactments which follow; and it
is on all accounts worthy of very special atten-
tion. Our Lord's quotation of it as the supreme
statement of the Divine law, in its Godward as-
pect, would in itself be an overwhelmingly
special reason for thorough study of it, and would
justify us in expecting to find it one of the deep-
est things in Scripture.
The translation of the first clause presents diffi-
culties. The Authorised Version gives us,
"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one
Lord," but that can no longer be accepted, since
it rests upon the Jewish substitution of Adhonai
for Yahweh. Taking this view of the construc-
tion, it should be rendered, " Hear, O Israel:
Yahweh our God is one Yahweh"; and this is
the meaning which most recent authorities — e. g.,
Knobel, Keil, and Dillmann — put upon it. But
equally good authorities — such as Ewald and
Oehler — render, " Yahweh our God — Yahweh is
one." This is unobjectionable grammatically.
Still another translation, " Hear, O Israel:
Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone," has been
received by the most recent and most scholarly
German translation of the Scripture, that edited
by Kautzsch. But the objection that in that case
/ bh-addo, not 'echddh, should have been used,
seems conclusive against it. The two others
come very much to the same thing in the end,
and were it not for the time at which Deuter-
onomy was written, Ewald's translations would
be the simpler and more acceptable. But the
first — " Yahweh our God is one Yahweh " — ex-
actly meets the circumstances of that time, and
moreover emphasises that in Israel's God which
the writer of Deuteronomy was most anxious to
establish. As against the prevailing tendency
of the time, he not only denies polytheism, or,
34— Vol. I.
as Dillmann puts it, asserts the concrete fact that
the true God cannot be resolved in the polytheis-
tic manner into various kinds and shades of deity,
like the Baalim, but he also prohibits the amal-
gamation or partial identification of Him with
other gods. Though very little is told us con-
cerning Manasseh's idolatry, we know enough
to feel assured that it was in this fashion he
justified his introduction of Assyrian deities into
the Temple worship. Moloch, for example, must
in some way have been identified with Yahweh,
since the sacrifices of children in Tophet are de-
clared by Jeremiah to have been to Yahweh.
Further, the worship at the High Places had
led, doubtless, to belief in a multitude of local
Yahwehs, who in some obscure way were yet
regarded as one, just as the multitudinous shrines
of the Virgin in Romanist lands lead to the
axioration of our Lady of Lourdes, our Lady of
Etaples, and so on, though the Church knows
only one Virgin Mother. This incipient and un-
conscious polytheism it was our author's purpose
to root out by his law of one altar; and it seems
congruous, therefore, that he should sum up the
first table of the Decalogue in such a way as to
bring out its opposition to this great evil. Of
course the oneness of diety as such is involved
in what he says; but the aspect of this truth
which is specially put forward here is that Yah-
weh, being God, is one Yahweh, with no part-
ners, nor even with variations that practically
destroy unity. No proposition could have been
framed more precisely and exactly to contradict
the general opinion of Manasseh and his fol-
lowers regarding religion; and in it the watch-
word of monotheism was spoken. Since it was
uttered, this has 1 een the rallying point of mono-
theistic religion, both among Jews and Moham-
medans. For " there is no God but God " is
precisely the counterpart of " Yahweh is one
Yahweh"; and from one end of the civilised
world to the other this strenuous confession of
faith has been heard, both as the tumultuous
battleshout of victorious armies, and as the stub-
born and immovable assertion of the despised,
and scattered, and persecuted people to whom
it was first revealed. Even to-day, though in the
hands of both Jews and Mohammedans it has
been hardened into a dogma which has stripped
the Mosaic conception of Yahweh of those ele-
ments which gave it possibilities of tenderness
and expansion, it still has power over the minds
of men. Even in such hands, it incites mission-
ary effort, and it appeals to the heart at some
stages of civilisation as no other creed does. It
makes men, nay, even civiased men, of the wild
fetich-worshipping African; but for want of what
follows in our context it leaves them stranded —
at a higher level, it is true, but stranded neverthe-
less— without possibilities of advance, and ex-
posed to that terrible decay in their moral and
spiritual conceptions which sooner or later as-
serts itself in every Mohammedan community.
Israel was saved from the same spiritual dis-
ease by the great words which succeed the as-
sertion of Yahweh's oneness. The writer of
Deuteronomy did not desire to set forth this
declaration as an abstract statement of ultimate
truth about God. He makes it the basis of a
quite new, a quite original demand upon his
countrymen. Because Yahweh thy God is one
Yahweh, " thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with
all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy might." To us, who have inherited all
526
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY
that was attained by Israel in their long and
eventful history as a nation, and especially in
its disastrous close, it may have become a com-
monplace that God demands the love of His
people. But if so, we must make an efifort to
shake off the dull yoke of custom and familiarity.
If we do, we shall see that it was an extraordi-
narily original thing which the Deuteronomist
here declares. In the whole of the Old Testa-
ment there are, outside of Deuteronomy, thirteen
passages in which the love of men to Yahweh is
spoken of. They are Exod. xx. 6; Josh. xxii. 5,
xxiii. 11; Judges v. 31; i Kings iii. 3; Neh. i. 5;
Psalms xviii. 2, xxxi. 24, xci. 14, xcvii. 10, cxvi. i,
cxlv. 20; and Dan. ix. 4. Now of these the
verses from Nehemiah and Daniel are manifestly
later than Deuteronomy, and of the Psalms only
the eighteenth can with any confidence be as-
signed to a time earlier than the seventh cen-
tury B. c. All the others may with great proba-
bility be assigned at earliest to the times of Jere-
miah and the post-exilic period. Three of the
passages from the historic books again — Josh.
xxii. 5, xxiii. 11; i Kings iii. 3 — are attributed,
on grounds largely apart from the use of this
expression, to the Deuteronomic editor, t. e., the
writer who went over the historical books about
600 B. c, and made slight additions here and
there, easily recognisable by their differing in
tone and feeling from the surrounding context.
Indeed Josh. xxii. 5 is a palpable quotation from
Deuteronomy itself.
Of the thirteen passages, therefore, only three
— Exod. XX. 6, Judges v. 31, and Psalm xviii.
2 — belong to the time previous to Deuteronomy,
and in all three the mention of love to God is
only allusive, and, as it were, by the way. Be-
fore Deuteronomy, consequently, there is little
more than the mere occurrence of the word.
There is nothing of the bold and decisive demand
for love to the one God as the root and ground
of all true relations with Him which Deuteron-
omy makes. At most, there is the hint of a pos-
sibility which might be realised in the future;
of love to God as the permanent element in
the life of man there is no indication; and it is
this which the author of Deuteronomy means,
and nothing less than this. He makes this de-
mand for love the main element of his teaching.
He returns to it again and again, so that there
are almost as many passages bearing on this in
Deuteronomy as in the whole Old Testament
besides; and the particularity and emphasis with
which he dwells upon it are immeasurably
greater. Only in the New Testament do we find
anything quite parallel to what he gives us; and
there we find his view taken up and expanded, till
love to God flashes upon us from almost every
page as the test of all sincerity and the guarantee
of all success in the Christian life.
To proclaim this truth was indeed a great
achievement; and when we remember the abject
fear with which Israel had originally regarded
Yahweh, it will appear still more remarkable that
the book embodying this should have been
adopted by the whole people with enthusiasm,
and that with it should begin the Canon of Holy
Scripture; for Deuteronomy, as all now recog-
nise, was the first book which became canonical.
I have said that the conception was an extraor-
dinarily original one, and have pointed out that
it had not been traceable to any extent previously
in Israel's religious books or its religious men.
It will appear still more original, I think, if we
consider what a growth in moral and spiritual
stature separates the Israel of Moses' day and
that of Josiah's; what the attitude of other na-
tions to their gods was in contrast to this; and,
lastly, what it involves and implies, as regards the
nature of both God and man.
As we have already seen, the earlier narratives
represent the men to whom Moses spoke as ac-
knowledging that they could not, as yet at any
rate, bear to remain in the presence of Yahweh.
Between their God and them, therefore, there
could be no relation of love properly so called-
There was reverence, awe, and chiefly fear, tem-
pered by the belief that Yahweh as their God was
on their side. He had proved it by delivering
them from the oppressions of Egypt, and they
acknowledged Him and were jealous for His
honour and submissive to His commands. So
far as the record goes, that would seem to have
been their religious state. Progress from that
state of mind to a higher, to a demand for direct
personal relations between each individual Is-
raelite and Yahweh, was not easy. It was hin-
dered by the fact that Israel as a whole, and not
the individual, was for a long time regarded as
the subject of religion. That, of course, was no
hindrance to the development of the thought that
Yahweh loved Israel; but so long as that concep-
tion dominated religious thought in Israel, so
long was it impossible to think of individual love
and trust as the element in which each faith-
ful man should live.
But the love of Yahweh was declared, century
after century, by prophet and priest and psalmist,
to be set upon His people, and so the way for
this demand for love on man's part was opened.
Man's relations with God began to grow more
intimate. The distance lessened, as the use of
the words " them that love Me " in the song of
Deborah and the Davidic word in Psalm xviii.,
" I love thee, Yahweh my rock," clearly show.
Hosea next took up the strain, and intensified
and heightened it in a wonderful manner, but
the nation failed to respond adequately. In the
later prophets the love and grace and long-
suffering of Yahweh and His ceaseless efforts
on behalf of Israel are continually made the
ground of exhortations, entreaties, and re-
proaches; but, as a whole, the people still did not
respond. We may be sure, however, that an
ever increasing minority were affected by the
clearness and intensity of the prophetic testi-
mony. To this minority, the Israel within Israel,
the remnant that was to return from exile and
become the seed of a people that should be all
righteous, the love of Yahweh tended to become
His main characteristic. That love sustained
their hopes; and though the awe and reverence
which were due to His holiness, and the fear
called forth by His power, still predominated,
there grew up in their hearts a multitude of
thoughts and expectations tending more and
more to the love of God.
As yet it was only a timid reaching out towards
Him, a hope and longing which could hardly
justify itself. Yet it was robust enough not to be
killed by disappointment, by hope deferred, or
even by crushing misfortune; and in the furnace
of affliction it became stronger and more pure.
And in the heart of the author of Deuteronomy
it grew certain of itself, and soared up with an
eagerness that would not be denied. Then, as
always where God is the object of it, love that
dares was justified; and out of its restless and
Deuteronomy vi. 4. 5 J LOVE i X) GOD THE LAW OF LIFE.
527
timid longings it came to the " place of rest im-
perturbable, where love is not forsaken if itself
forsaketh not."* From knowledge, confirmed
by the answering love and inspiration of God,
and impelled consciously by Him, he then in this
book made and reiterated his great demand. All
spiritual men found in it the word they had
needed. They responded to it eagerly when the
book was published; and their enthusiasrn carried
even the torpid and careless masses with them
for a time. The nation, with the king at their
head, accepted the legislation of which this love
to God was the underlying principle, and so far
as public and corporate action can go, Israel
adopted the deepest principle of spiritual life as
their own.
Of course with the mass this assent had little
depth; but in the hearts of the true men in Is-
rael the joy and assurance of their great dis-
covery, that Yahweh their God was open to, nay,
desired and commanded, their most fervent affec-
tion, soon produced its fruit. From the frag-
ments of the earliest legislation which have come
down to us, it is obvious that the Mosaic princi-
ples had led to a most unwonted consideration
for the poor. In later days, though the ingrained
tendency to oppression, which those who have
power in the East seem quite unable to resist,
did its evil work in both Israel and Judah, there
were never wanting prophetic voices to denounce
such villainy in the spirit of these laws. The
public conscience was thereby kept alive, and
the ideal of justice and mercy, especially to the
helpless, became a distinguishing mark of Israel-
ite religion. But it was in the minds of those
who had learned the Deuteronomist's great les-
son, and had taken example by him, that the
love which came from God, and had just been
answered back by man, overflowed in a stream
of blessing to man's " neighbours." Deuteron-
omy had uttered the first and great command-
ment! but it is in the Law of Holiness, that
complex of ancient laws brought together by the
author of P, and found now mainly in Lev. xvii.-
xxvi., that we find the second word, " Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."t If we ask.
Who is my neighbour? we find that not even
those beyond Israel are excluded, for in Lev. xix.
34 we read, " The stranger that sojourneth with
you shall be unto you as the homeborn among
you, and thou shalt love him as thyself." The
idea still needed the expansion which it received
from our Lord Himself in the parable of the
Good Samaritan; but it is only one step from
these passages to the New Testament.
From the standpoint of mere fear, then, to the
standpoint of love which casteth out fear, even
the masses of Israel were lifted, in thought at
least, by the love and teaching of God. And the
process by which Israel was led to this height
has proved ever since to be the only possible
way to such an attainment. It began in the free
favour of God, it was continued by the answer
of love on the part of man, and these antecedents
had as their consequence the proclamation of
that law of liberty — for self-renouncing love is
liberty — " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy-
self." Without the first, the second was im-
possible; and the last without the other two
would have been only a satire upon the incurable
selfishness of man. It is worthy of remark, at
least, that only on the critical theory of the Old
* Augustine's " Confessions," p. 64.
t Lev. xix. 18, 34.
Testament is each of these steps in the morai
and religious education of Israel found in its
right place, with its right antecedents; only when
taken so do the teachers who were inspired to
make each of these attainments find circum-
stances suited to their message, and a soil in
which the germs they were commissioned to
plant could live.
But great as is the contrast between the Is-
rael of Moses' day and that of Josiah's, it is not
so great as the contrast between the religion of
Israel in the Deuteronomic period and the re-
ligion of the neighbouring nations. Among
them, at our date 650 b. c, there was, so far as
we know them, no suggestion of personal love to
God as an effective part of religion. In the chap-
ters on the Decalogue the main ideas of the
Canaanites in regard to religion have been de-
scribed, so that they need not be repeated here.
I shall add only, what E. Meyer says of their
gods: " With advancing culture the cultus loses
its old simplicity and homeliness. A fixed ritual
was developed — founded upon old hereditary
tradition. And here the gloomier conception
became the ruling one, and its consequences were
inexorably deduced. The great gods, even the
protecting gods of the tribe or the town, are
capricious and in general hostile to man — pos-
sibly to some degree because of the mythological
conception of Baal as sun-god — and they demand
sacrifices of blood that they may be appeased.
In order that evil may be warded off from those
with whom they are angry, another human bein^'
must be offered to them as a substitute in propi-
tiatory sacrifice — nay, they demand the sacrifice
of the firstborn, the best-loved son. If the com-
munity be threatened with the wrath of the deity,
then the prince or the nobility as a whole must
offer up their children on its behalf."* This also
is the view of Robertson Smith,t who considers
that while in their origin the Semitic religions
involved kindly relations and continual inter-
course between the gods and their worshippers,
these gradually disappeared as political misfor-
tune began to fall upon the smaller Semitic peo-
ples. Their gods were angry and in the vain
hope of appeasing them men had recourse to
the direst sacrifices. Hints concerning these
had survived from times of savagery; and to the
diseased minds of these terror-stricken peoples
the more ancient and more horrible a sacrifice
was the more powerful did it seem. At this time,
therefore, the course of the Canaanite religions
was away from love to their gods. The decay of
nationality brought despair, and the frantic ef-
forts of despair, into the religion of the Canaan-
ite peoples; but to Israel it brought this higher
demand for more intimate union with their God.
Whatever elements tending towards love the
Canaanite religions originally may have had, they
had either been mingled with the corrupting
sensuality which seems inseparable from the
worship of female deities, or had been limited
to the mere superficial good understanding which
their participation in the same common life estab-
lished between the people and their godis. Their
union was largely independent of moral consider-
ations on either side. But in Israel there had
grown up quite a different state of things. The
union between Yahweh and His people had
from the days of the Decalogue taken a moral
turn: and gradually it had become clear that to
* "Geschichte des Alterthums," p. 249.
t " Religion of the Semites," p. 33a.
52^
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
have Abraham for their father and Yahweh for
their God would profit them little, if they did not
stand in right moral relations and in moral sym-
pathy with Him. Now, in Deuteronomy, that
fundamentally right conception of the relation
between God and man received its crown in
Yahweh's claim to the love of His people. No
contrast could be greater than that which corn-
mon misfortune and a common national ruin
produced between the surrounding Semitic peo-
ples and Israel.
But besides the small kingdoms which imme-
diately surrounded Palestine, Israel had for
neighbours the two great empires of Egypt and
Assyria. She was exposed therefore to influence
from them in even a greater degree. Long be-
fore the Exodus, the land which Israel came
afterwards to occupy had been the meeting-place
of Babylonian and Egyptian power and culture.
In the fifteenth century b. c. it was under the
suzerainty if not the direct sovereignty of Egypt;
but its whole culture and literature, for it must
have had books, as the name Kirjath-Sepher
(Book-town) shows, was Babylonian. Through-
out Israel's history, moreover, Assyrian and
Egyptian manners and ways of thought were
pressed upon the people; and we cannot doubt
that in regard to religion also their influence
was felt. But at this period, as in the Canaanite
religions, so also in those of Assyria and Egypt,
the tendency was altogether different from
what Deuteronomy shows it to have been in
Israel.
In regard to Egypt this is somewhat difficult
^ to prove, for the Egyptian religion is so com-
l plicated, so varied, and so ancient, that men who
have studied it despair of tracing any progress
in it. A kind of monotheism, polytheism, fetich-
ism, animism, and nature-worship such as we
find in the Vedas, have in turn been regarded as
its primitive state; but as a matter of fact all
these systems of religious thought and feeling are
represented in the earliest records, and they re-
mained constant elements of it till the end.*
Whatever had once formed part of it, Egyptian
religion clung to with extraordinary tenacity.
As time went on, however, the accent was shifted
from one element to the other, and after the
times of the XlXth dynasty, i. e., after the time
of the Exodus, it began to decay. A systema-
tised pantheism, of which sun-worship was the
central element, was '^'n^-orated by the priests;
the moral element, which had been prominent in
the days when the picture of the judgment of
the soul after death was so popular in Thebes,
retired more into the backsTroiind, and the purely
magical element became the principal one. In-
stead of moral goodness and the fulfilment of
duty being the main support of the soul in its
dread and lonely journeys in the " world of the
Western sky,"'knowledge of the proper formulas
became the chief hope, and the machinations
of evil demons the main danger. In the royal
tombs at Thebes the walls of the long galleries
are covered with representations of these demons,
and the accompanying writing gives directions
as to the proper formulas by knowledge of which
deliverance can be secured. This, of course, con-
fined the benefits of religion, so far as they re-
lated to the life to come, to the educated, and the
wealthy. For these secret spells were hard to
obtain, and had to be piirrha=ed at a high price.
As Wiedemann says, " Still more important than
• Cf. Wiedemann, Religion der alten Aegypter, p. 3.
in this world was the knowledge of the correct
magical words and formulas in the other world.
No door opened here if its name was not known,
no daemon let the dead pass in if he did not ad-
dress him in the proper fashion, no god came to
his help so long as his proper title was not given
him, no food could be procured so long as the
exactly prescribed words were not uttered."*
The people were therefore thrown back upon the
ancient popular faith, which needed gods only
for practical life, and honoured them only be-
cause they were mighty.f Some of them were
believed to be friendly; but others were malevo-
lent deities who would destroy mankind if they
did not mollify them by magic, or render them
harmless by the greater power of the good gods.
Consequently Set, the unconquerable evil demon,
was worshipped with zeal in many places. With
him there were numerous demons, " the ene-
mies," " the evil ones," which lie in wait for
individuals, and threaten their life and weal. The
main thing, therefore, was to bring the correct
sacrifices, to use such formulas and perform such
acts as would render the gods gracious and turn
away evil. Moreover the whole of nature was
full of spirits, as it is to the African of to-day,
and in the mystic texts of the Book of the Dead,
there is constant mention made of the " myster-
ious beings whose names, whose ceremonials
are not known," which thirst for blood, which
bring death, which go about as devouring flame,
as well as of others which do good. At all times
this element existed in Egypt; but precisely at
this time, in the reign of Psamtik, BrugschJ de-
clares that new force was given to it, and on the
monuments there appear, along with the " great
gods," monstrous forms of demons and genii.
In fact the higher religion had become pantheis-
tic, and consequently less rigidly moral. Magic
had been taken up into it for the life beyond the
grave, and became the only resource of the peo-
ple in this life. Fear, therefore, necessarily be-
came the ruling religious motive, and instead of
growing toward love of God, men in Egypt at
this time were turning more decisively than ever
away from it.
Of the Assyrian religion and its influence it is
also difficult to speak in this connection, for
notwithstanding the amount of translation that
has been done, not much has come to light in re-
gard to the personal religion of the Assyrians.
On the whole it seems to be established that in its
main features the religion of both Babylon and
Assyria remained what the non-Semitic inhabi-
ants of Akkad had made it. Originally it had
consisted entirely of a spirit and demon worship
not one whit more advanced than the religion
of the South Sea islanders to-day. As such it
was in the main a religion of fear. Though some
spirits were good, the bulk were evil.-^and all were
capricious. Men were consequently all their
lifetime subject to bondage, and love as a relig-
ious emotion was impossible. When the Semites
came at a later time into the country their star-
worship was amalgamated with this mere Sham-
anism of the Akkadians. In the new faith thus
evolved the great gods of the Sernites were ar-
ranged in a hierarchy, and the spirits, both good
and evil, were subordinated to them. But even
the great gods remain within the sphere of na-
ture, and have in full measure the defects and
* Wiedemann, p. i, 35.
+ Cf. Mever. p. 7'.
X " Egypt under the Pharaohs," Brodick's edition, p. 423.
Deuteronomy vi. 4. 5.] LOVE TO GOD THE LAW OF LIFE.
5*9
limitations of nature-gods everywhere.* They
are not entirely benelicent powers, nor are tliey
even moral beings. Some have special delight
in blood and destruction, while the cruel Semitic
child-sacrihce was practised in honour of others.
Again, their displeasure has no necessary or
even general connection with sin. Their wrath
is generally the outcome of mere arbitrary whim.
Indeed it may be doubted whether the conception
of sin or of moral guilt ever had a secure footing
in this religion. It certainly had none in the
terror-struck hymn to the seven evil spirits who
are described thus: —
" Seven (are) they, seven (are) they.
Male they (are) not, female they (are) not ;
Moreover the deep is their pathway.
Wife they have not, child is not born, to them.
Law (and) order they know not,
Prayer and supplication hear they not.
Wicked (are) they, wicked (are) they." t
There is here an accent of genuine terror,
which involved not love, but hatred. Even in
what Sayce calls a " Penitential Psalm," and
which he compares to the Biblical Psalms, there
is nothing of the gratitude to God as a deliverer
from sin which in Israel was the chief factor in
producing the response to Yahweh's demand for
the love of man. Morally, it contains nothing
higher than is contained in the hymn of the
spirits. The transgressions which are so pathet-
ically lamented, and from the punishment of
which deliverance is so earnestly sought, are
purely ceremonial and involuntary. The author
of the prayer conceives that he has to do with a
god whose wrath is a capricious thing, coming
upon men they know not why. So conceived
God cannot be loved. It is entirely in accord
with this that in the great flood epic no reason is
given for the destruction of mankind save the
caprice of Bel.t The few expressions quoted by
Si'yce from a hymn to the sun-god — such as this,
" Merciful God, that liftest up the fallen, that
supportest the weak. . . . Like a wife, thou sub-
mittest thyself, cheerful and kindly. . . . Men
far and wide bow before thee and rejoice " — can-
not avail to subvert a conclusion so firmly fixed.
These are simply the ordinary expressions which
the mere physical pleasure of the sunlight brings
to the lips of sun-worshippers of all ages and of
all climes. At best they could only be taken
as germs out of which a loving relation between
God and man might have been developed. But
though they were ancient they never were de-
veloped. At the end as at the beginning the
Assyrio-Babylonian religion moves on so low
a level, even in its more innocent aspects, that a
development like that in Deuteronomy is abso-
lutely impossible. In its worse aspects Assyrian
religion was unspeakable. The worship of Ishtar
at Nineveh outdid everything known in the an-
cient world for lust and cruelty.
On this side too, therefore, we find no parallel
to Israel's new outgrowth of higher religion.
Comparison only makes it stand out more
* Meyer, p. 117.
' t Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 36. Both poems
here referred to are pre-Assyrian, being found as transla-
tions in the library of Assurbanipal. But Assyrian religion
made no progress ; it seems to have remained always de-
pendent on Babylonian, even in details.
J Meyer, p. 178. Cf. however Sayce, " The Higher Criti-
cism and the Monuments," p. 114. Sayce maintains that
the Assyrian epic attributes the flood to the moral guilt of
men. But that is by no means proved, for it is more than
doubtful whether sin to the Assyrian was not always
mainly a ceremonial matter.
boldly in its splendid originality; and we are left
with the fruitful question, " What was the root
of the astonishing difference between Yahweh
and every other god whom Israel had heard of? "
Precisely at this time and under the same circum-
stances, the ethnic religions around Israel were
developing away from any higher elements they
had contained, and were thereby, as we know
now, hastening to extinction. Under the in-
spired prophetic influence, Israel's religion turned
the loss of the nation into gain; it rose by the
darkness of national misfortune into a nobler
phase than any it had previously known.
But perhaps the crowning merit of this de-
mand for love of God is the emphasis it lays
upon personality in both God and man, and the
high level at which it conceives their mutual re-
lations. From the first, of course, the personal
element was always very strongly present in the
Israelite conception of God. Indeed personality
was the dominating idea among all the smaller
nations which surrounded Israel. The national
god was conceived of mainly as a greater and
more powerful man, full of the energetic self-
assertion without which it would be impossible
for any man to reign over an Eastern community.
The Moabite stone shows this, for in it Chemosh
is as sharply defined a person as Mesha himself.
The Canaanite gods, therefore, might be wanting
in moral character; their existence was doubtless
thought of in a limited and wholly carnal man-
ner; but there never was, apparently, the least
tendency to obscure the sharp lines of their indi-
viduality. In Israel, a fortiori, such a tendency
did not exist; and that a writer of Matthew Ar-
nold's ability should have persuaded himself, and
tried to persuade others, that under the name
of Yahweh Israel understood anything so vague
as his "stream of tendency which makes for right-
eousness," is only another instance of the ex-,
traordinarily blinding effects of a preconceived
idea. So far from Yahweh being conceived in
that manner, it would be much easier to prove
that, whatever aberrations in the direction of
making God merely " a non-natural man " may
be charged upon Christianity, they have been
founded almost exclusively upon Old Testament
examples and Old Testament texts. If there was
defect in the Old Testament conception of God,
it was, and could not but be, in the direction
of drawing Him down too much into the limits
of human personality.
But though the gods were always thought of
by the Canaanites as personal, their character
was not conceived as morally high. Moral char-
acter in Chemosh, Moloch, or Baal was not of
much importance, and their relations with their t
peoples were never conditioned by moral con-
duct. How deeply ingrained this view was in
Palestine is seen in the persistency with which
even Yahweh's relation to His people was viewed
in this light. Only the continual outcry of the
prophets against it prevented this idea becoming
permanently dominant even in Israel. Nay, it
often deceived would-be prophets. Clinging to
the idea of the national God, and forgetting al-
together the ethical character of Yahweh, with-
out, perhaps, conscious insincerity, they prophe-
sied peace to the wicked, and so came to swell
the ranks of the false prophets. But from very
early times another thought was cherished by
Israel's representative men in regard to their
relations with God. Yahweh was righteous, and
demanded righteousness in His people. Obla-
530
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
tions were vain if offered as a substitute for this.
All the prophets reach their greatest heights of
sublimity in preaching this ethically noble doc-
trine; and the love to God which Deuteronomy
demands is to be exhibited in reverent obedience
to moral law.
Moreover, that God should seek or even need
the love of man threw other light on the Old
Testament religion. If, without revelation, Is-
rael had widened its mental horizon so as to con-
ceive Yahweh as Lord of the world, it may
be questioned whether it could have kept clear of
the gulf of pantheism. But by the manifestation
of God in their special history, the Israelites had
been taught to rise step by step to the higher
levels, without losing their conception of Yahweh
as the living, personal, active friend of their peo-
ple. Moreover they had been early taught, as
we have seen, that the deep design of all that was
wrought for them was the good of all men. The
love of God was seen pressing forward to its
glorious and beneficent ends; and both by as-
cribing such far-reaching plans to Yahweh, and
by affirming His interest in the fate of men, Is-
rael's conception of the Divine personality was
raised alike in significance and power; for any-
thing more personal than love planning and
working towards the happiness of its objects can-
not be conceived. But the crown was set upon
the Divine personality by the claim to the love
of man. This signified that to the Divine mind
the individual man was not hid from God by his
nation, that he was not for Him a mere specimen
of a genus. Rather each man has to God a
special worth, a special character, which, impelled
by His free personal love. He seeks to draw to
Himself. At every step each man has near him
" the great Companion," who desires to give
Himself to him. Nay, more, it implies that God
seeks and needs an answering love; so that
Browning's daring declaration, put into the
mouth of God when the song of the boy Theo-
crite is no more heard, " I miss My little human
praise," is simple truth.*
But if the demand illustrates and illuminates
the personality of God, it throws out in a still
more decisive manner the personality of man. In
a rough sense, of course, there never could have
been any doubt of that. But children have to
grow into full self-determining personality, and
savages never attain it. Both are at the mercy
of caprice, or of the needs of the moment, to
which they answer so helplessly that in general
no consistent course of conduct can be expected
of them. That can be secured only by rigorous
self-determination. But the power of self-deter-
mination does not come at once, nor is acquired
without strenuous and continued efYort; it is, in
fact, a power which in any full measure is pos-
sessed only by the civilised man. Now the Is-
raelites were not highly civilised when they left
Egypt. They were still at the stage when the
tribe overshadowed and absorbed the individual,
as it does to-day among the South Sea islanders.
The progress of the prophetic thought towards
the demand for personal love has already been
traced. Here we must trace the steps by which
the personal element in each individual was
strengthened in Israel, till it was fit to respond to
the Divine demand.
The high calling of the people reacted on the
individual Israelites. They saw that in many
respects the nations around them were inferior to
♦ Browning's Poems, " The Boy and the Angel."
them. Much that was tolerated or even re-
spected among them was an abomination to
Israel; and every Israelite felt that the honour
of his people must not be dragged in the dust by
him, as it would be if he permitted himself to
sink to the heathen level. Further, the laws re-
garding even ceremonial holiness which in germ
certainly, and probably in considerable extension
also, existed from the earliest time, made him
feel that the sanctity of the nation depended
upon the care and scrupulosity of the individual.
And then there were the individual spiritual
needs, which could not be suppressed and would
not be denied. Though one sees so little explicit
provision for restoration of individual character
in early Yahwism, yet in the course of time —
who can dou^t it? — the personal religious needs
of so many individual men would necessarily
frame for themselves some outlet. Building
upon the analogy of the relation established be-
tween Yahweh and Israel, they would hope for
the satisfaction of their individual needs through
the infinite mercy of God. The Psalms, such of
them as can fairly be placed in the pre-Deuter-
onomic time, bear witness to this; and those
written after that time show a hopefulness, and
a faith in the reality of individual communion
with God which show that such communion
was not then a new discovery.
In all these ways the religious life of the^ indi-
vidual was being cultivated and strengthened;
but this demand made in Deuteronomy lifts that
indirect refreshment of soul, for which the cultus
and the covenants made no special provision,
into a recognised position, nay, into the central
position in Israelite religion. The word, " Thou
shalt love Yahweh thy God," confirmed and
justified all these persistent efforts after indi-
vidual life in God, and brought them out into the
large place which belongs to aspirations that have
at last been authorised. By a touch, the inspired
writer transformed the pious hopes of those who
had been the chosen among the chosen people
into certainties. Each man was henceforth to
have his own direct relation to God as well as
the nation; and the national hope, which had
hitherto been first, was now to depend for its
realisation upon the fulfilment of the special and
private hope. Thus the old relation was entirely
reversed by Deuteronomy. Instead of the indi-
vidual holding " definite place in regard to Yah-
weh only through his citizenship," now the na-
tion has its place and its future secured only by
the personal love of each citizen to God. For
that is obviously what the demand here made
really means. Again and again the inspired
writer returns to it; and his persistent endeavour
is to connect all else that his book contains^
warning, exhortation, legislation — with this as
the foundation and starting-point. Here, as
elsewhere, we can trace the roots of the new
covenant which Jeremiah and Ezekiel saw afar
off and rejoiced at, and which our blessed Lord
has realised for us. The individual religious life
is for the first time fully recognised for what
ever since it has been seen to be, the first con-
dition of any attempt to realise the kingdom of
God in the life of a nation.
And not only thus does our text emphasise in-
dividuality. Love with all the heart, and all the
mind, and all the soul is possible only to a fully
developed personality; for, as Roth says, "We
love only in the measure in which personality is
developed in us. Even God can love only in so
Deuteronomy vi. 4, 5-] LOVE TO GOD THE LAW OF LIFE.
531
far as He is personal."* Or, as Julius Muller
says in his " Doctrine of Sin," "The association of
personal beings in love, while it involves the most
perfect distinction of the I and Thou, proves
itself to be the highest form of unity. "t Unless
■other counteracting circumstances come in,
therefore, the more highly developed individu-
ality is, the more entirely human beings are de-
termined from within, the more entirely will
union among men depend upon free and de-
liberate choice, and the more perfect will it be.
In being called to love God men are dealt with
.as those who have attained to complete self-
determination, who have come to completed
manhood in the moral life. For all that could
mix love with alloy, mere sensuous sympathy,
and the insistent appeal of that which is tna-
terially present, are wanting here. Here nothing
is involved but the free outgoing of the heart to
that which is best and highest; nothing but loy-
alty to that vision of Good which, amid all the
ruin sin has wrought in human nature, domin-
ates us so that " we needs must love the highest
when we see it." The very demand is a promise
.and a prophecy of completed moral and religious
liberty to the individual soul. It rests upon the
assurance that men have at last been trained to
walk alone, that the support of social life and
■external ordinances has become less necessary
than it was, and that one day a new and living
way of access to the Father will bring every soul
into daily intercourse with the source of all spirit-
ual life.
But this demand, in afifirming personality of so
high a kind, also re-created duty. Under the
national dispensation the individual man was a
servant. To a large extent he knew not what
his Lord did, and he ruled his life by the com-
mands he received without understanding, or per-
haps caring to understand, their ultimate ground
and aim. Much too of what he thus laid upon
himself was mere ancient custom, which had been
a protection to national and moral life in early
days, but which had survived, or was on the point
of surviving, its usefulness. Now, however, that
man was called upon to love God with all his
heart and mind and soul, the step was taken
which was to end in his becoming the consciously
free son of God. For to love in this fashion
means, on the one hand, a willingness to enter
into communion with God and to seek that com-
munion; and on the other it implies a throwing
open of the soul to receive the love which God
so persistently has pressed upon men. In such
a relation slavery, blind or constrained obedience,
disappears, and the motives of right action be-
come the purest and most powerful that man can
know.
In the first place, selfishness dies out. Those
to whom God has given Himself have no more
to seek. They have reached the dwelling " of
peace imperturbable," and know that they are
secure. Nothing that they do can win more for
them; and they do those things that please God
with the free, uncalculating, ungrudging forget-
fulness of self, which distinguishes those fortu-
nate children who have grown up into a perfect
filial love. Of course it was only the elect in Is-
rael who in any great degree realised this ideal.
But even those who neglected it had for a mo-
ment been illuminated by it; and the record of it
remained to kindle the nobler hearts of every gen-
*"Theol., Ethik," i., p. 515.
t " Doctrine of Sin," vol. i., p. 114.
eration. Even the legalism of later days could
not obscure it. In the case of many it bore up
and transfigured the dry details of Judaism, so
that even amid such surroundings the souls of
men were kept alive. The later Psalms prove
this beyond dispute, and the advanced view which
brings the bulk of the Psalter down to the post-
exilic period only emphasises the more this
aspect of pre-Christian Judaism. In Christianity
of course the ideal was made infinitely more ac-
cessible: and it received in the Pauline doctrine,
the Evangelical doctrine, of Justification by
Faith, a form which more than any other human
teaching has made unselfish devotion to God a
common aim. It would hardly be too much to
say that those philosophical and religious sys-
tems which have preached the unworthiness of
looking for a reward of well-doing, which have
striven to set up the doing of good for its own
sake as the only morality worthy of the name,
have failed, just because they would not begin
with the love of God. To Christianity, especially
to Evangelical Christianity, they have assumed
to speak from above downwards; but it alone has
the secret they strove in vain to learn. Men
justified by faith have peace with God, and do
good with passionate fervour without hope or
possibility of further reward, just because of
their love and gratitude to God, who is the
source of all good. This plan has succeeded,
and no other has; for to teach men on any other
terms to disregard reward is simply to ask them
to breathe in a vacuum.
In the second place, those who rose to the
height of this calling had duty not only deepened
but extended. It was natural that they should
not seek to throw ofT the obligations of worshij)
and morality as they had been handed down by
their ancestors. Only an authoritative voice
which they were separated from by centuriess
could say, " It hath been said by them of old
time, . . . but / say unto you "; and men would
be disposed rather to fulfil old obligations with
new zeal, while they added to them the new
duties which their widened horizon had brought
into view. It is true that in course of time th*e
Pharisaic spirit laid hold of the Jews, and' that
by it they were led back into a slavery which
quite surpassed the half-conscious bondage of
their earlier time. It is one of the mysteries of
human nature that it is only the few who can liv4
for any time at a high level, and hold the bal-
ance between extremes. The many cannot
choose but follow those few; and the dumb, half-
reluctant, half-fascinated way in which they are
drawn after them is a most pathetic thing to see.
But too often they avenge themselves for the
pressure put upon them, by taking up the teach-
ing they receive in a perverted or mutilated form,
dropping unawares the very soul of it, and suit-
ing it to the average man. When that is done the
bread from heaven becomes a stone; the message
of liberty is turned into a summons to the prison
house; and the darkness becomes of that opaque
sort which is found only where the light within
men is darkness. That tragedy was enacted in
Judaism as rarely elsewhere. The free service of
sons was exchanged for the timorous, anxious
scrupulosity of the formalist. How could men
love a God whom they pictured as inexorable in
claiming the mint and cummin of ceremonial
worship, and as making life a burden for all who
had a conscience? They could not, and they did
not. Most substituted a merely formal compli-
532
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
ance with the externaHties of worship for the
love to God and man which was the presupposi-
tion of the true Israelite's life, and the mass of
the nation fell away from true faith. Strangely
enough, therefore, the strength of men's love for
God, and of their belief in His love, gave an
impulse to the legalistic Pharisaism which our
Lord denounced as the acme of loveless irrelig-
ion.
But it was not so perverted in all. There
always was an Israel within Israel that refused
to let go the truths they had learned, and kept up
the succession of men inspired by the free spirit
of God. Even among the Pharisees there were
such — witness St. Paul— men who, though they
were entangled in the formalism of their time,
found it at last a pedagogue to bring them unto
Christ. We must believe therefore that at the
beginning the attainment marked by the demands
of Deuteronomy and the Law of Holiness existed
and was carried over into the daily life. As the
national limits of religion were broken down, the
word " neighbour " received an ever wider defini-
tion in Israel. At first only a man's fellow-tribes-
man or fellow-countryman was included; then
the stranger; later, as in Jonah's picture of the
conduct of the sailors, it was hinted that even
among the heathen brethren might be found.
Finally, in our Lord's parable of the Good Sa-
maritan the last barrier was broken down. But
it needed all St. Paul's lifework, and the first
and most desperate inner conflict Christianity had
to live through, to initiate men into anything
like the full meaning of what Christ had taught.
Then it was seen that as there was but one
Father in heaven, so there was but one family on
earth. Then too, though the merely ceremonial
duties by which the Jew had been bound ceased
to be binding on Christians, the sphere for the
practice of moral duty was immensely widened.
Indeed, had it not been for the free, joyous spirit
with which they were inspired by Christ, they
must have shrunk from the immensity of their
obligation. For not only were men's neighbours
infinitely more numerous now, but their relations
with them became vastly more complicated. To
meet all possible cases that might arise in the
great and elaborate civilisations Christianity had
to face and save, our Lord deepened the mean-
ing of the commandments; and so far from
Christians being free from the obligation to law,
immeasurably more was demanded of them. To
them first was the full sweep of moral obligation
revealed, for they first had reached the full
moral stature of men in Jesus Christ.
CHAPTER Vin.
EDUCATION— MOSAIC VIEW.
Deuteronomy vi. 6-25.
Those great verses, Deut. vi. 4, 5, form the
central truth of the book. Everything else in it
proceeds fiom and is informed by them, and they
are dwelt upon and enforced with a clear per-
ception of their radical importance. There is
something of the joy of discovery in the way in
which the unity of Yahweh and exclusive love to
Him are insisted upon, not only in verses 6-25
of this chapter, but in xi. 13-20. The same
strongly worded demand to lay to heart Yah-
weh's command to love Him and Him only, and
to teach it strenuously to their children — to
make it " a sign upon their hand," and " as a
frontlet between their eyes " — is found in both
passages. It is worthy of remark also that nearly
the same words are found in Exod. xiii. 9, 16.
Presumably on account of this, some have as-
cribed that section of Exodus to the author of
Deuteronomy. But both Dillmann and Driver
ascribe these passages to J and E, and with
good reason. Indeed, apart from the purely
literary grounds for thinking that these formulas
were first used by the earlier writers and were
copied by the author of Deuteronomy, another
line of argument points in the same direction.
In Exodus the thing to be remembered and
taught to the children was the meaning and
origin of the Passover and the consecration of
the firstborn, i. e., the meaning and origin of
some of their ritual institutions. Here in Deu-
teronomy, on the contrary, that which is to be
written on the heart and taught to the children is
moral and spiritual truth about God, and love to
God. Now the probable explanation of this
likeness and difference is, not that the author
of Deuteronomy, after using this insistive phrase
only of high spiritual truths in his own book, in-
serted it in Exodus with regard to mere insti-
tutions of the cultus; rather, the writers of Exo-
dus had used it of that which was important in
their day, and the Deuteronomist borrowed it
from them to emphasise his own most cherished
revelation. In the earlier stages of a religious
movement, the establishment of- institutions
which shall embody and perpetuate religious
truth, is one of the first necessities. It has be-
come a commonplace of Christian defence, for
example, that Baptism and the Lord's Supper
were made the most successful vehicles for con-
veying fundamental Christian truth, and that the
celebration of these two rites from the first days
even until now is one of the most convincing-
proofs of the continuity of Christianity. Natu-
rally, therefore, the establishment of the Pass-
over was specially marked out as the palladium
of Israelite religion in the earlier days. But in
the time after li^aiah, when Deuteronomy was
written, the institutions needed no longer such
insistence. They had indeed become so impor-
tant to the people that the mere observance of
them threatened to become a substitute for re-
ligious and even moral feeling. The Deuter-
onomist's great message was, consequently, a
reiteration of the prophetic truths as to the su-
premacy of the spiritual; and for the object of
the warm exhortation of the earlier writings he
substituted the proclamation of Yahweh's one-
ness, and of His demand for His people's love.
This seems a reasonable and probable explana-
tion of the facts as we find them. If true, it is a
proof that the need of ritual institutions, and the
danger of unduly exalting them, was not peculiar
to post-exilic times. In principle the temptation
was always present; and as living faith rose and
fell it came into operation, or was held in abey-
ance, throughout the whole of Israel's history.
Hence the mention of this kind of formalism or
the denunciation of it must be very cautiously
used as a criterion by which to date any Script-
ural writings.
It is therefore with a full consciousness of its
fundamental importance that the author of Deu-
teronomy follows the great passage chapter vi.
4, 5, with this solemn and inspiring exhortation.
It is from no mere itch for religious improve-
Deuteronomy vi. 6-25.]
EDUCATION— MOSAIC VIEW.
•!.33
ment of the occasion that he presses home his
message thus. Nor is it love for the mere repe-
tition of an ancient formula of exhortation that
dictates its use. He knew and understood the
work of Moses, and felt that the moulding power
in Israel's life as a nation, the unifying element
in it, had been the religion of Yahweh. What-
ever else may have been called in question, it has
never been doubted that the salt which kept the
political and social life of the people from rotting
through many centuries was the always advanc-
ing knowledge of God. At each great crisis of
Israel's history the religion of Yahweh had met
the demands for direction, for inspiration, for up-
lifting which were made upon it. With Protean
versatility it had adapted itself to every new con-
dition. In all circumstances it had provided a
lamp for the feet and a light for the path of the
faithful; and in meeting the needs of generation
after generation it had revealed elements of
strength and consolation which, without the
commentary of experience, could never have been
brought out. Now the author of Deuteronomy
felt that in these short sentences the high-water
mark of Israelite religion so far had been
reached, and that in renewing the work of Moses,
and adapting it to his own time, the principles
here enunciated m.ust be the main burden of his
message. Further progress depended, he ob-
viously felt, upon the absorption and assimilation
of these truths by his people, and he felt he must
provide for the perpetuation of them in that
better time he was preparing for. This he did
by providing for the religious education of the
young. Whatever else Israel had gained it had
been careful to hand on from generation to gen-
eration. The land flowing with milk and honey
was still in the possession of the descendants
of the first conquerors. The literature, the
science, the wisdom that the fathers had gathered,
had been carefully passed down to the children;
and a precious deposit of enriching experience in
the form of history had reached to the elect even
among the common people, as the example of
Amos shows. But the most valuable heritage
of Israel was that continually growing deposit of
religious truth v^/hich had been the life-blood
of its master-spirits. From generation to gen-
eration the noblest men in the nation, those most
sensitive to the touch of the Divine, had been
casting soundings into the great deep of the
hidden purposes of God. With sore travail of
both mind and spirit, they had found solutions
of the great problems which no living soul can
escape. These were no doubt more or less par-
tial, but they were sufficient for their day, and
were always in the line of the final answer. As
the sum of experience widened, the scope of the
solutions widened also, and in the course of
Providence these issued in a conception of God
which elsewhere v/as never approached. This of
all national treasures was the most priceless, and
to preserve and hand on this was simply to keep
the national soul alive. Compared with this,
every other heritage from the past was as noth-
ing; and so, with a simple directness which must
arnaze the legislators of modern states, the in-
spired lawgiver arranged for a religious educa-
tion.
To him, as to all ancient lawgivers, a common-
wealth without religion was simply inconceivable,
and the hampering, confusing, anH confn=ed diffi-
culties of to-day lay far beyond his horizon.
Parents must take over this great heritage and
lay it deeply to heart. They must then make it
the subject of their common talk. They must
write the profound words which summed it up
upon the doorposts of their houses. They must
let it fill their minds at their down-sitting and
their uprising, and while they walked by the
way. Further, as the crown of their work, they
were to teach it diligently to their children,
already accustomed by their parents' continual
interest to regard this as the worthiest object of
human thought. But though the parents were
to be the chief instructors of children in religion,
the State or the community was also to do its
part. As the private citizen was to write, " Hear,
O Israel: Yahweh our God is one Yahweh; and
thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with all thine
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
might," on the posts of his door, so the repre-
sentatives of the community were to write them
upon the town or village gates. In those early
days schools were unknown, as State-regulated
schools are still unknown in all purely Eastern
countries. Consequently there was no sphere for
the State in the direct religious teaching of the
young. But so far as it could act, the State was
to act. It was to commit itself to the religious
principles that underlay the life of the people,
and to proclaim them with the utmost publicity.
It was to secure that none should be ignorant of
them, so far as proclamation by writing in the
most public place could secure knowledge, for
on this the very existence of the State depended.
But the religious instruction was not to be
limited to the reiteration of these great sentences;
in that case they would have become a mere
form of words. In the last verses of the chapter,
vv. 20-25, we find a model of the kind of ex-
planatory comment which was to be given in ad-
dition: "When thy son asketh thee in time to
come, saying. What mean the testimonies, and
the statutes, and the judgments, which Yahweh
our God hath commanded you? then thou shalt
say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh's bondmen
in the land of Egypt; and Yahweh brought us
out of Egypt with a mighty hand," and so on.
That means that the history of Yahweh's dealings
with His people was to be taught, to show the
reasonableness of the Divine commands, to ex-
hibit the love-compelling character of God. And
this was entirely in accord with the Biblical con-
ception of God. Neither here nor elsewhere in
the Old Testament are there any abstract defi-
nitions of His character, His spirituality. His
omnipresence, or His omnipotence. Nor is there
anywhere any argument to prove His existence.
All that is postulated, presupposed, as that which
all men believe, except those who have wilfully
perverted themselves. But the existence of God
with all these great and necessary attributes is
undoubtedly implied in what is narrated of Yah-
weh's dealings with His people. As we have
seen, too, the very name of Yahweh implies that
His nature should not be limited by any defini-
tion. He was what He would prove Himself to
be, and throughout the Old Testament the gesta
Dei through and for the Israelites, and the pro-
phetic promises made in Yahweh's name, repre-
sented all that was known of God. This gave a
peculiarly healthy and robust tone to Old Testa-
ment piety. The subjective, introspective ele-
ment which in modern times is so apt to take the
upper hand, was kept in due subordination by
making history the main nourishment of relig-
ious thought. In constant contact with external
534
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
fact, Israelite piet3^ was simple, sincere, and
practical; and men's thoughts being turned away
from themselves to the Divine action in the
world, they were less touched by the disease of
self-consciousness than modern believers in God.
In every sphere of human life, too, they looked
for God, and traced the working of His hand.
The later distinction between the sacred and secu-
lar parts of life, which has been often pushed to
disastrous extremes, was to them unknown. For
these among many other reasons, the Old Testa-
ment must always remain of vital importance to
the Church of God. It can fall into neglect only
when the religious life is becoming unhealthy and
one-sided.
Further, its qualities especially fit it for use in
the education of children. In many respects a
child's mind resembles the mind of a primitive
people. It has the same love of concrete ex-
amples, the same incapacity to appreciate ab-
stract ideas, and it has the same susceptibility to
such reasoning as this: God has been very loving
and gracious to men, especially to our fore-
fathers, and we are therefore bound to love Him
and to obey Him with reverence and fear. To
the children of a primitive people such teaching
would therefore be doubly suitable; but the
Deuteronomist's anxiety in regard to it has been
justified by its results in times no longer primi-
tive. Through ages of persecution and oppres-
sion, often amid a social environment of the
worst sort, there has been little or no wavering
in the fundamental points of Jewish faith. Scat-
tered and peeled, slaughtered and decimated, as
they have been through blood-stained centuries,
this nation have held fast to their religion. Not
even the fact that, through their refusal to accept
their Messiah when He came, the most tender,
the most expansive, the most highly spiritual
elements of the Old Testament religion have es-
caped them, has been able to neutralise the
benefit of the truth they have so tenaciously held.
Of non-Christian nations they stand by far the
highest; and among the orthodox Jews who still
keep firm to the national traditions, and teach the
ancient Scriptures diligently to their children,
there is often seen a piety and a confidence in
God, a submission and a hopefulness which put
to shame many who profess to have hope in
Christ. Even in our day, when agnosticism and
denial of the supernatural is eating into Judaism
more than into almost any other creed,* a book
likeFriedlander's "The Jewish Religion" gives us
a very favourable idea of the spirit and teachings
of orthodox Judaism. And its main stay is, and
always has been, the religious training of the
young. " In obedience to the precept ' Thou
shaft speak of them,' i. e., of ' the words which I
command thee this day,' " says Friedlander,
" ' when thou liest down and when thou risest
up,' three sections of the law are read daily, in
the morning and in the evening, viz. (i) Deut.
vi. 4-9, beginning 'Hear'; (2) Deut. xi. 13-21,
beginning ' And it shall be if ye dilig:ently
hearken'; (3) Numb. xv. 37-41, beginning 'And
the Lord said.' The first section teaches the
unity of God, and our duty to love this one God
with all our heart, to make His word the subject
of our constant meditation and to instil it into
the heart of the young. The second section con-
* Jewish Quarterly Review, October, 1888, p. ss, where
Professor Schechter findshimself compelled to discuss the
question whether a man may be a good Jew and yet deny
the existence of God.
tains the lesson of reward and punishment, that
our success depends on our obedience to the
will of God. This important truth must con-
stantly be kept before our eyes, and before the
eyes of our children. The third section contains
the commandments of Tsitsith, the object of
which is to remind us of God's precepts." To-
day, therefore, as so many centuries ago, these
great words are uttered daily in the ears of all
pious Jews, and they are as potent to keep them
steady to their faith now as they were then. For
in most cases where a drift towards the fashion-
able agnosticism of the day or to atheistic mater-
ialism is observable among Jews, it will be found
to have been preceded either by neglect or form-
alism in regard to this fundamental matter.
Briefly, without this teaching they cease to be
Jews; with it they remain steadfast as a rock.
Uprooted as they are from their country, their
national coherence endures and seems likely to
endure till their set time has come. So triumph-
antly has the enforcement of religious education
vindicated itself in the case of God's ancient
people.
In the remaining verses of the chapter, vv.
10-19, we have a warning against neglect and for-
getfulness of their God, and an indication of the
circumstances under which it would be most diffi-
cult to remain true to Him. These are uttered en-
tirely from the Mosaic standpoint, and are among
the passages which it is most difficult to recon-
cile with the later authorship; for there would
appear to be no motive for the later writer to go
back upon the exceptional circumstances of the
early days in Canaan. His object must have been
to warn and guide and instruct the people of his
time in the face of their difficulties and tempta-
tions, to adapt Mosaic legislation and Mosaic
teaching to the needs of his own day. Now on
any supposition he must have written when all
conquest on Israel's part had long ceased. It
is most probable too that in his day the pros-
perity of his people was on the wane. They
were not looking forward to a time of special
temptation from riches; rather they were dread-
ing expatriation and decay. Consequently this
reference to the ease with which they became
rich by occupying the cities and villages and
farms of those they had conquered is quite out
of place, unless we are to regard the author as
a skilled and artistic writer who deliberately set
himself to reproduce in all respects the mind and
thoughts of a man of an earlier day, as Thack-
eray, for instance, does in his " Henry Esmond."
But that is not credible; and the explanation is
that given in chapter i., that the addresses here
attributed to Moses are free reproductions oi
earlier traditions or narratives concerning what
Moses actually said. If we know anything about
Moses at all, it is in the highest degree probable
that he left his people some parting charge. He
longed to pass the Jordan with them. He could
not fail to see that an immense revolution in their
habits and manner of life was certain to occur
when they entered the promised land. That
must have appeared to him fraught with varied
dangers, and words of warning and instructions
would rush even unbidden to his lips.
There can be no doubt, at any rate, that this
passage is true to human nature in regarding
the sudden acquirement of great and goodly cities
which they did not build, and houses full of good
things which they filled not, and cisterns hewn out
which they did not hew, vineyards and olive trees
i)cuteronomj- vi. 6-25.]
EDUCATION— MOSAIC VIEW.
oj;
which they did not plant, as a great temptation
to forgetfulness of God. At all times prosperity,
especially if it come suddenly, and without being
won by previous toil and self-denial, has tended
to deteriorate character. When men have no
changes or vicissitudes, then they fear not God.
Il is for help in trouble when the help of man is
vi:in, or for a deliverance in danger, that average
men most readily turn to God. But when they
feel fairly safe, when they have raised themselves,
as they think, " beyond all storms of chance,"
when they have built up between themselves and
poverty or failure a wall of wealth and power,
then the impulse that drives them upward ceases
to act. It becomes strangely pleasant, and it
seems safe, to get rid of the strain of living at the
highest attainable level, and with a sigh of relief
men stretch themselves out to rest and to enjoy.
These are the average men; but there are some
in every age, the elect, who have had the love of
God shed abroad in their hearts, who have had
such real and intimate communion with God
that separation from Him would turn all other
joys into mockery. They cannot yield to this
temptation as most do, and in the midst of wealth
and comfort keep alive their aspirations. In Is-
rael these two classes existed: and to the former.
f. e., to the great bulk of both rulers and people,
the stimulus administered by the conquest to the
material side of their nature must have been po-
tent indeed.
It is here implied that the Israelite people when
they entered Canaan had some moral education
to lose. Whether that could be so is the ques-
tion asked by many critics, and their answer is
an emphatic No. They were, say they, a rude,
desert people, without settled habits of life, with-
out knowledge of agriculture, and possessed of
a religion which in all outward respects was
scarcely, if at all, higher than that of the sur-
rounding nations. What happened to them in
Canaan, therefore, was not a lapse, but a rise.
They advanced from being a wandering pastoral
people to become settled agriculturists. They
gained knowledge ot the arts of life by their con-
tact with the Canaanites, and they lost little or
nothing in religion; for they were themselves
only image-worshippers and looked upon Yah-
weh as on a level with the Canaanite Baals. But
if the Decalogue belongs, in any form, to that
early time, and if the character of Moses be in
any degree historical, then, of course, this mode
of view is false. Then Israel worshipped a
spiritual God, who was the guardian of morals;
and there was in the mind of their leader and
legislator a light which illuminated every sphere
of life, both private and national. Consequently
there could be a falling away from a higher level
of religious life, as the Scriptures consistently
say there was. Without perhaps having under-
stood and made their own the fundamental truths
of Yahwism, the people had had their whole
social and political life remodelled in accordance
with its principles. They had, moreover, had
time to learn something of its inner meaning,
and in forty years we may well believe that the
more spiritually minded among them had be-
come imbued with the higher religious spirit.
Add to that the union, the movement, the excite-
ment of a successful advance, crowned by con-
(luest, and we have all the elements of a revived
religious and national life among Eastern people.
Similar causes have produced precisely similar
effects since. In important respects the origin
of Mohammedanism repeats the same story. A
semi-nomadic people, divided into clans and
tribes, related by blood but never united, were
unified by a great religious idea vastly in ad-
vance of any they had hitherto known. The
religious reformer who proclaimed this truth,
and those who belonged to the inner circle of
his friends and counsellors, were turned from
many evils, and exhibited a moral force and en-
thusiasm corresponding, in some degree at least,
to the sublimity of the religious doctrine they
had embraced. The masses, on their part, re-
ceived and submitted to a revised and improved
scheme of social life. Then they moved for-
ward to conquest, and in their first days not only
trampled down opposition, but deserved to do so,
for in most respects they were superior to the
ignorant and degraded Christians they over-
threw. They came out of the desert, and were
at first soldiers only. But in a generation or
two they largely settled to purely agricultural
life, as landowners for whom the native popula-
tion laboured; and they gained in knowledge of
the arts of life from the more civilised peoples
they conquered. But in religious and moral
character imitations of the conquered peoples
involved, for the conquerors, a loss. And soon
they did lose. The violence accompanying suc-
cessful war produced arrogance and injustice;
the immense wealth thrown into their hands so
suddenly gave rise to luxury and greed. Within
twenty-five years from the flight of Mohammed
from Mecca, relaxation of manner* manifested
itself. Sensuality and drunkenness were rife; with
Ali's death the Caliphate passed into the hands
of Muawia, the leader of the still half-heathen
part of the Koreish; and the secular, indififerent
portion of Mohammed's followers ruled in Is-
lam.*
Allowing all that can be allowed for excep-
tional influences in Israel, we may well believe
that the circumstances of the first invaders were
such as would strain the influence of the higher
religion upon the nation. And after the conquest
and settlement the strain would necessarily be
greater still. Whatever drawbacks warfare may
have, it at least keeps men active and hardy, but
the rest of a conqueror after warfare is a temp-
tation to luxury and corruption which has been
very rarely resisted. Even to-day, when men
enter upon new and vacant lands, and that with-
out war and under Christian influences, the
plenty which the first immigrants soon gather
about them proves adverse to higher thought.
In America in its earlier days, and in new
American territories and Australia now, oui
civilisation at that stage always takes a materi-
alistic turn. Every man may hope to become
rich, the resources of the country are so great
and those who are to share them are so few. In
order to develop them, all concerned must give
their time and thoughts to the work, and must
become absorbed in it. The result is that,
though the religious instinct asserts itself in
sufficient strength to lead to the building of
churches and schools, and men are too busy to
be much influenced by theoretical unbelief, yet
the pulse of religion beats feebly and low. The
feeling spreads, under many disguises it is true,
but still it spreads, that a man's life does " con-
* For an illustration of the way in which land-hiing:er
and the rush to satisfy it operate on men, seethe account
of " The Invasion of Oklahoma " (a territory lately thrown
open to occupation in the United States), Spectator, Apri!
27th, i88q.
536
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
sist in the abundance of the things which he pos-
sesseth "; and the heroic element of Christianity,
the impulse to self-sacrifice, falls into the back-
ground. The result is a social life respectable
enough, save that the social blots due to self-
indulgence are a good deal more conspicuous
than they should be; a very high average of
general comfort, with its necessary drawback of
a self-satisfied and somewhat ignoble content-
ment; and a religious life that prides itself mainly
in avoiding the falsehood of extremes. In such
an atmosphere true and living religion has great
difficulty in asserting itself. Each individual is
drawn away from the region of higher thought
more powerfully than in the older lands where
ambitions are for most men less plausible; and
so the struggle to keep the soul sensitive to
spiritual influences is more hard. As for the
national life, public affairs in those circumstances
tend to be ruled simply by the standard of imme-
diate expediency, and strenuousness of principle
or practice tends to be regarded as an impossible
ideal.
To all this Israel was exposed, and to more.
There are doubts as to the extent of their con-
quests when they settled down; but there are
none that when they did so they still had heathen
Canaanites among them. Throughout almost
the whole country the population was mixed
and constant intercourse with the conquered
peoples was unavoidable. At first these were
either Israel's teachers in many of the arts of
settled life, or they must have carried on the
work of agriculture for their Israelite lords.
Moreover many of the sacred places of the land,
the sanctuaries which from time immemorial had
been resorted to for worship, were either taken
over by the Israelites or were left in Canaanite
hands. In either case they opened a way for
malign influences upon the purer faith. Grad-
ually, too, the tribal feeling asserted itself. The
tribal heads regained the position they had he.l
before the domination of Moses and his succes-
sor, just as the tribal heads of the Arabs asserted
themselves after the death of Mohammed and his
immediate successors, and plunged into fratri-
cidal war with the companions of their prophet.
The only difference was that, while the circum-
stances of the Arabs compelled them to retain a
supreme head, the circumstances of the Israelites
permitted them to fall back into the tribal isola-
tion from which they had emerged. The national
life was broken up, the religious life followed in the
same path, until, as the Book of Judges graphic-
ally says in narrating how Micah set up an Ephod
and Teraphim for himself and made his son a
priest, " every man did that which was right
in his own eyes." With a people so recently won
for a higher faith, there could not but follow a
recrudescence of heathen or semi-heathen be-
liefs and practices.
To sum up, given a great truth revealed to one
man, which, though accepted by a nation, is only
half understood by the bulk of them, and given
also a great national deliverance and expansion
brought about by the same leader, you have there
the elements of a great enthusiasm with the seeds
of its own decay within it. Such a nation, es-
pecially if plied with external temptation, will
fall bark, not into its first state certainly, but into
a condition much below its highest level, so soon
as the leader and those who had really compre-
hended the new truth are removed to a distance
or are dead.
In the case of Mohammedanism this was in-
stinctively felt. We find the Governor of Bass-
orah writing thus to Omar, the third Khalif:
" Thou must strengthen my hands with a com-
pany of the Companions of the Prophet, for
verily they are as salt in the midst of the peo-
ple."* The same thing is expressly asserted of
Israel also by the later editor in Josh. xxiv. 31:
" And Israel served the Lord all the days of
Joshua, and all the days of the elders that out-
lived Joshua, and had known all the work of the
Lord, that He had wrought for Israel." It
would almost seem as if Semitic peoples were
specially liable to such oscillations, if Palgrave's
account of the people of Nejed before the rise
of the Wahabbis in the middle of last century
can be trusted. " Almost every trace of Islam,"
he says,t " had long since vanished from Nejed,
where the worship of the Djann, under the
spreading foliage of large trees, or in the cavern-
ous recesses of Djebel Toweyk, along with the
invocation of the dead and sacrifices at their
tombs, was blended with remnants of old Sabsean
superstition. The Coran was unread, the five
daily prayers forgotten, and no one cared where
Mecca lay, east or west, north or south; tithes,
ablutions, and pilgrimages were things unheard
of."t If that was the state of things in a country
exposed to no extraneous influences after a
thousand years of Islam, we may well believe that
the state of Israel in the time of the Judges was
a fall from a better state religiously as well as
politically. Looking to the future, Moses might
well foresee the danger; and looking back the
author of Deuteronomy would have reasons,
many of them now unknown, for knowing that
what was feared had occurred.
It is striking to see that both know but one
security against such lapses in the life of a nation,
and that is education. Nowadays we are inclined
to ask if this was not a delusion on their part.
The boundless faith in education as a moral, re-
ligious, and national restorative which filled
men's minds in the early part of this century,
has given place to disquieting questions as to
whether it can do anything so high. Many be-
gin to doubt whether it does more than restrain
men from the worst crimes, by pointing out their
consequences. And in the case of ordinary secu-
lar education that doubt is only too well founded.
But it was not mere secular education the Old
Testament relied on. Reading, writing, and arith-
metic, valuable as these are as gateways to knowl-
edge, were not in its view at all. What it was felt
necessary to do was to keep alive an ideal view of
life: and that was done by pouring into the
young the history of their people, with the best
that their highest minds had learned and thought
of God. The demand is that parents shall first
of all give themselves up to the love of God,
without any reserve, and then that they shall
teach this diligently to their children as the sub-
stance of the Divine demand upon them. Evi-
dently by the words, " Thou shalt talk of them
* " The Caliphate," by Sir William Muir, p. 185.
+ " Central and Eastern Arabia," vol. i., p. ^7^^.
tThis shows how precarious the fundamental principle
of much new criticism is. The non-observance of rites
laid down as Divine commands, and the appearance of
ancient superstitions snch as the worship of the dead at
any period, are held sufficient in the history of Israel to
prove that monotheism did not then exist, and that an ,
cestor- worship was then the prevailing cult. If applied to
Islam that principle would lead to utterly false conclu-
sions. Is there any reason for thinking that itmaj' not
g'ive similar results when applied to the history of
Israel ?
Deuteronomy vi. 6-25.]
EDUCATION— MOSAIC VIEW.
537
when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou
walkest by the way, and when thou liest down
and when thou risest up," it is meant that the
truth about God and the thought of God should
be a subject on which conversation naturally
turned, and to which it gladly returned continu-
ally. Words about these things were to flow
from a genuine delighted interest in them, which
made speech a necessity and a joy. Further,
parents were to meet the naive and questioning
curiosity of their children as to the meaning of
religious and moral ordinances of their people,
with grave and extended teaching as to the
work of God among them in the past. They
were to point out, vv. 21-25, all the grace of God,
and to show them that the statutes, which to
young and undisciplined minds might seem a
heavy burden, were really God's crowning mercy:
they marked out the lines upon which alone
good could come to man: they were the direc-
tions of a loving guide anxious to keep their
feet from paths of destruction, " for their good
always." Such education as this might prove
adequate to overcome even stronger temptations
than those to which Israel was exposed. For
see what it means. It means that all the gar-
nered religious thought and emotion of past gen-
erations, which the experiences of life and the felt
presence of God in them had borne in upon the
deepest minds of Israel, was to be made the
bounding horizon for the opening mind of every
Israelite child. When the child looked beyond
the desires of its physical nature, it was to see
this great sight, this panorama of the grace of
Yahweh. To compensate for the restrictions
which the Decalogue puts upon the natural im-
pulses, Yahweh was to be held up to every child
as an object of- love, no desire after which could
be excessive. Love to Yahweh, drawn out by what
He had shown Himself to be, was to turn the
energies of the young soul outward, away from
self, and direct them to God, who works and is
the sum of all good. Obviously those upon
whom such education had its perfect work would
never be fettered by the material aspects of things.
Their horizon could never be so darkened that
the twilight gods worshipped by the Canaanites
should seem to them more than dim and vanish-
ing shadows. Every evil, incident to their cir-
cumstances as conquerors, would fall innocuous
at their feet.
The instrument put into the hands, of Israel
was, viewed ideally, quite adequate for the work
it had to do. But the history of Israel shows
that the effort to keep Yahweh continually pres-
ent to the mind of the people failed; and the
question arises, why did it fail? If, as we have
every reason to believe, the main tendencies of
human nature then were what they are now, the
first cause of failure would be with the parents.
Many, probably the most of them, would observe
to do all that Moses commanded, but they would
do it without themselves keeping alive their spir-
itual life. Wherever that was the case, though the
prayers should be scrupulously rehearsed, though
the religious talk should be increasing, though
the instruction about the past should be exact
and regular, the his?heFt results of it all would
cease to appear. The best that would be done
would be to keen alive ' "owledo'e of whnt the
fathers had to'd them. The wor.'Jt would be to
render the child's mi'-<-' sn fami'iar wi<-h all as-
pects of the truth n'^' •<•■''■ n'l t'-o -.'-.nsp^ of
religioMs emotion, that tliroughout life this would
always seem a region already explored, and in
which no water for the thirsty soul had been
found.
But in the children, too, there would be fatal
hindrances. One would almost expect, o priori,
that when one generation had won in trial and
hardship and conquest a fund of moral and
spiritual wisdom, their children would be able
to take it to themselves, and would start from the
point their fathers had attained. But in expe-
rience that is not found to be so. The fathers
may have gained a sane and strong manliood
through the training and teaching of Divine
Providence, but their children do not start from
the level their fathers have gained. They begin
with the same passions, and evil tendencies, and
illusions, as their fathers began with, and against
these they have to wage continual war. Above
all, each soul for itself must take the great step
by which it turns from evil to good. No rise in
the general level of life will ever enable men to
dispense with that. The will must determine
itself morally by a free choice, and the Divine
grace must play its part, before that union with
God which is the heart of all religion can be
brought about. No mechanical keeping up of
good habits or fairer forms of social life can do
much at this crucial point; and so each genera-
tion finds that there is no discharge in the war
to which it is committed. As in all wars, many
fall; sometimes the battle goes sorely against the
kingdom of God, and the majority fall. The
strength and beauty 01 a whole generation turns
to the world and away from God, and the
labours and prayers of faithful men and women
who have taught them seem to be in vain.
The method of warding off evil by even high
religious education is consequently very imper-
fect and uncertain in its action. Nevertheless
thir relative uncertainty is bound up with the
very nature of moral influence and moral agency.
Professor Huxley, in a famous passage of one
of his addresses, says th'at if any being would
offer to wind him up like a clock, so that he
should always do what is right, and think what is
true, he would close with the offer, and make no
mourning about his moral freedom. Probably
this was only a vehement way of expressing a
desire for righteousness in deed, and truth in
thought, somewhat pathetic in such a man. But
if we are to take it literally, it is a singularly
unwise declaration. The longing which gives
pathos to the professor's words would on his
hvpothesis be a lunacv: for in the realm of morals
mechanical compulsion has no meaning. Even
God must give room to His creature, that he may
exercise the spiritual freedom with which he is
ei.dowed. Even Gou. we may say without ir-
reverence, must sometimes fail in that which He
seeks to accomplish, in the field of moral life.
Philosophically speaking, perhaps, this statement
cannot be defended. But it is not the Absolute
of Philosophy which can touch the hearts and
draw the love of men. It is the living, personal
God, of whom we pain our best working con-
ception by boldly transferring to Him the highest
categories predicable of our humanity. He is,
doubtless, much more than we; but we can only
ascribe to Him our own best and highest. When
we have done that we have approached Him as
near as we can ever do. The Scriptural writers,
therefore, have no pedantic scruples in their
cnppch about God. Thev constantly renresent
Him as pleading with men, desiring to influence
53'^^
J HE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
them, and yet sometimes as being driven back
defeated by the obstinate sin of man. The Bible
is full of the failures of God in this sense; and
God's greatest failure, that which forms the bur-
den and inspires the pathos of the bulk of the
Old Testament, is His failure with His chosen
people. They would not be saved, they would
not be faithful; and God had to accomplish His
work of planting the true and spiritual religion
in the world by means of a mere remnant of
faithful men chosen from a faithless multitude.
But though this plan failed miserably in one
way, in the way of gaining the bulk of the peo-
ple, it succeeded in another. As has just been
said, the purpose of God was in any case accom-
plished. But even apart from that, the religious
education that was given was of immense im-
portance. It raised the level of life for all; like
the Nile mud in the inundation, it fertilised the
whole field of this people's life. It kept an ideal,
too, before men, without which they would have
fallen even lower than they did. And it lay in
the minds of even the worst, ready to be changed
into something higher; for without previous in-
tellectual acquaintance with the facts, the deeper
knowledge was impossible. Moreover the ordi-
nary civil morality of the people rested upon it.
Without their religion and the facts on which it
was based, the moral code had no hold upon
them, and could have none. That had grown up
in one complex tangle with religion; it had re-
ceived its highest inspiration from the concep-
tion of God handed down from the fathers; and
apart from that it would have fallen into an
incoherent mass of customs unable to justify
or account for their existence. In every com-
munity the same principle holds. Hence what-
ever the theory of the relation of the State to
religion which may prevail, no State can, without
much harm, ignore the religion of the people. It
may sometimes even be wise and right for a
government to introduce or to encourage a
higher religion at the' expense of a lower. But
it can never be either wise or right to be inad-
vertent of religion altogether. In accordance
with this precept, the rulers of Israel never were
so. They not only encouraged parents to be
strenuous, as this passage demands oi them,
but on more than one occasion they made defi-
nite provision for the religious instruction of the
people. In a formal sense that grew into a habit
which even yet has not lost its hold; and hence,
as we have seen, the Jews have been kept true
in an unexampled manner to their racial and re-
ligious characteristics.
CHAPTER IX.
THE BAN.
Deuteronomy vii.
As in the previous chapter we have had the
Mosaic and Deuteronomic statement of the in-
ternal and spiritual means of defending the Is-
raelite character and faith from the temptations
which the conquest in Canaan would bring with
,it, in this we have strenuous provision made
against the same evil by external means. The
mind first was to be fortified against the tempta-
tion to fall away: then the external pressure from
the example of the peoples they were to conquer
was to be minimised by the practice of the ban.
The first five verses, and the last two deal em-
phatically with that, as also does ver. i6, and
what lies between is a statement of the grounds
upon which a strict execution of this dreadful
measure was demanded. These, as is usual in
Deuteronomy, are dealt with somewhat discurs-
ively; but the command as to the ban, coming
as it does at the beginning, middle, and end,
gives this chapter unity, and suggests that it
should be treated under this head as a whole.
There are besides other passages which can most
conveniently be discussed in connection with
chapter vii. These are the historic statements
as to the ban having been laid upon the cities of
Sihon (Deut. ii. 34) and Og (Deut. iii. 6); the
provision for the extirpation of idolatrous per-
sons and communities (Deut. xiii. 15); and lastly,,
that portion of the law of war which treats of the
variations in the execution of the ban which
circumstances might demand (Deut. xx. 13-18).
These passages, taken together, give an almost
exhaustive statement in regard to the nature and
limitations of the Cherem, or ban, in ancient
Israel, a statement much more complete than is
elsewhere to be found; and they consequently
suggest, if they do not demand, a complete in-
vestigation of the whole matter.
It is quite clear that the Cherem, or ban, by
which a person or thing, or even a whole people
and their property, were devoted to a god, was
not a specially Mosaic ordinance, for it is a
custom known to many half-civilised and some
highly civilised nations. In Livy's account of
early Rome we read that Tarquinius, after de-
feating the Sabines, burned the spoils of the
enemy in a huge heap, in accordance with a
vow to Vulcan, made before advancing into the
Sabine country. The same custom is alluded to
in Vergil, Ain. viii. 562, and Caesar, B. G. vi. 17.
tells us a similar thing of the Gauls. The Mexi-
can custom of sacrificing all prisoners of war to
the god of war was of the same kind. But the
most complete example of the ban in the He-
brew sense, occurring among a foreign people,
is to be found in the Moabite stone which
Mesha, king of Moab, erected in the ninth
century b. c, i. e., in the days of Ahab. OE
course Moab and Israel were related peoples,
and it might in itself be possible that Moab dur-
ing its subjection to Israel had adopted the ban
from Israel. But that is highly improbable, con-
sidering how widespread this custom is, and how
deeply its roots are fixed in human nature.
Rather we should take the Moabite ban as an
example of its usual form among the Semitic
peoples. " And Chemosh said to me, Go, take
Nebo against Israel. And I went by night anci
fought against it from the break of morn until
noon, and took it and killed them all, seven
thousand men and boys, and women and girls
and maid-servants, for I had devoted it to
' Ashtor-Chemosh '; and I took thence the ves-
sels " (so Renan) " of Yahweh, and I dragged
them before Chemosh."* The ordinary Semitic
word for the ban is Cherem. It denotes a thing
separated from or prohibited to common use,
and no doubt it indicated originally merely that
which was given over to the gods, separated for
their exclusive use for ever. In this way it was
distinguished from that which was " sanctified "
to Yahweh, for that could be redeemed; devoted
things could not.
* Driver, "Notes on Hebrew Text of the Books of
Satmiel," p. loi, note.
Deuterouom}- vii.]
THE BAN.
539
In the ancient laws repeated in Lev. xxvii. 28,
29, two classes of devoted things seem to be re-
ferred to. First of all, we have the things which
an individual may devote to God, " whether of
man or beast, or of the field of his possession."
The provision made in regard to them is that
they shall not be sold or redeemed, but shall
become in the highest degree sacred to Yahweh.
Men so devoted, therefore, became perpetual
slaves at the holy places, and other kinds of
property fell to the priests. In the next verse,
29, we read. " None devoted which shall be de-
voted of " (i. e., from among) " men shall be ran-
somed; he shall surely be put to death," but that
must refer to some other class of men devoted to
Yahweh. It is inconceivable that in Israel indi-
viduals could at their own will devote slaves or
children to death. Moreover, if every man de-
voted must be killed, the provision of Numb.
xviii. 14, according to which everything devoted
in Israel is to be Aaron's, could not be carried
out. Further, there is a difference in expression
in the two verses: in 28 we have things " devoted
to Yahweh," in 29 we have simply men " de-
voted."* There can be little doubt, therefore,
that we have in ver. 29 the case cf men con-
demned for some act for which the punishment
prescribed by the law was the ban (as in Exod.
xxii. 19, *' He that sacrificeth unto any god save
unto Yahweh only shall be put to the ban"),
or which some legal tribunal considered worthy
of that punishment. In such cases, the object of
the ban being something offensive, something
which called out the Divine wrath and abhor-
rence, this " devotion " to God meant utter de-
struction. Just as anathema, a thing set up in a
temple as a votive offering, became anatJiejna
an accursed thing, and as saccr, originally mean-
ing sacred, came to mean devoted to destruc-
tion, so Cherem, among the Semites, came to
have the meaning of a thing devoted to destruc-
tion by the wrath of the national gods. From
ancient days it had been in use, and in Israel it
continued to be practised, but with a new moral
and religious purpose which antiquity could
know nothing of. No more conspicuous in-
stance of that transformation of ancient customs
of a doubtful or even evil kind by the spirit of
the religion of Yahweh, which is one of the most
remarkable characteristics of the history of Is-
rael, can be conceived than this use of the ban
for higher ends.
As the fundamental idea of the Chcrem was the
devoting of objects to a god, it is manifest that the
whole inner significance of the institution would
vary with the conception of the Deity. Among
the worshippers of cruel and sanguinary gods,
such as the gods of the heathen Semites were,
the ends which this practice was used to promote
would naturally be cruel and sanguinary. More-
over, where it was thought that the gods could be
bought over by acceptable sacrifices, where they
were conceived of as non-moral beings, whose
reasons for favour or anger were equally capri-
cious and unfathomable, it was inevitable that the
Chcrem should be mainly used to bribe these
gods to favour and help their peoples. Where
victory seemed easy and within the power of
the nation, the spoil and the inhabitants of a
conquered city or country would be taken by the
conquerors for their own use. Where, on the
other hand, victory was difficult and doubtful,
an effort would be made to win the favour of the
*Cf. Dillmann, " Exodus and Leviticus," p. 634.
god, and wring success from him by promising
him all the spoil. The slaughter of the captives
would be considered the highest gratification
such sanguinary gods could receive, while their
pride would be held to be gratified by the utter
destruction of the seat of the worship of other
gods. Obviously it was in this way that the
Gauls and Germans worked this institution; and
the probability is that the heathen Semites would
view the whole matter from an even lower stand-
point. But to true worshippers of Yahweh such
thoughts must have grown abhorrent. From the
moment when their God became the centre and
the norm of moral life to Israel, acts which had
no scope but the gratification of a thirst for
blood, or of a petty jealous pride, could not be
thought acceptable to Him. Every institution
and custom, therefore, which had no moral ele-
ment in it, had either to be swept away, or
mortalised in the spirit of the purer faith. Now
the ban was not abolished in Israel; but it was
moralised, and turned into a potent and terrible
weapon for the preservation and advancement of
true religion.
By the Divine appointment the national life of
Israel was bound up with the foundation and
progress of true religion. It was in this people
that the seeds of the highest religion were to be
planted, and it was by means of it that all the
nations of the earth w ere to be blessed. But as
the chief means to this end was to be the higher
ethical and religious character of the nation as
such, the preservation of that from depravation
and decay became the main anxiet)'^ of the proph-
ets and priests and lawgivers of Israel. Just as
in modern days the preservation and defence of
the State is reckoned in every country the su-
preme law which overrides every other consider-
ation, so in Israel the preservation of the higher
life was regarded. Rude and half-civilised as
Israel was at the beginning of its career, the
Divinely revealed religion had made men con-
scious of that which gave this people its unique
value both to God and men. They recognised
that its glory and strength lay in its thought of
God, and in the character which this impressed
upon the corporate life, as well as on the life of
each individual. As we have seen, this bred in
them a consciousness of a higher calling, of a
higher obligation resting on them than upon
others. They consequently felt the necessity of
guarding their special character, and used the
ban as their great weapon to ward off the contag-
ion of evil, and to give this character room to
develop itself. Its tremendous, even cruel,
power was directed in Israel to this end; it was
from this point of view alone that it had value in
the eyes of the fully enlightened man of Israel.
Stade in his history (vol. i., p. 490) holds that
this distinction did not exist, that the Israelite
view differed in little, if anything, from that of
their heathen kinsmen, and that the ban resulted
from a vow intended to gratify Yahweh and win
His favour by giving Him the booty. But it is
undeniable that in the earliest statement in re-
gard to it (Exod. XX.) there is a distinct legisla-
tive provision that the ban should be proclaimed
and executed irrespective of any vow; and in the
later, but still early, notices of it in Joshua,
Judges, and i Samuel the command to execute
it comes in every case from Yahweh. In Deu-
teronomy, again, the ethical purpose of the ban
is always insisted upon, most emphatically per-
haps in chap. xx. 17 ff., where the Cherem is laid
54C
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY
down as a regular practice in war against the
heathen inhabitants of Canaan: " But thou shalt
utterly destroy them, . . . that they teach you
not to do after all their abominations, which they
have done unto their gods; so should ye sin
against Yahweh your God." Whatever hints or
appearances there may be in the Scripture narra-
tives that the lower view still clung to some
minds are not to be taken as indicating the nor-
mal and recognised view. They were, like much
else of a similar kind, mere survivals, becoming
more and more shadowy as the history advances,
and at last entirely vanishing away. The new
and higher thought which Moses planted was
the rising and prevailing element in the Israelite
consciousness. The lower thought was a de-
caying reminiscence of the state of things which
the Mosaic revelation had wounded to the death,
but which was slow in dying.
In Israel, therefore, the ban was, on the prin-
ciples of the higher religion, legitimate only
where the object was to preserve that religion
when gravely endangered. If any object could
justify a measure so cruel and sweeping as the
ban, this could, and this is the only ground upon
which the Scriptures defend it. That the danger
was grave and imminent, when Israel entered
Canaan, cannot be doubted. As we have seen,
the Israelite tribes were far from being of one
blood or of one faith. There was a huge mixed
multitude along with them; and even among those
who had unquestioned title to be reckoned among
Israelites, many were gross, carnal, and slavish
in their conceptions of things. They had not
learned thoroughly nor assimilated the lessons
they had been taught. Only the elect among
them had done that; and the danger from con-
tact with races, superior in culture, and relig-
iously not so far below the position occupied by
the multitude of Israel, was extreme. The na-
tion was born in a day, but it had been educated
only for a generation; it was raw and ignorant
in all that concerned the Yahwistic faith. In fact
it was precisely in the condition in which spirit-
ual disease could be most easily contracted and
would be most deadly. The new religion had
not been securely organised; the customs and
habits of the people still needed to be moulded by
it, and could not, consequently, act as the stay
and support of religion as they did at later times.
Further, the people were at the critical moment
when they were passing from one stage of social
life to another. At such moments there is im-
mense danger to the health and character of a
nation, for there is no unity of ideal present to
every mind. That which they are moving away
from has not ceased to exert its influence, and
that to which they are moving has not asserted
itself with all its power. At such crises in the
career of peoples emerging from barbarism, even
physical disease is apt to be deadlier and more
prevalent than it is among either civilised or
entirely savage men. The old Semitic heathen-
ism had not been entirely overcome, and the new
and higher religion had not succeeded in estab-
lishing full dominion. Contact with the Canaan-
ites in almost any shape would under such
circumstances be like the introduction of a
contagious disease, and at almost any price it had
to be avoided. The customs of the world at
that time, and of the Semitic nations in particu-
lar, offered this terribly effective weapon of the
" ban," and for this higher purpose it was ac-
cepted; and it was enforced with a stringency
which nothing would justify short of the fact
that life or death to the great hope of mankind
was involved in it.
But it may be and should be asked. Would any
circumstances justify Christian men, or a Chris-
tian nation, in entering upon a war of extermina-
tion now? and if not, how can a war of extermi-
nation against the Canaanites have been sanc-
tioned by God? In answer to the first question,
it must be said that, while circumstances can be
conceived under which the extermination of a
race would certainly be carried out by nations
called Christian, it is hardly possible to imagine
Christian men taking part in such a massacre.
Even the supposed command of God could not
induce them to do so.* It would be so contrary
to all that they have learned of God's will, both
as regards themselves and others, that they would
hesitate. Almost certainly they would decide
that they were bound to be faithful to what God
had revealed of Himself; they would feel that He
could not wish to blunt their moral sense and
undo what He had done for them, and they
would put aside the command as a temptation.
But the case with the Israelites was altogether
different. The question is not, how could God
destroy a whole people? Were it only that, there
would be little difficulty. Everywhere in His
action through nature God is ruthless enough
against sin. Vice and sin are every day bringing
men and women and innocent children to death,
and to suffering worse than death. For that
every believer in God holds the Divine law re-
sponsible. And when the Divine command was
laid upon the Israelites to do, more speedily, and
in a more awe-inspiring way, what Canaanite
vices were already doing, there can be no diffi-
culty except in so far as the effect upon the
Israelites is concerned. It is by death, inflicted
as the punishment of vice, and sparing neither
woman nor child, that nations have, as a rule,
been blotted out; and, except to the confused
thinker, so far as the Divine action is concerned
there is no difference between such cases and this
of the Canaanites. The real question is. Can a
living, personal God deliberately set to men a
task which can only lower them in the scale of
humanity — brutalise them, in fact? No, is of
course the only possible answer; therefore a
supposed Divine command coming to us to do
such things would rightly be suspected. We
could not, we feel sure, be called upon by God
to slay the innocent with the guilty, to overwhelm
in one common punishment individual beings
who have each of them an inalienable claim to
justice at our hands. But the Israelites had not
and could not have the feeling we have on the
subject. The feeling for the individual did not
exist in early times. The clan, the tribe, the
nation was everything, and the individual noth-
ing. Consequently there was not existent in the
world that keen feeling in regard to individual
rights, which dominates us so completely that
we can with difficulty conceive any other view.
In this world the early Israelite scarcely per-
ceived the individual man, and beyond this
world he knew of no certain career for him.
He consequently dealt with him only as part of
his clan or tribe. His tribe suffered for him and
he for his tribe, and in early penal law the two
could hardly be separated. Indeed it may al-
most be said that, when the individual suffered
for his own sin, the satisfaction felt by the
* Mozley's " Lectures on the Old Testament," p. 102.
Deuteronomy vii.J
THE BAN.
541
wronged was rather due to the tribe having
suffered so much loss in the individual's death
than to the retribution which fell upon him.
Moreover war was the constant employment of
all, and death by violence the most common of all
forms of death. Manners and feelings were both
rude, and the pains as well as the pleasures of
civilised and Christian men lay largely beyond
their horizon. There was consequently no dan-
ger of doing violence to nobler feelings or of
leaving a sting in the conscience by calling such
men to such work. The stage of moral develop-
ment they had reached did not forbid it, and
the work therefore might be given them of
God.
But the grounds for the action were immeas-
urably raised. Instead of being left on the
heathen level, " the usage was utilised so as to
harmonise with the principles of their religion,
and to satisfy its needs. It became a mode of
secluding and rendering harmless anything which
peculiarly imperilled the religious life of either an
individual or the community, such objects being
withdrawn from society at large, and presented to
the sanctuary, which had power, if needful, to
authorise their destruction."* The Deutero-
nomic command is not given shamefacedly. The
interests at stake are too great for that. Israel
is utterly to smite the Canaanite nations, to put
them to the ban, to make no covenant with them
nor to intermarry with them. " Thus shall ye
deal with them: ye shall break down their altars,
and dash in pieces their obelisks, and hew down
their Asherim, and burn their graven images
with fire." There is a iierce, curt energy about
the words which impresses the reader with the
vigour needed to defend the true religion. The
danger was seen to be great, and this tremendous
weapon of the ban was to be wielded with un-
sparing rigour, if Israel was to be true to its
highest call. " For," ver. 6 goes on to say,
" thou art a holy people unto Yaliweh thy God;
Yahweh thy God hath chosen thee to be a pecu-
liar people unto Himself, out of all peoples that
are upon the face of the earth." They were the
elect of God; they were a holy people, a people
separated unto their God, and the Divine blessing
was to come upon all nations through them if they
remained true. Their separateness must therefore
be maintained. As a people marked out by the
love of God, they could not share in the common
life of the world as it then was. They could not
lift the Canaanites to their level by mingling
with them. So they would only obscure, nay,
in so far as this rigorous command was not car-
ried out, they did all but fatally obscure, the
higher elements of national and personal life
which they had received. They were too re-
cently converted to be the people of Yahweh, too
weak in their own faith, to be able to do any-
thing but stand in this austere and repellent atti-
tude towards the world. Centuries passed be-
fore they could relax without danger. It may
even be said that until the coming of our Lord
I hey dared not take up any other than this sepa-
ratist position, though as the ages passed and
•he prophetic influence grew, the yearning after
.1 gathering in of the Gentiles, and the promise
)f it in the Messianic day, became more mark-
♦ dly prominent. Only when men could look for-
ward to being made perfect in Jesus Christ did
'hey receive the command to go unreservedly
•Driver, "Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of
Samuel," p. loi.
35— Vol. L
out into the world, for only then had they an
anchor which no storm in the world could drag.
But we must be careful not to exaggerate the
separation called for here. It does not authorise
anything like the fierce, intolerant thirst for con-
quest and domination which was the very key-
note of Islam.* In Deut. ii. 5, 6, 19, the lands
of Edom, Moab, and Ammon are said to be
Yahweh's gift to these peoples in the same way
as Canaan was to Israel. Nor did the law ever
authorise the bitter and contemptuous feeling
with which Pharisaic Israelites often regarded all
men beyond the pale of Judaism. There was no
general prohibition against friendly intercourse
with other peoples. It was against those only,
whose presence in Canaan would have frustrated
the establishment of the theocracy, and whose in-
fluence would have been destructive of it when
established, that the " ban " was decreed. When
war arose between Israel and cities farther off
than those of Canaan, they were not to be
put to the " ban." Though they were to be
hardly treated according to our ideas, they were
to suffer only the fate of cities stormed in those
days, for the danger of corruption was propor-
tionately diminished (Deut. xx. 17) by their dis-
tance. The right of other peoples to their lands
was to be respected, and friendly intercourse
might be entered on with them. But the right of
Israel to the free and unhindered development to
which it had been called by Yahweh was the
supreme law. The suspicion of danger to that
was to make things otherwise harmless, or even
useful, to be abhorred. If men are to live nearer
to God than others, they must sacrifice much
to the higher call.
To press home this, to induce Israel to respond
to this demand, to convince them anew of their
obligation to go any length to keep their position
as a people holy to Yahweh, our chapter urges
a variety of reasons. The first (vv. 7-11) is that
the history and grounds of their election exhibit
the character of Yahweh in such a way as to
heighten their sense of their privileges and the
danger of losing them. He had chosen them,
only because of His own love to them; and
having chosen them and sworn to their fathers,
He is true to His covenant. He brought them
out of the house of bondage, and has led them
until now. In Yahweh they had a spiritual ideal,
whose characteristics were love and faithfulness.
But though He loves He can be wrathful, and
though He has made a covenant with Israel, it
must be fulfilled in accordance with righteous-
ness. In dealing with such a God they must be-
ware of thinking that their election is irrespective
of moral conditions, or that His love is mere
good nature. He can and does smite the enemies
of good, for anger is always possible where love
is. It is only with good nature that anger is
not compatible, just as warm and self-sacrificing
affection also is. Those who turn away from
Him, therefore. He requites immediately to their
face, as surely as " He keepeth covenant and
mercy with them that love Him and keep His
commandments." All the blessed and intimate
relations which He has opened up with them, and
in which their safety and their glory lie, can be
dissolved by sin. They are, therefore, to strike
fiercely at temptation, to regard neither their own
lives nor the lives of others when that has to be
put out of the way, to smite and spare not, for
the very love of God.
* Riehm, " Old Testament Theology," p. 98.
542
THE BOOK OF DEU lERONOMY.
A second reason why they should obey the
Divine commands, as in other matters, so in
this terrible thing, is this. If they be willing and
obedient, then God will bless them in temporal
ways as well as with spiritual blessings. Even
for their earthly prosperity a loyal attitude to
Yahweh would prove decisive. " Thou shalt be
blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a
male or female barren among you, or among
your cattle. And Yahweh will take away from
thee all sickness, and He will put none of the
evil diseases of Egypt which thou knowest upon
thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate
thee." The same promises are renewed in more
detail and with greater emphasis in the speech
contained in chapters xxviii. and xxix. There
the significance of such a view, and the difficulties
involved in it for us, will be fully discussed.
Here it will be sufficient to note that the profit
of obedience is brought in to induce Israel to
enforce the " ban " most rigorously.
The last verses of our chapter, vv. 17-26, set
before Israel a third incitement and encourage-
ment. Yahweh, who had proved His might and
His favour for them by His mighty deeds in
Egypt, would be among them, to make them
stronger than their mightiest foes (ver. 21):
" Thou shalt not be affrighted at them, for
Yahweh thy God is in the midst of thee, a great
God and a terrible." The previous inducements
to obey Yahweh their God and be true to Him
were founded on His character and on His acts.
He was merciful; but He could be terrible, and
He would reward the faithful with prosperity.
Now His people are encouraged to go forward
because His presence will go with them. In the
conflicts which obedience to Him would pro-
voke, He would be with them to sustain them,
whatever stress might come upon them. Step
by step they would drive out those very peoples
' whom they had dreaded so when the spies
brought back their report of the land. The
terror of their God would fall upon all these
nations. A great God and a terrible He would
prove Himself to be, and with Him in their
midst they might go forth boldly to execute the
ban upon the Canaanites. The sins and vices of
these peoples had brought this upon them; their
horrible worship left an indelible stain wherever
its shadow fell. Israel, led and directed by
Yahweh Himself, was to fall upon them as the
scourge of God.
Notwithstanding the Divine urgency, the com-
mand to destroy the Canaanites and their idols
was not carried out. After a victory or two the
enemy began to submit. Glad to be rid of the
toils of war, Israel settled down among the peo-
ple of the land. All central control would seem
to have disappeared. The Canaanite worship
and the Canaanite customs attracted and fasci-
nated the people, and enemy after enemy broke
in upon them and triumphed over them. The
half-idolatrous masses were led away into de-
praved forms of worship, and for a time it looked
as if the work of Moses would be utterly un-
done. Had the purer faith he taught them not
been revived, Israel would nrobably not have
survived the period of the Judges. As it was
they just survived; but by their lapse the leaven-
ing of the whole of the nation with the pure prin-
ciples of Yahweh-worship had been stopped. In-
stead of being cured, the idolatrous inclinations
they had brought with them from the pre-Mosaic
tirue had been revived and strengthened. Multi-
tudes, while calling Yahweh their God, had sunk
almost to the Canaanite level in their worship,
and during the whole period of their existence as
a nation Israel as a whole never again rose clear
of half-heathen conceptions of their God. The
prophets taught and threatened them in vain,
until at last ruin fell upon them and the Divine
threats of punishment were fulfilled.
CHAPTER X.
THE BAN IN MODERN LIFE.
In our modern time this practice of the ban
has, of course, become antiquated and impos-
sible. The Cherem, or ban, of the modern syna-
gogue is a different thing, based upon different
motives, and is directed to the same ends as
Christian excommunication. But though the
thing has ceased, the principles underlying it,
and the view of life which it implies, are of
perpetual validity. These belong to the essen-
tial truths of religion, and especially need to be
recalled in a time like ours, when men tend
everywhere to a feeble, lax, and cosmopolitan
view of Christianity. As we have seen, the fun-
damental principle of the Cherem was that, how-
ever precious, however sacred, however useful
and helpful in ordinary circumstances a thing
might be, whenever it became dangerous to the
higher life it should at once be given up to
Yahweh. The lives of human beings, even
though they were men's dearest and nearest,
should be sacrificed: the richest works of art, the
weapons of war, and the wealth which would have
adorned life and made it easy, were equally to be
given up to Him, that He might seclude them
and render them harmless to men's highest in-
terests. Neighbourliness to the Canaanites was^
absolutely forbidden, and the Church of the Oldl
Testament was commanded to take up a position
of hostility, or at best of armed neutrality, to all
the pleasures, interests, and concerns of the peo-
ples who surrounded them. Now the prevailing
modern view is that not only the ban itself, but
these principles have become obsolete. Not-
withstanding that the Church of the New Testa-
ment is the bearer of the higher interests of hu-
manity, we are taught that when it is least defi-
nite in its direction as to conduct, when it is most
tolerant of the practices of the world, then it is
most true to its original conception. We are
told that an indulgent Church is what is wanted;
rigour and religion are now supposed to be
finally divorced in all enlightened minds. This,
view is not often categorically expressed, but it
underlies all fashionable religion, and has its
apostles in the golden youth who forward en-
lightenment by playing tennis on Sundays. Be-
cause of it too, Puritan has become a name of
scorn, and careless self-gratification a mark of
cultured Christianity. Not only asceticism, but
&<TKr]a-is has been discredited, and the moral
tone of society has perceptibly fallen in conse-
quence. In wide circles both within and with-
out the Church it seems to be held that pain is-
the only intolerable evil, and in legislation as
well as in literature that idea has been register-
ing itself.
For much of this progress, as some call it, no'
reasoned justification has been attempted, but it
has been defended in part by the allegation that
the circumstances which make the " ban " neces-
THE BAN IN MODERN LIFE.
543
sary to the very life of the ancient people of God
have passed away, now that social and political
life has been Christianised. Even those who
are outside the Church in Christian lands are no
longer living at a moral and spiritual level so
much below that of the Church. They are not
heathen idolaters, whose moral and religious
ideas are contagiously corrupting, and nothing
but Pharisaism of the worst type, it is said, can
justify the Church in taking up a position to
society in any degree like that which was im-
posed upon ancient Israel. Now it cannot be
denied that there is truth here, and in so far as
the Christian Church or individual Christians
have taken up precisely the same position to
those without as is implied in the Old Testa-
ment ban, they are not to be defended. Modern
society, as at present constituted, is not corrupt-
ing like that of Canaan. No one in a modern
Christian state has been brought up in an atmos-
phere of heathenism, and what an incredible dif-
ference that involves only those who know
heathenism well can appreciate. If spiritual life
is neither understood nor believed in by all, yet
the rules of morals are the. same in every mind,
and these rules are the product of Christianity.
As a consequence, the Church is not endangered
in the same way and to the same degree by con-
tact with the world as in the ancient days. In-
deed to the Israelite of the post-Mosaic time our
" world," which some sects at least would ab-
solutely ignore and shut out, would seem a very
definite and legitimate part of the church. The
Jewish Church was certainly to a very large ex-
tent made up of precisely such elements, while
those who were to be put to the ban were far
more remote than any citizens of a modern state,
except a portion of the criminal class. Further,
those not actively Christian are, on account of
this community of moral sentiments, open to ap-
peal from the Church as the heathen Canaanites
were not. In English-speaking lands, while
there are multitudes indifferent to Christianity,
most acknowledge the obligation of the Christian
motives. In nations at least nominally Christian,
therefore, both because the danger of corrup-
tion is greatly less, and because the world is
more accessible to the leaven of Christian life, no
Church can, or dare, without incurring terrible
loss and responsibility, withdraw from or show
a merely hostile front to the world. The sects
which do so live an invalid life. Their virtues
take on the sickly look of all " fugitive and
cloistered virtue." Their doctrines become full
of the " idols of the cave," and they cease to have
any perception of the real needs of men.
Nevertheless the austere spirit inculcated in
this chapter must be kept alive, if the Church is
to be the spiritual leader of humanity, lor strenu-
ousness is the great want of modern life. Dr.
Pearson, whose book on. " National Life and
Character " has lately expounded the theory
that the Church, " being too inexorable in its
ideal to admit of compromises with human
frailty, is precisely on this account unfitted for
governing fallible men and women," i. e., govern-
ing them in the political sense, has elsewhere
stated his view of the remedy for one of the great
evils of modern life.* " The disproportionate
growth of the distributing classes, as compared
with the producing, is due, I believe, to two
moral causes — the love of amusement and the
•" The Social Movements of the Ag:e," by Professor Pear-
son, Melbourne Church Congress, 1882.
passion for speculation. Men flock out of
healthy country lives in farms or mines into our
great cities, because they like to be near the
theatre and the racecourse, or because they hope
to grow rich suddenly by some form of gam-
bling. The cure for a taint of this kind is not
economical but religious, and can only be found.
I am convinced, in a return to the masculine
asceticism that has distinguished the best days of
history, Puritan or Republican." This is em-
phatically true of Australia, where and of which
the words were first spoken; and masculine ascet-
icism of the Puritan type would cure many an-
other evil there besides these. But the same thing
is true everywhere; and if religion is to cure
slackness in social or political life, how much
more must it cultivate this austere spirit for
itself! The function of the Church is not to
govern the world; it seeks rather to inspire the
world. It should lead the advance to a higher,
more ennobling life, and should exhibit that in
its own collective action and in the kind of char-
acter it produces. Its greatest gift to the world
should be itself, and it is useful only when it is
true to its own ethos and spirit. To keep that un-
impaired must therefore be its first duty, and to
fulfil that duty it must keep rigorously back
from everything which, in relation to its own ex-
isting state, would be likely to lower the power
of its peculiar life. The State must often com-
promise with human frailty. Often there will
be before the legislator and the statesman only
a choice between two evils, or at least two un-
desirable courses, unless a worse thing is to be
tolerated. The Church, on the other hand,
should keep close to the ideal as it sees it. Its
reason for existence is that it may hold up the
ideal to men, and exhibit it as far as that may
be. Compromise in regard to that is impossible
for the Church, for that would be nothing else
than disloyalty to its own essential principle.
The spirit, therefore, that inspired the " ban "
must always be living and powerful in the
Church. Whatever is dangerous to the special
Christian life must cease to exist for Christians.
It should be laid at the feet of their Divine
Head, that He may seclude it from His people
and render it innocuous. Many things that are
harmless or even useful at a lower level of life
must be refused a place by the Christian. Grati-
fications that cannot but seem good to others
must be refused by him; for he seeks to be in
the forefront of the battle against evil, to be the
pioneer to a more whole-hearted spiritual life.
But that does not imply that we should seek to
renew the various imperfect and external devices
by which past times sought to attain this exceed-
ingly desirable end. Experience has taught the
folly and futility of sumptuary laws, for example.
Their only eflfect was to do violence to the in-
wardness which belongs of necessity to spiritual
life. They externalised and depraved morality,
and finaliy defeated themselves. Nor would the
later Puritanism, with its rigidity as regards
dress and deportment, and its narrow and limited
view of life, help us much more. It began doubt-
less with the right principle; but it sought to
bind all to its observances, whether they care<l
for the spirit of them or not; and it showed
a measureless intemperance in regard to the
things which it declared hostile to the life of
faith. In that form it has been charged with
" isolation from human history, human enjoy-
ment, and all the manifold play and variety of
544
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
human character." For a short time, however,
Puritanism did strike the golden mean in this
matter, and probably we could not in this present
connection find a better example for modern days
than in the Puritanism of Spenser, of Colonel
Hutchinson (one of the regicides so called), and
of Milton. Their united lives covered the heroic
period of Puritanism, and taken in their order
they represent very fairly its rise, its best estate,
and its tendencies towards harsh extremes, when
as yet it was but a tendency.
Spenser, born in the " spacious times of great
Elizabeth," was politically and nationally a Pur-
itan, and in aim and ideal, at least, was so in his
stern view of life and religion.* His attachment
to Lord Grey of Wilton, that personally kind
yet absolutely ruthless executor of the English
" ban " against the untamable Irish, and his de-
fence of his policy, show the one; while his
" Fairy Queen," with its representation of relig-
ion as " the foundation of all nobleness in man"
and its dwelling upon man's victory over him-
self, reveals the other. But he had in him also
elements belonging to that strangely mingled
world in which he lived, and which catpe from
an entirely different source. He had the Eliza-
bethan enthusiasm for beauty, the large delight
in life as such even where its moral quality was
questionable, and the artist's sensitiveness and
adaptability in a very high degree. These
diverse elements were never fully interfused in
him. Amid all the gracious beauty of his work,
there is the trace of discord and the mark of
conflict; and at times perhaps his lite fell into
courses which spoke little of self-control. But
his face was always in the main turned upwards.
In the main, too, his life corresponded with his
aspirations. He combined his poetic gift, his
love of men and human life, with a faithfulness to
his ideal of conduct which, if not always perfect,
was sincere, and was, too, as we may hope, ulti-
mately victorious. The Puritan in him had not
entire victory over the worldling, but it had
the mastery; and the very imperfection of the
victory kept the character in sympathy with the
whole of life.
In Colonel Hutchinson,! as depicted in that
stately and tender panegyric which speaks to
us across more than two centuries so pathetically
of his wife's almost adoring love, we see the
Puritan character in its fullest and most balanced
form. We do not, of course, mean that his mind
had the imaginative power of Spenser's, or his
character the force of Milton's; but partly from
circumstances, partly by singular grace of nature,
his character possessed a stability and an equi-
librium which had not come when Spenser lived,
and which was beginning to go in the evil days
upon which Milton fell. At the root of all his
virtues his wife sets " that which was the head
and spring of them all, his Christianity." " By
Christianity," she says, " I intend that universal
habit of grace which is wrought in a soul by the
regenerating Spirit of God, whereby the whole
creature is resigned up into the Divine will and
love, and all its actions designed to the obedience
and glory of its Maker." He had been trained
in a Puritan home, and though when he went out
into the world he had to face quite the average
temptations of a rich and well-born youth, he
fled all youthful lusts. But he did not retire
from the world. " He could dance admirably
* Vide Church's " Spenser," p. i6.
+ " Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson," by his wife.
well, but neither- in youth nor riper years made
any practice of it; he had skill in fencing such
as became a gentleman; he had a great love to
music, and often diverted himself with a viol,
on which he played masterly; he had an exact
ear, and judgment in other music; he shot excel-
lently in bows and guns, and much used them for
his exercise; he had great judgment in painting,
graving, sculpture, and all liberal arts, and had
many curiosities of value in all kinds. He took
much pleasure in improvement of grounds, in
planting groves and walks and fruit-trees, in
opening springs and making fishponds. Of
country recreations he loved none but hawking,
and in that was very eager, and much delighted
for the time he used it." Hutchinson was no
ascetic, therefore, in the wrong sense, but lived in
and enjoyed the world as a man should. But
perhaps his greatest divergence from the lower
Puritanism lay in this, that " everything that it
was necessary for him to do he did with delight,
free and unconstrained." Moreover, though he
adopted strong Puritan opinions in theology,
" he hated persecution for religion, and was al-
ways a champion for all religious people against
all their great oppressors. Nevertheless self-
restraint was the law of his life, and he many
times forbore things lawful and delightful to
him, rather than he would give any one occasion
of scandal." In public affairs he took the
courageous part of a man who sought nothing
for himself, and was moved only by his hatred
of wrong to leave the prosperity and peace of his
home life. He became a member of the Court
which tried the King against his will, but signed
the warrant for his death, simply because he con-
ceived it to be his duty. When the Restoration
came and he was challenged for his conduct,
scorning the subterfuges of some who declared
they signed under compulsion, he quietly ac-
cepted the responsibility for his acts. This led to
his death in the flower of his age, through im-
prisonment in the Tower; but he never flinched,
" having made up his accounts with life and
death, and fixed his purpose to entertain both
honourably." From the beginning of his life to
the end there was a consistent sanity, which is
rare at any time, and was especially rare in those
days. His loyalty to God kept him austerely
aloof from unworthiness, while it seemed to add
zest to the sinless joys which came in his way.
Above all, it never suffered him to forget that
the true Christian temper and character was the
pearl of price which all else he had might law-
fully be sacrificed to purchase.
In the character of Milton we find the same
essential elements, the same purity in youth,
which, with his beauty, won for him the name of
the Lady of his College: the same courage and
public spirit in manhood; the same love of
music and of culture. After his University
career he retired to his father's house, and read
all Greek and Latin literature, as well as Italian,
and studied Hebrew and some other Oriental
languages. All the culture of his time, there-
fore, was absorbed by him, and his mind and
speech were shot through and through with the
brilliant colours of the history and romance of
many climes. Almost no kind of beauty failed
to appeal to him. but the austerity of his_ views
of life kept him from being enslaved by it. In
his earlier works even, he caught in a surprising
way all the glow, and splendour, and poetic
fervour of the English Renaissance; but he
THE BAN IN MODERN LIFE.
545
joined with it the sternest and most uncom-
promising Puritan morality, not only in theory
and desire like Spenser, but in the hard practice
of actual life. When the idea of duty comes to
dominate a man, the grace and impetuosity of
youth, the overmastering love of beauty, and the
appreciation of the mere joy of living are apt
to die away, and the poetic fire burns low. But
it was not so with Milton. To the end of his
life he remained a true Elizabethan, but an Eliza-
bethan who had always kept himself free from
the chains of sensual vice, and had never stained
his purity of soul. That fact makes him unique
almost in English history, and has everywhere
added a touch of the sublime to all that his
works have of beauty. " His soul was like a star,
and dwelt apart: " and we may entirely believe
what he tells us of himself when he returned
from his European travels: " In all the places
in which vice meets with so little discourage-
ment, and is protected with so little shame, I
never once turned from the path of integrity and
virtue, and perpetually reflected that, though my.
conduct might escape the notice of men, it could
not elude the inspection of God." Like the true
Puritan he was, Milton not only overcame evil
in himself, but he thought his own life and health
a cheap price to pay for the overthrow of evil
wherever he saw it. When the civil war broke
out, he returned at once from his travels, to help
to right the wrongs of his country. In the serv-
ice of the Government he sacrificed his poetic
gift, his leisure for twenty years, and finally
his sight, to the task of defending England from
her enemies. But he did not stop there. His
severity became excessive, at times almost vindic-
tive. When he wrote prose he scarcely ever
wrote without having an enemy to crush, and
much that he uttered in this vein cannot possibly
be approved. His pamphlets are unfair to a de-
gree which shows that his mind had lost balance
in the turmoil of the great struggle, so that he
approached at moments the narrower Puritanism.
But he still proved himself too great for that,
and emerged anew as a great and lofty spirit,
held down very little by earthly bonds, and
strenuously set against evil as a true servant of
God.
Now the temper of Puritanism such as this of
these old English worthies is precisely what
Christians need most to cultivate in these days.
They must be animated by the spirit which re-
fuses to touch, and refers to God, whatever
proves hostile to life in God; but they must also
combine with this aloofness a sympathetic hold
on ordinary life. It is easy on the one hand to
solve all problems by cutting oneself ofif from
any relation with the world, lest the inner life
should sufTer. It is also easy to let the inner
life take care of itself, and to float blithely
on with all the currents of life which are not
deadly sins. But it is not easy to keep the
mind and life open to all the great life-
streams which tend to deepen and enrich
human nature, and yet to stand firm in self-
control, determined that nothing which drags
down the soul shall be permitted to fascinate or
overpower. To this task Christian men and the
Christian Church seem at present to be specially
called. It is admitted on all hands that the
ordinary Puritanism became too intolerant of
all except spiritual interests; so that it could not,
without infinite loss, have been accepted as the
guide for all life. But hence what was good in it
has been rejected along with the bad; and it
needs to be restored, if a weak, self-indulgent
temper, which resents hardship or even disci-
pline, is not to gain the upper hand. In social
life especially this is needful, otherwise so much
debate would never have been expended on the
question of amusements. On the face of it, a
Christianity which can go with the world in all
those of its amusements which are not actually
forbidden by the moral law must be a low type
of Christianity. It can be conscious of no special
character which it has to preserve, of no. special-
voice which it has to utter in the antiphony of
created things. Whatever others allow, them-,
selves, therefore, the vigilant Christian .must see
to it that he does nothing which will destroy
his special contribution to the world he lives in.-
It is precisely by that that he is the salt of the
earth; and if the salt have lost its savour .where-
with will you season it? No price is too, ,great-
for the preservation of this savour, and in refe.r-
ence to the care of it each man must ujtimately
be a law unto himself. No one else.. can. really
tell where his weakness lies. No one .e;lse. can-
know what the effect of this or that, recreation
upon that weakness is. ..:.,.
When men lose spiritual touch with 'their own
character they are apt to throw themselves bask
for guidance in such matters upon .the general .
opinion of the Christian community, or. the tradi-
tion of the elders. In doing so .they, are in
danger of losing sincerity in a mass of formalism.-
But if a vivid apprehension of the need of in-
dividuality in the regulation of life is maintained,,
the formulated Christian objection to certain
customs or certain amusements may be .a most
useful substitute for painful experience, of our
own. Some such amusements may have been
banned in the past without sufficient reason;. or
they may have been excluded only .because of the
special openness to temptation of a certa.in com-
munity; or they may have so changed their char-
acter that they do not now deserve the ban which
was laid upon them once justly enough. Any
plea, therefore, for the revisal or abolition of ■
standing conventions on such grounds must be
listened to and judged. But, on the whole, these
standing prohibitions of the Church represent
accumulated experience, and all young people
especially will do wisely not to break away from
them. What the mass of Christians in the past
have found hurtful to the Christian character will
in most cases be hurtful still. For if it can be
said of the secular world in all matters of ex-
perience that " this wise world is mainly, right,"
it may surely be said also of the Christian com-
munity. In our time there is a quite justifiable
distrust of conventionality in morals and in
religion; but it should not be forgotten that
conventions are not open to the same ob-
jection. They represent, on the whole, merely
the registered results of actual experience, and
they may be estimated and followed in an en-
tirely free spirit. It is not wise, therefore, to
revolt against them indiscriminately, merely be-
cause they may be used cruelly against others,
or may be taken as a substitute for a moral nature
by oneself. Thackeray in his constant railing at
the judgment of the world seems to make this
mistake. He is never weary in pointing out
how unjust the broad general judgments of the
world are to specially selected individuals.
Harry Warrington in " The Virginians," for in-
stance, though innocent, lives in a manner and
546
THE BOOK OF DKU lEROiNOMY.
with associates which the world has generally
found to indicate intolerable moral laxity; and
because the world was wrong in thinking that to
be true in his case which would have been true in
ninety-five out of a hundred similar cases, the
moralist rails at the evil-hearted judgments of
the world. But "' this wise world is mainly
right," and its rough and indiscriminating judg-
ments fit the average case. They are part of the
great sanitary provision which society makes for
its own preservation. And the case is precisely
similar with the conventions of the religious life.
They too are in the main sanitary precautions
which a conscience thoroughly alive and a strong
intelligence may make superfluous, but which for
the unformed, the half-ignorant, the less original
natures, in a word, for average men and women,
are absolutely necessary. Spontaneity and free-
dom are admirable qualities in morals and re-
ligion. They are even the conditions of the
highest kinds of moral and religious life, and the
necessary presuppositions of health and progress.
But something is due to stability as well; and a
world of original and spontaneous moralists,
trusting only to their own " genial sense " of
truth, would be a maddening chaos. In other
words, conventions if used unconventionally, if
not exalted into absolute moral laws disobedience
to which excludes from reputable society, if taken
simply as indications of the paths in which least
danger to the higher life has been found to lie,
are guides for which men may well be thank-
ful.
In the world of thought too, as well as in the
world of action, a wise austerity of self-control
is absolutely necessary. The prevailing theory
is that every one, young men more especially,
should read on all sides on all questions, and
that they should know and sympathise with all
modes of thought. This is advocated in the
supposed interests of freedom from externaJ
domination and from internal prejudice. But in
a great number of cases the result does not fol-
low. Such catholicity of taste does produce a
curious dikttante interest in lines of thought, but
as a rule it weakens interest in truth as such. It
delivers from the domination of a Church or
other historic authority; but only, in most cases,
to hand over the supposed freeman to the nar-
rower domination of the thinker or school by
which he happens to be most impressed. For it
is vain and impotent to suppose that in regard
to morals and religion every mind is able to find
its way by free thought, when in regard to bodily
health, or even in questions of finance, the fret-
thought of the amateur is acknowledged to end
usually in confusion. Those only can usefully
expose their minds to all the various currents of
modern thought who have a clear footing of their
own. Whatever that may be, it gives them a
point on which to stand, and a vantage-ground
from which they can gather up what widens or
corrects their view. But to leave the land alto-
gether, and commit oneself to the currents, is to
render any after-landing all but impossible. With
regard to the books read, the lines of thought
followed, and the associations formed, the Chris-
tian must exercise self-denial and self-examina-
tion. Whatever is manifestly detrimental to his
best life, whatever he feels to be likely to taint
the purity of his mind or lower his spiritual
vitality, should be put under the " ban," should
be lesolutely avoided in all ordinary cases. Of
course modes of thougliL that deserve to be
weighed may be found mingled with such ele-
ments; also views of life which have a truth and
importance of their own, though their setting
is corrupt. But it is not every one's business
to extricate and discuss these. Those who are
called to it will have to do it; and in doing it
as a duty they may expect to be kept from the
lurking contagion. Every one else who investi-
gates them runs a risk which he was not called
upon to run. The average Christian should,
therefore, note all that tends to stunt or deprave
him spiritually, and should avoid it. It is not
manliness but folly which makes men read filthy
literature because of its style, or sceptical litera-
ture because of its ability, when they are not
called upon to do so, and when they have not
fortified themselves by the purity of the Scrip-
tures and the power of prayer. To make such
literature or such modes of thought our staple
mental food, or to make the writers or admirers
of such books our intimate friends, is to sap our
own best convictions and to disregard our high
calling.
Lastly, however common it may be for men to
sit down in selfish isolation and devote them-
selves to their own interests, even though these
be spiritual, in the face of remediable evils, that
is not the Christian manner of acting. Of the
great Puritans we mentioned, Spenser endured
hardness in that terrible Irish war which the men
of Elizabeth's day regarded as the war of good
against evil; Hutchinson fought for and died
in the cause of political and religious freedom;
and Milton devoted his life and health to the
same cause. All of them, the two latter espe-
cially, might have kept out of it all, in the peace
and comfort of private life; but they judged that
the destruction of evil was their first duty. At
the trumpet call they willingly took their side,
and prepared to give their lives, if necessary, for
the righteous cause. Now it is not enough for
us to avoid evil any more than it was for them.
Though personal influence and example are un-
doubtedly among the most potent weapons in
the warfare for the Kingdom of God, there
must be, besides these, the power and the will to
put public evils under the ban. Whatever insti-
tution or custom or law is ungodly, whatever in
our social life is manifestly unjust, should stir
the Christian Church to revolt against it, and
should fill the heart ot the individual Christian
with an undying energy of hatred. It is not
meant that the Christian Churches as such should
transform themselves into political societies or
social clubs. To do that would simply be to ab-
dicate their only real functions. But they should
be the sources of such teaching as will turn men's
thoughts towards social justice and political
righteousness, and should prepare them for the
sacrifice which any great improvement in the
social state must demand of some. Further,
every individual Christian should feel that his
responsibility for the condition of his brethren,
those of his own nation, is very great and direct;
that to discharge municipal and political duty
with conscientious care is a primary obligation.
Only so can the power be gained to " ban " the
bad laws, the unjust practices, the evil social
customs, which disfigure our civilisation, which
degrade and defraud the poor.
A militant Puritanism here is not only a neces-
sity for further social progress, but it is also
a necessity for the full exhibition of the power
and the essential sympathies of Christianity.
Deuteronomy viii.]
THE BREAD OF THE SOUL.
547
' For want of it the working classes in their move-
ment upward have not only been alienated from
the Churches, but they have learned to demand
of their leaders that they shall " countenance the
poor man in his cause." They are tempted to
require their leaders to share not only their
common principles, but their prejudices; and
they often look with suspicion upon those who
insist upon applying the plumb-line of justice to
the demands of the poor as well as to the claims
of the rich. The whole popular movement suf-
fers, for it is degraded from its true position.
From being a demand for justice, it becomes a
scramble for power — power too which, when
gained, is sometimes used as selfishly and tyran-
nically by its new possessors as it sometimes was
by those who previously exercised it. Into all
branches of public life there is needed an infusion
of a new and higher spirit. We want men who
hate evil and will destroy it where they can, who
seek nothing for themselves, who feel strongly
that the kind of life the poor in civilised countries
live is intolerably hard, and are prepared to
suffer, if by any means they may improve it.
But we want at the same time a type of reformer
who, by his hold upon a power lying beyond
this world, is kept steady to justice even where
the poor are concerned, who, though he passion-
ately longs for a better life for them, does not
make more food, more leisure, more amusement,
his highest aim. Men are needed who think
more nobly of their brethren than that: men, on
the one hand, who know that the Christian
character and the Christian virtues may exist
under the hardest conditions, and that the Chris-
tian Church exists mainly to brighten and rob
of its degradation the otherwise cheerless life of
the multitude; but, on the other, who recognise
that our present social state is fatal in many
ways to moral and spiritual progress for the mass
of men, and must be in some way recast.
AH this means the entrance into public life of
Christian men of the highest type. Such men
the Christian community must supply to the
State in great numbers, if the higher characteris-
tics of our people are not to be lost. Through
a long and eventful history, by the manifold
training aiYorded by religion and experience, the
English nation has become strong, patient, hope-
ful, and self-reliant, with an instinct for justice
and a hatred of violence which cannot easily be
paralleled. It has, too, retained a faith in and
respect for religion which many other nations
seem to have lost. That character is its highest
achievement, and its decay would be deplorable.
Christianity is specially called to help to preserve
it. by bringing to its aid the power of its own
special character, with its great spiritual re-
sources. The sources of its life are hid, and must
be kept pure; the power of its life must be made
manifest in actual union with the higher ele-
ments in the national character for mutual de-
fence. Above all, Christianity must not, timidly
or sluggishly, draw upon itself the curse of
Meroz by not coming to the help of the Lord
against the mighty. Nor can it permit the im-
mediate interests of the respectable to blind or
hold it back. That which is best in its own na-
ture demands all this; and in seeking to answer
that demand the Churches will attain to a quite
new life and power. The Lord their God will
be in the midst of them, and they will feel it;
for they will then have made themselves channels
for the Divine purity and power.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BREAD OF THE SOUL.
Deuteronomy viii.
In the chapters which follow, viz. viii., ix., and
X. i-ii, we have an appeal to history as a motive
for fulfilling the fundamental duty of loving
God and keeping His commandments. In its
main points it is substantially the same appeal
which is made in chapters i.-iii.,. is, in fact, a
continuation of it. Its main characteristics,
therefore, have already been dealt with; but there
are details here which deserve more minute
study. Coming after Yahweh's great demand
for the love of His people, the references to the
Divine action in the past assume a deeper and
more affectionate character than when they were
mere general exhortations to obedience and sub-
mission. They become inducements to the
highest efforts of love; and the first appeal is
naturally made to the gracious and fatherly deal-
ing of Yahweh with His people in their journey
through the wilderness. Of all the traditions or
reminiscences of Israel, this of the wilderness
was the most constantly present to the popular
mind, and it is always referred to as the most
certain, the most impressive, and the most touch-
ing of all Israel's historic experiences. Yet
Stade and others push the whole episode aside,
saying, if any Israelites came out of Egypt, we
do not know who they were. Such a mode of
dealing with clear, coherent, and in themselves
not improbable historical memories, is too arbi-
trary to have much effect, and the wilderness
journey remains, and is likely to remain, one of
the indubitable facts which modern critical re-
search has established rather than shaken.
To this, then, our author turns, and he deals
with it in a somewhat unusual way. As we have
seen, the prevalent notion that piety and right-
eousness are rewarded with material prosperity
is firmly rooted in his mind. But he did not feel
himself limited to that as the solitary right way
of regarding the providence of God. Men's
minds are never quite so simple and direct in
their action as many students and critics are
tempted to suppose. Every great conception
which holds the minds of men produces its ef-
fects, even from the first moment it is grasped,
by all that is in it. Implications and develop-
ments which are made explicit, or are called out
into visibility, only by the friction of new en-
vironments, have been there from the beginning;
and minds have been secretly moulded by them
though they were not conscious of them. Hard
and fast lines, then, are not to be drawn between
the stages of a great development, so that one
should say that before such and such a moment,
when a new aspect of the old truth has emerged
into consciousness, that aspect was not effective
in any wise. The outburst of waters from a
reservoir is indubitable evidence of steady, per-
sistent pressure from within in that direction
before the overflow. Similarly, in the region
of thought and feeling the emergence of a new
aspect of truth is of itself a proof that the holders
of the root conception were already swayed in
that direction.
The history of Christianity affords proof of
this. It is a commonplace to-day that the world
is only beginning to do justice to some aspects of
548
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
the teaching of our Lord. But the teaching, al-
ways present, always exerted its influence, and
was felt before it could be explained. In the
Old Testament development the same thing
was most emphatically true. Individual respon-
sibility to God was not, so far as we can
now see, distinctly present in Israelite re-
ligious thought till the time of Jeremiah,
but it would be absurd to say that any mind
that accepted the religion of Yahweh had
ever been without that feeling. So with the
doctrine of God's providence over men: we are
not to say that before the Book of Job the ex-
planation of suffering as testing discipline had
been entirely hid from Israel, by the view that
material prosperity and adversity were regulated
in the main according to moral and religious life.
Consequently, notwithstanding previous strong
assertions of the latter view which we find in
Deuteronomy, we need not be in the least sur-
prised to "find that here the hardships of the
wilderness journey are regarded, not as a punish-
ment for Israel's sins, but simply as a trial or
test to see what their heart was towards Him.
This is essentially the point of view of the Book
of Job, the only difference being that here it is
applied to the nation, there to the individual.
But our chapter rises even above that, for the
first verses of it plainly teach that the experiences
of the wilderness were made to be what they
were, in order that the people might learn to
know the spiritual forces of the world to be the
essential forces, and that they might be induced
to throw themselves back upon them as that
which is alone enduring. In the words of ver.
3, they were taught by this training that man
does not live by bread alone, but by everything
that proceeds from the mouth of God.
These two then, that hardship was testing dis-
cipline for Israel, and that it was also intended
to be the means of revealing spirit as the supreme
force even in the material world, are the main
lessons of the eighth chapter. Of these the last
is by far the most important. Casting back his
eye upon the past, the author of Deuteronomy
teaches that the trials and the victories, the
wonders and the terrors of their wilderness time
were meant to humble them, to empty them of
their own conceits, and to make them know be-
yond all doubting that God alone was their por-
tion, and that apart from Him the^ had no
certainty of continuance in the future and no
sustainment in the present. " All the command-
ment which I command thee this day shall ye
observe to do, that ye may live," is the funda-
mental note, and the physical needs and trials
of the time are cited as an object-lesson to that
effect. " He humbled thee, and suffered thee to
hunger, and fed thee with manna which thou
knewest not; that He might make thee to know
that man doth not live by bread alone, but by
everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of
Yahweh doth man live." Of course the first
reference of the " everything that proceedeth "
is to the creative word of Yahweh. The meaning
is that the sending of the manna was proof that
the ordinary means of living, i. e., bread, could
be dispensed with when Yahweh chose to make
use of His creative power. Many commentators
think that this exhausts the meaning of the pass-
age, and they regard our Lord's use of these
words in the Temptation as limited in the same
fashion. But both here and in the New Testa-
ment more must be intended. Here we have
the statement in the first verse that Israel is to
keep the commandments, which certainly are
a part of " all that proceeds " from the mouth
of God, that they may live. This implies that the
mere possession of material sustenance is not
enough for even earthly life. Impalpable spirit-
ual elements must be mingled with " bread " if
life is not to decay. This, our chapter goes on to
say, would be plain to them if they would care-
fully consider God's dealing with them in the
wilderness, for the sending of the manna was
meant to emphasise and bring home to them that
very truth. It was meant, in short, to convey a
double lesson — the direct one above referred to,
and the more remote but deeper one which had
been asserted in the first verse.
In the Temptation narrative the same deeper
meaning is surely implied. The temptation sug-
gested to Jesus was that He should use the
miraculous powers given to Him for special pur-
poses to make stones into bread for Himself.
Now that would have been precisely an instance
of the literal primary meaning of our passage;
it would have been a case of supplying the ab-
sence of bread by the use of the creative word of
God. To meet that temptation and to put it
aside our Lord uses these words: " It is written,
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
Thereupon He was no more importuned to sup-
ply the place of bread by a creative word. The
implication is that the life of the Son of God
found sustenance in spiritual strength derived
from His Father. In other words, the passage
is really parallel to John iv. 31 ff : " In the mean
while the disciples prayed Him, saying. Rabbi,
eat. But He said unto them, I have meat to eat
that ye know not. The disciples therefore said
one to another. Hath any man brought Him
to eat? Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to
do the will of Him that sent Me, and to accom-
plish His work." Understanding it thus, the
Temptation passage is entirely in accord with
that from which it is quoted, if the first and third
verses be taken together. Both teach that
abundance of material resources, all that visibly
sustains the material life, is not sufficient for the
life of such a creature as man. Not -^nly his
inner life, but his outer life, is dependent for its
permanence upon the inflow of spiritual sus-
tenance from the spiritual God. For animals,
bread might be enough; but man holds of both
the spiritual and the material as animals do not.
It is not mere mythical dreaming when man is
said to be made in the image of God; it expresses
the essential fact of his being. Consequently,
without inbreathings from the spiritual, even his
physical life pines and dies. But how wonderful
is this insight in a writer so ancient, belonging
to so obscure a people as the Jews! How can we
account for it? There was nothing in their
character or destiny as a people to explain it,
apart from the supernatural link that binds them
and their thoughts at all times to the coming
Christ, and draws them, notwithstanding all aber-
rations, even when they know it not, towards
Him.
How great an attainment it is we may see, if we
reflect for a moment upon the state of Christian
Europe at the present day. Nowhere among
the masses of the most cultured nations is this
deeply simple truth accepted by the vast majority
of men. Nowhere do we find that history has
succeeded in bringing it home to the conscience
Deuteronomy viii.]
THE BREAD OF THE SOUL.
549
as a commonplace. The rich or well-to-do cling
to riches, the means of material enjoyment, as
if their life did consist in the abundance of things
they possess. They strive and struggle for them
with an industry, a forethought, a perseverance,
which would be justified otily if man could live
by bread alone. That is largely the condition
of those who have bread in abundance or hope
to gain it abundantly. With those who do not
have it the case is perhaps even worse. Worn
and fretted by the hopeless struggle against
poverty, driven wild by the exigencies of a daily
life so near starvation point that a strike, a fall
in prices, a month's sickness, bring them face to
face with misery, the toiling masses in Europe
have turned with a kind of wolfish impatience
upon those who talk of God to them, and de-
mand " bread." As a German Socialist mother
said publicly some years ago, " He has never
given me a mouthful of bread, or means to gain
it: what have I to do with your God?" Their
only hope for the future is that they may eat and
be full; and of this they have made a political
and religious ideal which is attracting the
European working classes with most portentous
power.
In all countries men are passionately asserting
that man can live by bread alone, and that he will.
^For this dreadful creed increasing numbers are
prepared to sacrifice all that humanity thought it
had gained, and shut their ears to any who
warn them that, if they had all they seek, earth
might be still more of a Pandemonium than they
think it at present. But they have much excuse.
They have never had wealth so as to know how
very little it can do for the deepest needs of men;
and their faith in it, their belief that if they were
assured of a comfortable maintenance all would
be right with the world, is pathetic in its simplic-
ity. Yet the secret that is hid to-day from the
mass of men was known among the small Is-
raelite people two thousand five hundred years
ago. Since then it has formed the very keynote
of the teaching of our Lord; but save by the
generations of Christians who have found in it
the key to much of the riddle of the world it has
been learned by nobody.
Yet history has never wearied in proclaiming
the same truth. Israel, as we have seen, had
verified it in the history of the pre-Canaanite
races whose disappearance is recorded in the
first section of our book, and in the doom which
was impending over the Canaanites. But to our
wider experience, enriched by the changes of
more than two thousand years, and by the still
more striking vicissitudes of ancient days revealed
by archaeology, the fact that intelligence of the
highest kind, practical skill, and the courage of
conquerors cannot secure " life," is only more
impressively brought home. If we go back to
the pre-Semitic empire of Mesopotamia, to what
is called the Akkadian time, we find that, before
the days of Abraham, a great civilisation had
arisen, flourished for more than one thousand
years, and then decayed so utterly that the very
language in which its records were written had
to be dealt with by the Semites, who inherited
the former culture, as we deal with Latin. Yet
these early people had made a most astonishing
advance into the ocean of unknown truth. They
had invented writing; they had elaborate systems
of law and social life; they had in other directions
made remarkable discoveries in science, espe-
cially in mathematical and astronomical science,
and had built great cities in which the refine-
ment and art of modern times was in many
directions anticipated. In all ways they stood
far higher above neighbouring peoples than any
civilised nation of Europe stands now in com-
parison with its neighbours. But if they were at
all inclined to put their trust in the immortality
of science, if they ever valued themselves, as we
do, on the strength of the advances they had
made, time has had them in derision. Very much
of what they knew had to be rediscovered pain-
fully in later times. Their very name perished
out of the earth; and it has been discovered now
to make them an object of abiding interest only
to the few who make ethnology their study.
Neither material wealth and comfort nor assidu-
ous culture of the mind could save them. For
their religion and morals were, amid all this ma-
terial success, of the lowest type. They heard
little of what issues from the mouth of God in the
specially Divine sphere of morality, and did not
give heed to that little, and they perished. For
man does not live by bread alone, but by that
also, and neglect of it is fatal.
It may be said that they flourished for more
than a thousand years, and neglect of the Divine
word, if it be a poison, must (as Fenelon said of
cofYee) be a very slow one, so far as nations are
concerned. But it has always been a snare to
men to mistake the Divine patience for Divine
indifference and inaction. The movement,
though to us creatures of a day it seems slow,
is as continuous, as crushing, and as relentless
as the movement of a glacier. " The mills of
God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding
small," and all along the ages they have thrown
out the crushed and scattered fragments of the
powers that were deaf to the Divine voice. So
persistently has this appeared that it would by
this time have passed beyond the region of faith
into that of sight, were it not always possible to
ignore the moral cause and substitute for it
something mechanical and secondary. The great
world-empires of Egypt and Assyria passed
away, primarily -owing to neglect of the higher
life. Secondarily, no doubt, the ebbs and flows
of their power, and their final extinction, were
influenced by the course of the Indian trade; and
many wise men think they do well to stop there.
But in truth we do not solve the difficulty by
resting in this secondary cause; we only shift it
a step backwards. For the question immediately
arises. Why did the trade change its course from
Assyria to Egypt, and back again from Egypt
to Assyria? Why did a rivulet of it flow through
the land of Israel in Solomon's day and after-
wards cease? The answer must be that it was
when the character of these various nations rose
in vigour by foresight and moral self-restraint
that they drew to themselves this source of
power. They " lived," in fact, by giving heed to
some word of God. Nor does the history of
Greek supremacy in Europe and Asia, or the rise
and fall of the Roman Empire, contradict that
view. The modern historian, whatever his faith
or unfaith may be, is driven to find the motive
power which wrought in these stupendous move-
ments in the moral and spiritual sphere. This
transforms history from being merely secular into
a Bible, as Mommsen finely says,* " And if she
cannot any more than the Bible hinder the fool
from misunderstanding and the devil from quot-
ing her, she too will be able to bear with and to
• "History of Rome," vol. iv., Part II., p. 467.
550
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
requite them both." She utters her voice in the
streets, and in the end makes her meaning clear.
For she gives us ever new examples. ,
Probably her grandest object-lesson at present
is the wasting and paralysis that is slowly wither-
ing up all Mohammedan states. Where they
have been left to themselves, as in Morocco and
Persia, depopulation and the break-up of society
has come upon them, and where Muslim popula-
tions are really prospering it is under the in-
tiuence of Christian Powers. And the reason
is plain. Islam is a revolt from, and a rejection
of, the higher principles of life contained in
Christianity, and a return to Judaism. But the
Judaism to which it returned had already lost its
finest bloom. All that was left to it of tender-
ness or power of expansion Islam rejected, and
of the driest husks of Old Testament religion it
made its sole food. Naturally and necessarily,
therefore, it has been found inadequate. It can-
not permanently live under present conditions,
and it is capable of no renewal. Here and there,
especially in India, attempts to break out of the
prison house which this system builds around
its votaries are being made, but in the opinion
of experts like Mr. Sell * they cannot succeed.
■' Such a movement," he tells us, " may elevate
individuals and purify the family life of many,
but it will, like all reform movements of the past,
have very little real effect on Islam as a polity
and as a religion." If he be right, we learn from
a Mohammedan whom he quotes, the Naual
Mulisin-ul-Mulk, what alone can be looked for.
" To me it seems," he says, " that as a nation and
a religion we are dying out; our day is past, and
we have little hope of the future." More con-
spicuously and deliberately perhaps than any one
did Mohammed choose to go back from the best
light that shone in the world of his day. Some
at least of his contemporaries knew what a
spiritual religion meant. He was guilty, there-
fore, of the " great refusal "; and his work, great
a.s it was, seems to some even of his own dis-
ciples to be hastening to its end. Material suc-
cess, bread in all senses, the kingdoms founded
by him and his successors had in abundance, and
still might have. But man cannot live by that
alone, and the absence oi the higher element
has taken even that away.
In Christendom, too, the same lesson is being
taught. Of all European countries France per-
liaps is that where the corroding power of ma-
terialistic thought has been most severely felt.
Vet few countries are so rich in material wealth,
and if bread was all that " life " demanded, no
country should be so full of it. But it is in no
sense so. Even its intellectual life is drooping,
and its population, if not decreasing, is
standing still. This, all serious writers de-
plore; and the dawn of what may perhaps
be a new era is seen in the earnestness
with which the sources of this evil are sought
out and discussed. Men like the Vicomte
de Vogiie f depict the new generation as weary
of negations, sick of the material positivism of
their immediate predecessors, disgusted with
" realism," which, as another recent writer de-
fines it, " in thought is mere provincialism, in
affection absolute egoism, in politics the deifica-
tion of brute force; in the higher grades of so-
ciety tyranny; in the lower, unbridled license."
And the only cure is faith and moral idealism.
* Contfjnporarv Revieiv, Anjrust, 1893, p. 293.
+ "Heures d'Histoire."
" Society can apply to itself to-day," says De
Vogiie, "the beautiful image of Plotinus; it re-
sembles those travellers lost in the night, seated
in silence on the shore of the sea, waiting for
the sun to rise above the billows." In Germany
similar conditions have produced similar though
much mitigated results. Yet even there, Lange,
the historian of materialism, tells us that there
runs through all our modern culture a tendency
to materialism, which carries away every one
who has not found somewhere a sure anchor.
"The ideal has no currency; all that cannot
prove its claim on the basis of natural science
and history is condemned to destruction, though
a thousand joys and refreshments of the masses
depend upon it." He concludes by saying that
" ideas and sacrifices may still save our civilisa-
tion, and change the path of destructive revolu-
tion into a path of beneficent reforms." Through
all history, then, and loudest in our own day, the
cry of our passage goes up; and where the path
marked out by the faith of Israel, and carried to
its goal by Jesus Christ, has been forsaken, the
peoples are resting in hungry expectation.
Words from the mouth of God can alone save
them; and if the Churches cannot make them
hear, and no new voice brings it home to them,
there would seem to be nothing before them but
a slower or quicker descent into death. ^
But it may be that the nations are deaf to the
Churches' voice because these have not learned
thoroughly that life for them too is conditioned
in the same fashion. They can live truly, fully,
triumphantly only when they take up and absorb
" everything that issues from the mouth of God."
All Christians must admit this; but most proceed
at once to annul what they have stated by the
limitations of meaning they impose upon it. An
older generation vehemently affirmed this faith,
meaning by it every word and letter which
Scripture contained. We do not find fault with
what they assert, for the first necessity of spiritual
life is the study and love of the Holy Scriptures.
No one who knows what the higher life in Christ
is, needs to be told that the very bread of life
is in the Bible. Neglect it. or, what is perhaps
worse, study it only from the scientific and in-
tellectual point of view, and life will slowly ebb
away from you, and your religion will bring
you none of the joy of living. Bring your
thoughts, your hopes, your fears, and your aspi-
rations into daily contact with it. and you will feel
a vigour in your spiritual nature which will
make you " lords over circumstance." Every
part of it contributes to this effect when it is
properly understood, for experience proves the
vanity of the attempt to distinguish between the
Bible and the word of God. As it stands,
wrought into one whole by labours the strenu-
ousness. the multiplicity, the skill, and the relig-
ious spirit of which we are only now coming to
understand, it is the word of God; it has issued
from His mouth, and from it, searched out and
understood, the most satisfying " bread " of the
soul must come. Only by use of it can the
Christian soul live. But though the Bible is the
word of God par excellence, it is not the only word
that issues from the mouth of God to man. Be-
cause the Church has often too much refused to
listen to any other word of God, those who are
without are " sitting looking out over the sea
towards the west for the rising of the sun which
is behind them." For if it is death to the spirit
to turn away from Scripture, it means sickness
Deuteronomy ix.-xi.]
ISRAEL'S ELECTION.
551
and disease to refuse to learn the other lessons
which are set for us by the God of truth. All
true science must contain a revelation of Him,
for it is an exposition of the manner of His work-
ing. History too is a Bible, which has been con-
firming with trumpet tongue the truths of Scrip-
ture as we have seen. Nay, it is a commentary
upon the special revelation given to us through
Israel, set for our study by the Author of that
revelation. Further, we may say that the prog-
ress of our Christian centuries has shown us
heights and depths of wisdom in the revelation
mankind has received in Christ which, without
its light, we should not have known.
The spirit of Christ in regard to slavery, for
instance, was made manifest fully only in our day.
The true relations of men to each other, as con-
ceived by our blessed Lord, are evidently about
to be forced home upon the world by the tur-
moils, the strikes, and the outrages, by the wild
demands, and the wilder hopes which are the
characteristic of our epoch. In the future, too,
there must lie experiences which will make mani-
fest to men the brand which the spirit of Christ
puts upon war, with its savagery and its folly.
These are only noteworthy instances of the ex-
planation of revelation by the developments of
the Divine purpose in the world. But in count-
less ways the same process is going on, and the
Church which refuses to regard it is preparing
a decay of its own life. For man lives by ez>ery
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,
and every such word missed means a loss of
vitality. The Christian Church, therefore, if it is
to be true to its calling, should be seriously
watchful lest any Divinely sent experience
should be lost to it. It cannot be indifferent,
much less hostile, to discoveries in physical
science; it cannot ignore any fact or lesson which
history reveals; it cannot sit apart from social
experiments, as if holding no form of creed in
such things, without seriously impairing its
chances of life. For all these things are pregnant
with most precious indications of the mind of
,God, and to turn from them is to sit in darkness
and the shadow of death. In the most subtle and
multifarious way, the inner spiritual life of man
is being modified by the discoveries of scientists,
historians, philologists, archjeologists, and critics,
and by the new attention which is being given to
the foundations of society and social life. All
the truth that is in these discoveries issues from
the mouth of God. They too are a Bible, as
Mommsen says, and if the Christian Church can-
not " hinder the fool from misunderstanding and
tlie devil from quoting them," it can itself listen
with open car to these teachings, and work them
into coherent unity with the great spiritual
Revelation. This is the perennial task which
awaits the Church at every stage of its career,
for on no other terms can it live a healthy life.
Here we find the answer to timid Christians
who address petulant complaints to those who
are called to attempt this work. If, say they,
ihese new thoughts are not essential to faith, if
in the forms to which we have been accustomed
the essence of true religion has been preserved,
why do yon disturb the minds of believers by out-
side questions? The reply is that we dare not re-
fuse the teaching which God is sending us in these
ways. To refuse light is to blaspheme light.
Though \vc might save our generation some
trouble by turning our back upon this light,
though wc might even save some from manifest
shipwreck of faith, we should pay for that by
sacrificing all the future, and by rendering faith
mipossible perhaps for greater muhitudes of our
successors.
Yet this does not imply that the Church is
to be driven about by every wind of doctrine.
Some men of science demand, apparently, that
every new discovery, in its first crude form,
should be at once adopted by the Church, and
that all the inferences unfavorable to received
views of religion, which occur to men accus-
tomed to think only truths that can be demon-
strated by experiment, should be registered in its
teachings. But such a demand is mere folly.
The Church has in its possession a body of truth
which, if not verifiable by experiment, has
been verified by experience as no other body
of truth has been. Even its enemies being
judges, no other system of a moral or spir-
itual kind has risen above the horizon which
can for a moment be compared with Christianity
as the guide of men for life and death.* Through
all changes of secular thought, and amid all the
lessons which the world has taught the Church,
the fundamental doctrines have remained in es-
sence the same, and by them the whole life of
man, social, political, and scientific, has ultimately
been guided. Immense practical interests have
therefore been committed to the Church's keep-
ing, the interests primarily of the poor and the
obscure. She ought never to be tempted, con-
sequently, to think that she is moving and acting
in a vacuum, or manage her aflfairs after the
manner of a debating society. It is no doubt a
fault to move too slowly; but in circumstances
like that of the Church, it can never be so de-
structive to the best interests of mankind as to
move with wanton instability. Her true attitude
must be to prohibit no lines of inquiry, to open
her mind seriously to all the demonstrated truths
of science with gladness, to be tolerant of all
loyal effort to reform Christian thought in ac- ,
cordance with the new light, when that has be-
come at all possible. For her true food is every-
thing that issues from the mouth of God; and
only vvhen she receives with gratitude her daily
bread in this way also, can her life be as vigorous
and as elevated as it ought to be.
CHAPTER XII.
ISRAEL'S ELECTION. AND MOTIVES FOR
FAITHFULNESS.
Deuteronomy ix.-xi.
The remaining chapters of this special intro-
duction to the statement of the actual laws be-
ginning with chapter xii., contain also an earnest
insistence upon other motives why Israel should
remain true to the covenant of Yahweh. They
are urged to this, not only because life both
spiritual and physical depended upon it. as was
shown in the trials of the wilderness, but they
are also to lay it to heart that in the conquests
which assuredly await them, it will be Yahweh
alone to whom they will owe them. The spies
had declared, and the people had accepted their
report, that these peoples were far mightier than
they, and that no one could stand before the
children of Anak. But the victory over them
*Cy. Lange, " Geschichte des Materialismus," vol ii.,
pp. sio, 528.
552
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
would show that Yahweh had been among them
like a consuming fire, before which the Canaan-
ite power would wither as brushwood in the
flame.
Under these circumstances the thought would
obviously lie near that, as they had been defeated
and driven back in their first attempt upon Ca-
naan because of their unrighteousness and unbe-
lief, so they would conquer now because of their
righteousness and obedience. But this thought
is sternly repressed. The fundamental doctrine
which is here insisted on is that Israel's con-
sciousness of being the people of God must at
the same time be a consciousness of complete
dependence upon Him. If His gifts were ulti-
mately to be the reward of human righteousness,
then obviously that feeling of complete depend-
ence could not be established. They are to
move so completely in the shadow of God that
they are to see in their successes only the carry-
ing out of the Divine purposes. Instead of
feeling fiercely contemptuous of the Canaanites
they destroy, because they stand on a moral and
spiritual 'weight which gives them a right to
triumph, the Israelites are to feel that, while it
is for wickedness that the Canaanite people are
to be punished, they themselves had not been
free from wickedness of an aggravated kind.
Their dififerent treatment, therefore, rests upon
the fact that they are to be Yahweh's chosen in-
struments. In the patriarchs he chose them to
become the means, the vehicle, by which salva-
tion and blessing were to be brought to all
nations. While, therefore, the evil that comes
upon the peoples they are to conquer is deserved,
the good they themselves are to receive is equally
undeserved. That which alone accounts for the
difiference is the faithfulness of God to the
promises He made for the sake of His purposes.
He needs an instrument through which to bless
mankind. He has chosen Israel for this pur-
pose, partly doubtless because of some qualities,
not necessarily spiritual or moral, which they
have come to have, and partly because of
their historical position in the world. These
taken together make them at this precise mo-
ment in the history of the world's development
the fittest instruments to carry out the Divine
purpose of love to mankind. And they are
elected, made to enter into more constant
and intimate communion with God than other
nations, on that account. In the words of
Rothe, " God chooses or elects at each his-
torical moment from the totality of the sinful
race of mankind that nation by whose enrol-
ment among the positive forces which are to
develop the kingdom of God the greatest pos-
sible advance towards the complete realisation
of it may be attained, under the historical cir-
cumstances of that moment." Whether that
completely covers the individual election of St.
Paul, as Rothe thinks, or not, it certainly pre-
cisely expresses the national election of the Old
Testament, and exhausts the meaning of our
passage. Israelite particularism had universality
of the highest kind as its background, and here
the latter comes most insistently to its rights.
It was not only the election of Israel to be a
peculiar people which depended upon the wise
and loving purpose of God; the providences
which befell them also had that as their source.
To fit them for their mission, and to give them
a place wherein they could develop the germs of
higher faith and nobler morality which they had
received, Yahweh gave them victory over those
greater nations, and planted them in their place.
This, and this only, was the reason of their suc-
cess; and with scathing irony the author of Deu-
teronomy stamps under his feet (ix. 7 fT.) any
claim to superior righteousness on their part.
He points back to their continuous rebellions
during the forty years in the wilderness. From
the beginning to the end of their journey towards
the promised land, they are told, they have been
rebellious and stiff-necked and unprofitable.
They have broken their covenant with their God.
They have caused Moses to break the tables of
stone containing the fundamental conditions of
the covenant, because their conduct had made it
plain that they had not seriously bound them-
selves to it. But the mercy of God had been
with them. Notwithstanding their sin, Yahweh
had been turned to mercy by the prayer of Moses
(vv. 25 fif.), and had repented of His design to
destroy them. A new covenant was entered into
with them (chap, x.) by means of the second
tables, which contained the same commands as
were engraven on the first. The renewal, more-
over, was ratified by the separation of the tribe
of Levi (x. 8 fif.) to be the specially priestly tribe,
" to bear the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord,
to stand before the Lord to minister unto Him
and to bless in His name." From beginning to
end it was always Yahweh, and again Yahweh.
who had chosen and loved and cared for them.
It was He who had forgiven and strengthened
them; but always for reasons which reached far
beyond, or even excluded, any merit on their
part.
The grounds of Moses' successful intercession
for them (ix. 25 ff.) are notable in this connec-
tion. They have no reference at all to the needs,
or hopes, or expectations of the people. These
are all brushed aside, as being of no moment
after such unfaithfulness as theirs had been.
The great object before his mind is represented
to be Yahweh's glory. If this stiff-necked people
perish, then the greatness of God will be ob-
scured and His purposes will be misunderstood.
Men will certainly think, either that Yahweh."
Israel's God, attempted to do what He was not
able to do, or that He was wroth with His
people, and drew them out into the wilderness
to slay them there. It is God's purpose with
them, God's purpose for the world through
them, which alone gives them importance.
Were it not for that, they would be as little worth
saving as they have deserved to be saved. For
his people, and, we may be sure, for himself,
Moses recognises no true worth save in so far as
he or they were useful in carrying out Divine
purposes of good to the world. Nor is the ab-
sence of any plea on Israel's behalf, that it is
miserable or unhappy, due merely to a desire to
keep the rebellious people in the background for
the moment, and to appeal only to the Divine
self-love for a pardon which would, on the
merits of the case, be refused. It is the God of
the whole earth, before whom " the inhabitants
of the earth are as grasshoppers," who is ap-
pealed to; a God removed far above the petty
motives of self-interested men, and set upon the
one great purpose of establishing a kingdom of
God upon the earth into which all nations might
come. If His glory is appealed to, that is only
because it is the glory of the highest good both
for the individual and for the world. If fear
lest doubt should be cast upon His power is put
Deuteronomy ix.-xi.]
ISRAEL'S ELECTION.
553
forward as a reason for His having mercy, that
is because to doubt His power is to doubt the
supremacy of goodness. If the Divine promise
to the patriarchs is set forth here, it is because
that promise was the assurance of the Divine
interest in and Divine love of the world.
Under such circumstances it would need a very
narrow-hearted literalism, such as only very
" liberal " theologians and critics could favour,
to reduce this appeal to a mere attempt to flatter
Yahweh into good-humour. It really embodies
all that can be said in justification of our look-
ing for answers to prayer at all; and rightly
understood it limits the field of the answer as
strictly as the expressed or implied limitations
of the New Testament, viz. that effectual prayer
can only be for things according to the will of
God. Moreover it expresses an entirely natural
attitude towards God. Before Him, the sum of
all perfections, the loving and omniscient and
omnipresent God, what is man that he should
assert himself in any wise? When the height
and the depth, the sublimity and the comprehen-
siveness of the Divine purpose is considered,
how can a man do aught save fall upon his face
in utter self-forgetfulness, immeasurably better
even than self-contempt? The best and holiest
of mankind have always felt this most; and the
habit of measuring their attainments by the faith-
fulness and knowledge, the virtue and power
which is in God, has impressed some of the
greatest minds and purest souls with such hu-
mility, that to men without insight it has seemed
mere affectation. But the pity, the condescen-
sion, the love of Christ has so brought God
down into our human life, that we are apt at
times to lose our awe of God as seen in Him.
Were we children of the spirit we should not fall
into that sin. We cannot, consequently, be too
frequently or too sharply recalled to the more
austere and remote standpoint of the Old Testa-
ment. For many even of the most pious it
would be well if they could receive and keep a
more just impression of their own worthlessness
and nullity before God.
In the section from the twelfth verse of chap-
ter X. to the end of chapter xi. the hortatory in-
troduction is summed up in a final review of all
the motives to and the results of obedience and
love to God. The fundamental exhortation as
to love to God is once more repeated; only here
fear is joined with love and precedes it; but the
necessity of love to God is expanded and dwelt
upon, as at the beginning, with a zeal that never
wearies. The Deuteronomist illustrates and en-
forces it with old reasons and new, always speak-
ing with the same pleading and heartfelt earnest-
ness. He does not fear the tedium of repetition,
nor the accusation of moving in a narrow round
of ideas. Evidently in the evil time when he
wrote this love towards God had come to be his
own support and his consolation; and it had been
revealed to him as the source of a power, a
sweetness, and a righteousness which could
alone bring the nation into communion with
God. In affecting words resembling very
closely the noble exhortation in Micah vi., " He
hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and
what doth Yahweh require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly
with thy God?" he teaches much the same doc-
trine as his contemporary: " And now, Israel,
v/hat doth Yahweh thy God require of thee, but
to fear Yahweh thy God, to walk in all His ways.
and to love Him, and to serve Yahweh thy God
with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep
the commandments of Yahweh and His statutes
which I command thee this day for thy good? " *
In spirit these passages seem identical; but it
is held by many writers on the Old Testament
that they are not so, that they represent, in fact,
opposite poles of the faith and life of Israel.
Micah is supposed by Duhm, for instance, to
mean by his threefold demand that justice be-
tween man and man, love and kindliness and
mercy towards others, and humble intercourse
with God are, in distinction from sacrifice, true re-
ligion and undefiled. Robertson Smith also
considers that these verses in Micah contain a
repudiation of sacrifice. In Deuteronomy, on
the contrary, fear and love of God and walking
in His ways are placed first, but they are joined
with a demand for the heartfelt service of God
and the keeping of His statutes as about to be
set forth. Now these certainly include ritual
and sacrifice. The one passage, written by a
prophet, excludes sacrifice as binding and accept-
able service of God; the other, written perhaps
by a priest, certainly by a man upon whom no
prophetic lessons of the past had been lost, in-
cludes it. To use the words of Robertson Smith
in discussing the requisites of forgiveness in the
Old Testament, " According to the prophets
Yahweh asks only a penitent heart and desires
no sacrifice; according to the ritvial law. He de-
sires a penitent heart approaching Him in cer-
tain sacrificial sacraments." f The author of
Deuteronomy teaches the second view; the au-
thor of Micah, chap, vi., who is probably his
contemporary, teaches the former. How is such
divergence accounted for? The answer gener-
ally made is that Deuteronomy was the product
of a close alliance between priests and prophets.
A common hatred of Manasseh's idolatry and a
common oppression had brought them together
as never perhaps before. With one heart and
mind they wrought in secret for the better day
which they saw approaching, and Deuteronomy
was a reissue of the ancient Mosaic law adapted
to the prophetic teaching. It represented a
compromise between, or an amalgamation of,
two entirely distinct positions.
But even on this view it would follow that
from the time of Josiah, when Deuteronomy was
accepted as the completest expression of the will
of God, the doctrine that ritual and sacrifice as
well as penitence were essential things in true
religion was known, and not only kno.wn but ac-
cepted as the orthodox opinion. Putting aside,
then, the question whether sacrifice was acknowl-
edged by the prophets before this or not, they
must have accepted it from this point onward,
unless they denied to Deuteronomy the authority
which it claimed and which the nation conceded
to it. Jeremiah clearly must have assented to it,
for his style and his thought have been so closely
moulded on this book that some have thought
he may have been its author. In any case he did
not repudiate its authority; and all the prophets
who followed him must have known of this view,
and also that it had been sanctioned by that
book which was made the first Jewish Bible.
We have here, at all events, the keynote of the
supremacy of moral duty over Divine com-
mands concerning ritual which distinguishes the
prophetic teaching in Micah and elsewhere,
* Chap. X. 12.
t "Old Testament in Jewish Church," 2d edition, p. 30S.
554
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
joined with the ei forcement of ritual observ-
ances. But there are few purely prophetic pass-
ages which raise the higher demand so high as
it is raised here.
To love and fear God are anew declared to be
man's supreme duties, and the author presses
these home by arguments of various kinds.
Again he returns to the election of Israel by
Yahweh, without merit of theirs; and to bring
home to them how much this means, the Deu-
teronomist exhibits the greatness of their God,
His might, His justice, and His mercy, which,
great as it is to His chosen people, is not con-
fined to them, but extends to the stranger also.
This most gracious One they are to serve by
deeds, to Him they are to cleave, and they are
to swear by Him only, that is, they are solemnly
to acknowledge Him to be their God in return
for His undeserved favour. For their very
existence as a nation is a wonder of His power,
since they were only a handful when they went
down to Egypt, and now were " as the stars of
heaven for multitude."
Then once more, in chapter xi., he repeats his
one haunting thought that love is to be the
source of all worthy fulfilment of the law; and
he endeavours to shed abroad this love to God
in their hearts by reminding them once more of
all the marvels of their deliverance from Egypt,
and of their wilderness journey. Their God had
delivered them first, then chastised them for their
sins, and had trained them for the new life that
awaited them in the land promised to their
fathers.
Even in the security of the land they were to
find themselves not less dependent upon God
than before. Rather their dependence would be
more striking and more impressive than in
Egypt. As we have seen repeatedly, this in-
spired writer belonged in many respects to the
childhood of the world, and the people he ad-
dressed were primitive in their ideas. Yet his
thoughts of God in their highest flight were so
essentially true and deep, that even to-day we
can go back upon them for edification and in-
spiration. But here we have an appeal based
upon a distinction which to-day should have al-
most entirely lost its meaning. The Deuterono-
mist yields quite simply and unreservedly to the
feeling that the regular, unvarying processes of
nature are less Divine, or at least are less imme-
diately significant of the Divine presence, than
those which cannot be foreseen, which vary, and
which defy human analysis. For he here con-
trasts Egypt and Canaan, in both of which he
represents Israel as having been engaged in
agricultural pursuits, and speaks as if in the for-
mer all depended upon human industry and in-
genuity, and might be counted upon irrespective
of moral conduct, while in the latter all would
depend upon Divine favour and a right attitude
towards God. It is quite true that in preceding
chapters he has been teaching that, even for
worldly material success, the higher life is neces-
sary, that man nowhere lives by bread alone;
and that we may assuredly assume is his deepest,
his ultimate thought. But he has a practical
end in view at this moment. He wishes to per-
suade his people, and he appeals to what both
he and they felt, though in the last resort it
might hardly perhaps be justified. In Egypt, he
says, your agricultural success was certain if
only you were industrious. The great river, of
which the land itself is the gift, came down in
flood year after year, and you had only to store
and to guide its waters to ensure you a certain
return for your labour. You had not to look to
uncertain rains, but could by diligence always
secure a sufificiency of the life-giving element.
In Canaan it will not be so. It " drinketh water
only of the rain of heaven." God's eye has to
be upon it continually to keep it fertile, and the
sense of dependence upon Him will force itself
upon you more constantly and powerfully in con-
sequence. They could hope to prosper only if
they never forgot, never put away His exhorta-
tions out of their sight. Otherwise, he says, the
life-giving showers will not fall in their due sea-
son. Your land will not yield its fruits, and " ye
shall perish quickly off the good land which
Yahweh giveth you."
Now what are we to say of this appeal?
There can be no doubt that the Divine omnipo-
tence was really, in the Deuteronomist's view as
well as in ours, as irresistible in Egypt as in
Canaan. Fundamentally, no doubt, life or
death, prosperity or adversity, were as much in
the hand of God in the one case as in the other;
and the Deuteronomist, at least, had no doubt
that rebellion against God could and would de-
stroy Egypt's prosperity as much as Canaan's.
But he felt that somehow there was a tenderer
and more intimate communion of love between
Yahweh and His people imder the one set of cir-
cumstances than under the other. We are not
entitled to impute to him a questionable distinc-
tion which modern minds are apt to make, viz.
that where long experience has taught men to
regard the course of providence as fixed, there
the sphere of prayer for material benefit ends,
and that only in the region where the Divine
action in nature seems to us more spontaneous,
and less capable of being foreseen, can prayer be
heartily, because hopefully, made. But the feel-
ing that suggests that was certainly in his mind.
He felt the difference between the fixed condi-
tions of life in Egypt and the more variable con-
ditions in Canaan, to be much the same as the
difference between the circumstances of a son
receiving a fixed yearly allowance from hi.s
father, in an independent and perhaps distant
home, and those of a son in his father's house,
who receives his portion day by day as the re-
sult and evidence of an ever-present aflfection.
Both are equally dependent upon the father's
love, and both should theoretically be equally
filled with loving gratitude. But as a fact, the
latter would be more likely to be so, and would
be held more guilty if he were not so. Upon
that actual fact the Deuteronomist takes his
stand. As they were now to enter into Yahweh's
land. His chosen dwelling-place, he sees in the
different material conditions of the new country
that which should make the union between Yah-
weh and His people more intimate and more
secure, and He presses home upon them the
greater shame of ingratitude, if under such cir-
cumstances they should forget God and His
laws.
Finally (xi. 22-2s) he promises them the vic-
torious extension of their dominion if they will
love Yahweh and keep His laws. From Leb-
anon to the southern wilderness, from the Eu-
phrates to the western sea, they should rule, if
they would cleave unto their God. At no time
was this promise fulfilled save in the days of
David and Solomon. For only then had Leb-
anon and the wilderness, the Euphrates and the
Deuteronomy ix.-xi]
ISRAEL'S ELECTION.
555
sea, been the boundaries of Israel. This must,
then, be regarded as the time of Israel's greatest
faithfulness. But it is striking that it is in Jo-
siah's day, after the adoption of Deuteronomy as
the national law, that we meet with a conscious
effort to realise this condition of things once
more. There would seem to be little doubt that
the good king took an equally literal view of
what the book commanded and of what it
promised. He inaugurated a period of complete
external compliance with the law, and like the
young and inexperienced man he was, he re-
garded that as the fulfilment of its requirements,
and looked for a similar instantaneous fulfilment
of the promises. Bit by bit he had absorbed the
ancient territory of the Northern Kingdom; and
in the decay of the Assyrian power he saw the
opportunity for the enlargement of his dominion
to the limit here defined. He consequently went
out against Pharaoh Necho in the full confidence
that he would be victorious. But if the Divine
promise and its conditions were taket> up too
superficially by him, Divine providence soon
and terribly corrected the error. The defeat and
death of Josiah revealed that the reformation had
not been real and deep enough, and that the
nation was not faithful enough to make such
triumph possible. Indeed, so far as we can see,
the time for any true fulfilment of Israel's call-
ing in that fashion had then passed by. The
harvest was past, and Israel was not saved, and
could not now be saved, for it was in its deepest
heart unfaithful.
It may be questioned by some, of course,
whether an Israel faithful even in the highest
degree could at any time have kept possession
of so wide a dominion in the face of the great
empires of Assyria and Egypt. These were rich,
and had a far larger command both of territory
and men: how then could the Israelites ever
have maintained themselves in face of them?
But the question is how to measure the power of
the higher ideas they held. It is not force but
truth that rules the world; and absolutely no
limit can be set to the possibilities which open
out to a free, morally robust, and faithful people,
who have become possessed of higher spiritual
ideas than the peoples that surround them.
Even in this sceptical modern day the transfor-
mation as regards physical strength which takes
place when certain classes of Hindus become
either Mohammedans or Christians is so start-
ling and so rapid that it appears almost a miracle.
As regards courage, too, it is even more rapid
and equally remarkable. The great majority of
the struggles of nations are fought out on the
level of mere physical force and for material
ends, and the strongest and richest wins: but
whenever a people possessed of higher ideas and
absolutely faithful to them does appear, the op-
posing power, however great it may be in wealth
and numbers, is whirled away in fragments as
by a tornado, or it dissolves like ice before the
sun. What Israel might have been, therefore.
had it been penetrated by the principles of the
higher religion, and been passionately true to it,
can in no way be judged by that which it actually
was. Among the untried possibilities which it
was too unfaithful to realise, the possession of
such an empire as Deuteronomy promises would
seem to be one of the least.
Our chapter sums up what precedes with the
declaration on the part of Yahweh, " See, I am
setting before you this day a blessing and a
curse," according as they might obey or disobey
the Divme command. It is stated, in short, that
the whole future of the people is to be deter-
mined by their attitude to Yahweh and the com-
mands He has given them. In these two words
" blessing " and " curse." as Dillmann observes.
He sets before them the greatness of the deci-
sion they are called upon to make. Just as at
the end of chapter iii. the vision of Yahweh's
stretched-out hand, which has strewn the world
with the wrecks and fragments of destroyed
nations, is relied on to prepare the people for
contemplating their own calling, so here the
gain or loss which would follow their decision
is solemnly set before them. By Dillmann and
others it is supposed that vv. 29 and 31, which
instruct the people to " lay the blessing upon
Mount Gerizim a'nd the curse upon Mount
Ebal," have been transferred by the later editor
from chapter xxvii., where they would come in
very fittingly after ver. 3. But whether that be
so or not, they are evidently so far in place here
that they add to the solemnity with which the
fate of the nation in the future is insisted upon.
Their "choice is brief and yet endless"; it can
be made in a moment, but in its consequence it
will endure.
But here a difficulty arises. Dr. Driver in his
" Introduction " says of this hortatory section of
our book that its teaching is that " duties are not
to be performed from secondary motives, such
as fear or dread of consequences; they are to be
the spontaneous outcome of a heart from which
every taint of worldliness has been removed, and
which is penetrated by an all-absorbing sense of
personal devotion to God." Yet in these later
chapters we have had little else but appeals to
the gratitude and hopes and fears of Israel.
Chapters viii. to xi. are wholly taken up with
incitements to love and obey God, because He
has been immeasurably good to them, never let-
ting their ingratitude overcome His loving-
kindness; because they are v/holly dependent
upon Him for prosperity and the fertility of their
land; and because evil will come upon them if
they do not. That would seem to be the oppo-
site of what Driver h^s declared to be the in-
forming spirit and the fundamental teaching of
Deuteronomy.
Yet his view is the true one. Even if the Deu-
teronomist had added these lower motives to at-
tract and gain over those who were not so open
to the higher, that would not deprive him of the
glory of having set forth disinterested love as the
really impelling power in true religion. We are
not required to lower our esteem of that achieve-
ment, even if, like the reasonable and wise
teacher he is, he boldly uses every motive that
actually influences men, whether it should do so
or not, to win them to the higher life. But it
is not necessary to suppose that he does so. His
demand is that men shall love Yahweh their
God with all their heart and strength, and to
win them to that he sets forth what their God
has revealed Himself to be. Men cannot love
one whom they do not know: they cannot love
one who has not proved himself lovable to them.
As his whole eflfort is to get men to love God,
and show their love by obedience to His ex-
pressed will, the Deuteronomist brings to mind
all His loving thoughts and acts towards them,
and so continually keeps his appeal at the high-
est level. He does not ask men to serve God
because it will be profitable to them, but be-
5S6
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOxMY
cause they love God: and he endeavours to make
them love God by reciting all His love and
friendliness and patience to His people, and by
pointing out the evil which His love is seeking
to ward oflf. The plea is not the ignoble one that
they must serve Yahweh for what they can gain
by it, but that they should love Yahweh for His
love and graciousness, and that out of this love
continual obedience should flow as a necessary
result. That is his central position; and if he
points out the necessary results of a refusal to
turn to God in this way, he does not thereby set
forth slavish fear or calculating prudence as in
themselves religious motives. They are only
natural and reasonable means of turning men to
view the other side. He uses them to bring the
people to a pause, during which he may win
them by the love of God. • That is always the
true appeal; and Christianity when it is at its
finest can do nothing but follow in this path.
Having before his mind the results of evil con-
duct, he does urge men to escape from the wrath
that may rest upon them. But the only means
so to escape is to yield to the love of God. No
self-restraint dictated by fear of consequences,
no turning from evil because of the lions that are
seen in the path, satisfies the demand of either
Old Testament or New Testament religion. Both
raise the truly religious life above that into the
region of self-devoting love; and they both deny
spiritual validity to all acts, however good they
may be in themselves, which do not follow love
as its free and uncalculating expression. Yet
they both deal with men as rational beings who
can estimate the results of their acts, and warn
them of the death which must be the end of every
other way of supposed salvation. In this man-
ner they keep the path between extremes, ignor-
ing neither the inner heart of religion nor wind-
ing themselves too high for sinful men.
How hard it is to keep to this reasonable but
spiritual view is seen by popular aberrations both
within and without the Church. At times in the
history of the Church Christian teachers have
allowed their minds to be so dominated by the
terror of judgment that judgment has seemed to
the world to be the sole burden of their message.
As a reaction from that again, other teachers
have arisen who put forward the love of God in
such a one-sided way as to empty it of all its
severe but glorious sublimity; as if, like Mo-
hammed, they believed God was minded mainly
" to make religion easy " unto men. Outside
the Church the same discord prevails. Some
secular writers praise those religions which de-
clare that a man's fate is decided at the judgment
by the bala^nce of merit over demerit in his acts;
while others mock at any judgment, and com-
mit themselves with a light heart to the half-
amused tolerance of the Divine good nature.
But the teaching which combines both elements
can alone sustain and bear up a worthy spiritual
life. To rely upon terror only, is to ignore the
very essence of true religion and the better ele-
ments in the nature of man; for that zvill not be
dominated by fear alone. To think of the Di-
vine love as a lazv. self-indulgent laxity, is to
degrade the Divine nature, and to forget that the
possibility of wrath is bound up in all love that
is worthy of the name.
One other point is worthy of remark. In
these chapters, which deal with the history of
God's chosen people in their relations with Him,
there come out the very elements which dis-
tinguish the personal religion of St. Paul. The
beginning and end of it all is the free grace of
God. God elected His people that they might
be His instrument for blessing the world, not
because of any goodness in them, for they were
perverse and rebellious, but because He had so
determined and had promised to the fathers. He
had delivered them from the bondage of Egypt
by His mighty power, and dwelt among them
thenceforth as among no other people. He gave
them a land to dwell in, and there as in His own
house He watched and tended them, and strove
to lead them upwards to the height of their call-
ing as the people of God by demanding of them
faith and love. It is a very enlightening re-
mark of Robertson Smith's that the deliverance
out of Egypt was to Israel in the Old Testament
what conversion is to the individual Christian
according to the New Testament. Taking that
as our starting-point, we see that the thought
of Deuteronomy is precisely the thought of Ro-
mans. ,It is said, and truly enough, that the
Pauline theology was a direct transcript of Paul's
own experience; but we see from this that he did
not need to form the moulds for his own funda-
mental thoughts. Long before him the author
of Deuteronomy had formed these, and they
must have been familiar to every instructed Jew.
But the recognition of this is not a loss but a
gain. If St. Paul had founded a theory of the
universal action of God upon the soul only on
the grounds of his own very peculiar experience,
it might be argued that the basis of his teaching
had been too personal to permit us to feel sure
that his view was really as exhaustive as he
thought. We see, however, that what he ex-
perienced the Deuteronomist had long before
traced in the history of his people; and most
probably he would not have traced it with so
firm a hand had he not himself had experience
of a similar kind in his personal relations with
God. This method of conceiving the relation
of God to the higher life of man, therefore, is
stated by the Scriptures as normal. The free
grace of God is the source and the sustainer of
all spiritual life, whether in individuals or com-
munities. Ultimately, behind all the successful
or unsuccessful efforts of the human heart and
will, we are taught to see the great Giver, wait-
ing to be gracious, willing that all men should
be saved, but acting with the strangest reserves
and limitations, choosing Israel among the
nations, and even within Israel choosing the
Israel in whom alone the promises c^n be real-
ised. Made to serve by human sin, He waits
upon the caprices of the wills He has created.
He does not force them; but with compassionate
patience He builds up His Holy Temple of such
living stones as offer themselves, and " without
haste as without rest " prepares for the consum-
mation of His work in the redemption of a
people that shall be all prophets, a kingdorn of
priests, a holy nation unto whom all nations
shall jcm themselves when they see that God is
in them of a truth. That is the Old Testament
conception of the^ source, and guarantee, and
goal of all spiritual lite in the world, and St.
Paul's view is merely a more mature and definite
form of the same thing. And wherever spiritual
life has manifested itself with unusual power,
the same consciousness of utter unworthiness on
the part of man, and entire dependence upon the
grace and favour of God. has also manifested
itself. The intellectual dii^culties connected with
Deuteronomy xii.-xxvi.]
LAW AND RELIGION.
557
this view, great as they are, have never sup-
pressed it; the pride of man and his faith in him-
self have not been able permanently to obscure
it. The greater men are, the more entirely do
they dread any approach to that self-exaltation
which puts away as unnecessary the Divine hand
stretched out to them. As Dean Church points
out,* " not Hebrew prophets only, but the
heathen poets of Greece looked with peculiar and
profound alarrri upon the haughty self-sufifi-
ciency of men." Nothing can, they think, ward
oflf evil from the man who makes the mistake of
supposing, even when carrying out the Divine
will, that he needs only his own strength of
brain and will and arm to succeed, that he is ac-
countable to no one for the character which he
permits success to build up within him.
Even the agnostic of to-day, as represented
by Professor Huxley, cannot do without some
modicum bf " grace " in his conception of man's
relation to the powers of nature, though to ad-
mit this is to run a rift of inconsistency through
his whole system of thought. " Suppose," he
says in his " Lay Sermons," " it were perfectly
certain that the life and future of every one of
us would, one day or other, depend on his win-
ning or losing a game at chess. . . The chess-
board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena
of the universe, the rules of the game are what
we call the laws of nature. The player on the
other side is hidden from us. We know that his
play is always fair, just, patient. But we know
to our cost that he never overlooks a mistake, or
makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
To the man who plays well the highest stakes are
paid with that overflowing generosity with which
the strong shows delight in strength, and one
who plays ill is checkmated without haste, but
without remorse. My metaphor will remind you
of the famous picture in which the Evil One is
depicted playing a game of chess with man for
his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in
that picture a calm, strong angel, playing, as we
say, for love, and who would rather lose than
win, and I should accept it as the image of hu-
man life." Even in a world without God, there-
fore, the facts of life suggest " justice," " pa-
tience," " generosity," and a pity which " would
rather lose than win." With all the inexorable
rigour and hardness of man's lot there is mingled
something that suggests " grace " in the power
that rules the world; and from the Deuteronomist
to St. Paul, from Augustine to Calvin and Pro-
fessor Huxley, the resolutely thorough thinkers
have found, in the last analysis, these two ele-
ments, the rigour of law and the election of
grace, working together in the moulding of
mankind.
The statement of these facts in Deuteronomy
is as thorough as any that succeeded it. The
rigour of law could not be more precisely and
pathetically declared than in this insistence on
the blessing or the curse which must inevitably
follow right choice or wrong. But the tender-
ness of grace could not be more attractively dis-
played than in this picture of Yahweh's dealings
with Israel. Love never faileth here, no more
than elsewhere. It persists, notwithstanding
stiff-necked rebellion, and in spite of coarse ma-
terialism of nature. Even a childish fickleness,
more utterly trying than any other weakness or
defect, cannot wear it out. But inexorable
blessing or curse is blended with it, and helps
* " Cathedral Sermons," p. 26.
36— Vol. I.
to work out the final result for Israel and man-
kind. That is the manner of the government of
God, according to the Scriptures. History in
its long course as known to us now confirms the
view; and the author of Deuteronomy, in thus
blending love and law together in the end of this
great exhortation, has rested the obligation to
obedience on a foundation which cannot be
moved.
CHAPTER XIIL
LAW AND RELIGION.
Deuteronomy xii.-xxvi.
With this section (chapters xii.-xxvi.) we
have at length reached the legislation to which
all that has gone before is, in form at least, a
prelude. But in its general outline this code, if
it can be so called, has a very unexpected char-
acter. When we speak of a code of laws in
modern days, what we mean is a series of
statutes, carefully arranged under suitable heads,
dealing with the rights and duties of the people,
and providing remedies for all possible wrongs.
Then behind these laws there is the executive
power of the Government, pledged to enforce
them, and ready to punish any breaches of them
which may be committed. In most cases, too,
definite penalties are appointed for any disregard
or transgression of them. Each word has been
carefully selected, and it is understood that the
very letter of the laws is to be binding. Every
one tried by them knows that the exact terms of
the laws are to be pressed against him, and that
the thing aimed at is a rigorous, literal enforce-
ment of every detail. Tried by such a concep-
tion, this Deuteronomic legislation looks very
extraordinary and unintelligible.
In the first place, there is very little of orderly
sequence in it. Some large sections of it have
a consecutive character; but there is no percepti-
ble order in the succession of these sections, and
there has been very little attempt to group the
individual precepts under related heads. More-
over in many sections there is no mention of a
penalty for disobedience, nor is there any ma-
chinery for enforcing the prescriptions of the
code. There is, too, much in it that seems rather
to be good advice, or direction for leading a
righteous lite, a life becoming an Israelite and a
servant of Yahweh, than law. For instance, such
a prescription as this, " If there be with thee a
poor man, one of thy brethren, within any of thy
gates, in thy land which Yahweh thy God giveth
thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart nor shut
thine hand from thy poor brother," can in no
sense be treated as a law, in the hard technical
sense of that word. It stands exactly on a level
with the exhortations of the New Testament,
c. g., " Be not wise in your own conceits," " Ren-
der to no man evil for evil," and rather sets up
an ideal of conduct which is to be striven after
than establishes a law which must be complied
with. There is no punishment prescribed for
disobedience. All that follows if a man do
harden his heart against his poor brother is the
sting of conscience, which brings home to him
that he is not living according- to the will of God.
In almost every respect, therefore, this Deu-
teronomic code differs from a modern code, and
in dealing with it we must largely dismiss the
558
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
ideas which naturally (..-viir to us when we speak
of a code of laws. Guv conception of that is,
clearly, not valid for these ancient codes; and we
need not be surprised if we find that they will
not bear being pressed home in all their details,
as modern codes must be, and are meant to be.
Great practical difficulties have arisen in India,
Sir Henry Maine assures us, from applying the
ideas of Western lawyers to the ancient and
sacred codes of the East. He says that the eflfect
of a procedure under which all the disputes of a
community must be referred to regular law-
courts is to stereotype ascertained usages, and
to treat the oracular precepts of a sacred book
as texts and precedents that must be enforced.
The consequence is that vague and elastic social
ordinances, which have hitherto varied according
to the needs of the people, become fixed and im-
mutable, and an Asiatic society finds itself
arrested and, so to speak, imprisoned unexpect-
edly within its own formulas. Inconsistencies
and contradictions, which were never perceived
when these laws were worked by Easterns, who
had a kind of instinctive perception of their true
nature, became glaring and troublesome under
Western rule, and much unintentional wrong
has resulted. May it not be that the same thing
has happened in the domain of literature in con-
nection with these ancient Hebrew laws? Dis-
crepancies, small and great, have been the com-
monplace of Pentateuch criticism for many years
past, and on them very far-reaching theories
have been built. It may easily be that some of
these are the result rather of our failure to take
into account the elastic nature of Asiatic law,
and that a less strained application of modern
notions would have led to a more reasonable
interpretation.
But granting that ordinary ancient law is not
to be taken in our rigorous modern sense, yet
the fact that what we are dealing with here is
Divine law may seem to some to imply that in
all its details it was meant to be fulfilled to the
letter. If not, then in what sense is it inspired,
and how can we be justified in regarding it as
Divinely given? The reply to that is, of course,
simply this, that inspiration makes free use of all
forms of expression which are common and per-
missible at the time and place at which it utters
itself. From all we know of the Divine methods
of acting in the world, we have no right to sup-
pose that in giving inspired laws God would
create entirely new and different forms for Him-
self. On the contrary, legislation in ancient
Israel, though Divine in its source, would natu-
rally take the ordinary forms of ancient law.
Moreover in this case it could hardly have been
otherwise. As has already been pointed out, a
large part of the Mosaic legislation must have
been adopted from the customs of the various
tribes who were welded into one by Moses. It
cannot be conceived that the laws against steal-
ing, for example, the penalties for murder, or
the prescriptions for sacrifice, can have been
first introduced by the great Lawgiver. He
made much ancient customary law to be part and
parcel of the Yahwistic legislation by simply tak-
ing it over. If so, then all that he added would
naturally, as to form, be moulded on what he
found pre-existing. Consequently we may apply
to this law, whether Divinely revealed or
adopted, the same tests and methods of inter-
pretation as we should apply to any other body
of ancient Eastern law.
Now of ancient Eastern codes the laws of
Manu are the nearest approach to the Mosaic
codes, and their character is thus stated by
themselves (chap, i., ver. 107) : " In this work
the sacred law has been fully stated, as well as
the good and bad qualities of human actions and
the immemorial rule of conduct to be followed
by all." That means that in the code are to be
found ritual laws, general moral precepts, and a
large infusion of immemorial customs. And its
history, as elicited by criticism, has very interest-
ing hints to give us as to the probable course of
legal development in primitive nations. It is
sometimes said that the results of the criticism
of the Old Testament, if true, present us with a
literature which has gone througli vicissitudes
and editorial processes for which literary history
elsewhere affords absolutelv no parallel. How-
ever that may be as regards the historical and
prophetical books, it is not true witH regard to
the legal portions of the Pentateuch. The very
same processes are followed in Professor
Buhler's Introduction to his translation of the
" Laws of Manu," forming Vol. XXV. of "The
Sacred Books of the East," as are followed in
the critical commentaries on the Old Testament
law codes. Pages Ixvii. seq. of Buhler's Intro-
duction read exactly like an extract from Kue-
nen or Dillmann; and the analysis of the text,
with its resultant list of interpolations, runs as
much into detail as any similar analysis in the
Old Testament can do. Moreover the con-
jectures as to the growth of Manu's code are, in
many places, parallel to the critical theories of
the growth of the Mosaic codes. The founda-
tion of Manu is, in the last resort, threefold —
the teaching of the Vedas, the decisions of those
acquainted with the law, and the customs of vir-
tuous Aryas. At a later time the teachers of the
Vedic schools gathered up the more important
of these precepts, decisions, and customs into
manuals for the use of their pupils, written at
first in aphoristic prose, and later in verse.
These, however, were not systematic codes at
all. As the name given them implies, they were
strings of maxims or aphorisms. Later, these
were set forth as binding upon all, and were re-
vised into the form of which the " Laws of
Manu " is the finest specimen.
In Israel the process would appear to have
been similar, though much simpler. It was
similar; for though there are radical diflfertnces
between the Aryan and the Semitic mind which
must not be overlooked, the former being more
systematic and fond of logical arrangement than
the latter, a great many of the things which are
common to Moses and Manu are quite inde-
pendent of race, and are due to the fact that both
legislations were to regulate the lives of men at
the same stage of social advancement. But
Manu was much later than Moses. Indeed, as
we now have them, the laws of Manu are as late
as the post-Ezraite Judaic code, and in temper
and tone these two codes very nearly resemble
each other. Consequently the earlier codes of
the Pentateuch are simpler than Manu. When
Israel left Egypt, custom must have been almost
alone the guide of life. Moses' task was to pro-
mulgate and force home his fundamental truths;
in this view he must adopt and remodel the cus-
tomary law so as to make it innocuous to the
higher principles he introduced, or even to make
it a vehicle for the popularising of them. So
far as he made codes, he would make them v.ith
Deuteronomy xii.-xxvi.]
LAW AND RELIGION.
559
that end. Consequently he would take up mainly
such prominent points as were most capable of
being, or which most urgently needed to be,
moralised, leaving all the rest to custom where
it was harmless. This is the reason, too, most
probably, why the earlier codes are so short and
so unsystematic. They are selections which
needed special attention, not complete codes
covering the whole of life. In fact the form and
contents of all the Old Testament codes can be
accounted for only on this supposition. As the
codes lengthen, they do so simply by taking up,
in a modified or unmodified form, so much more
of the custom; and under the pressure of Yah-
wistic ideas these selected codes became more
and more weighted with spiritual significance
and power.
That would seem to have been the process by
which the inspired legislators of Israel did their
work; and if it be so, some of the variations
which are now taken to be certain indications
of diflferent ages and circumstances may simply
represent local varieties of the same custom.
Custom tends always to vary with the locality
within certain narrow limits. It would be quite
in accord with the general character of ancient
customary law to believe that, provided the law
was on the whole observed, there would be no
inclination to insist upon excluding small local
variations; and equally so that in a collection
like the Pentateuch the custom of one locality
should appear in one place, that of another in
another. In that case, to insist that a certain
.sacrifice, for example, shall always consist of the
same number of animals, and that any variation
means a new and later legislation on the subject,
is only to make a mistake. The discrepancy is
made important only by applying modern Eng-
lish views of law to ancient law. Professor A.
B. Davidson has shown in the Introduction to
his " Ezekiel " (p. liii.) that this latter was prob-
ably Ezekiel's view. '" On any hypothesis of
priority," he says, " the differences in details be-
tween him (t. e., Ezekiel) and the law (i. c, P)
may be easiest explained by supposing that,
while the sacrifices in general and the ideas
which they expressed were fixed and current, the
particulars, such as the kind of victims and the
number of them, the precise quantity of meal,
oil, and the like, were held non-essential and
alterable when a change would better express the
idea." The same principle would apply to the
differences between Ezekiel and Deuteronomy,
e. g., the omission of the feast of weeks and of
the law of the offering of the firstlings of the
Hock. If so, then obviously Ezekiel must have
thought that the previous ritual law was not
meant to be as binding as we make it.
But, as has already been remarked, this law
was elastic in more important matters; often,
even when it seems to legislate, it is only setting
up ideals of conduct. Before we leave this sub-
ject an example should be given, and the law
of war may serve, especially if we compare it
with the corresponding section of Manu. The
provisions in Deuteronomy, chap, xx., according
to which on the eve of a battle the officers should
proclaim to the army that any man who had built
a new house and had not dedicated it, or who
had planted a vineyard and had not yet used the
fruit of it, or who had betrothed a wife and not
yet taken her, or who was afraid, should retire
from the danger, as also the provisions that for-
l)id the destruction of fruit-trees belonging to a
besieged city, cannot have been meant as abso-
lute laws. Yet that is no ground for supposing
that they could have been introduced only after
Israel, having ceased to be a sovereign state,
waged no war, and that consequently they arc
interpolations in the original Deuteronomy.
For the similar provisions of the laws of Manu
were given while kings reigned, and were ad-
dressed to men constantly engaged in war. Yet
this is what we find: " When he (the king) fights
with his foes in battle, let him not strike with
weapons concealed (in wood), nor with (such as
are) barbed, poisoned, or the points of which are
blowing with fire. Let him not strike one who
(in flight) has climbed on an eminence, nor a
eunuch, nor one who joins the palms of his
hands (in supplication), nor one (who flees)
with flying hair, nor one who sits down, nor one
who says ' I am thine,' nor one who sleeps, nor
one who has lost his coat of mail, nor one who is
naked, nor one who is disarmed, nor one who
looks on without taking part in the fight, nor
one who is fighting with another foe, nor one
whose weapons are broken, nor one afflicted
(with sorrow), nor one who has been grievously
wounded, nor one who is in fear, nor one who
has turned to flight; but in all these cases let
him remember the duty (of honourable war-
riors)." With an exact and unremitting obliga-
tion to observe these precepts war would be
impossible, and we may be sure that in neither
case were they meant in that sense. They
simply set forth the conduct which a chivalrous
soldier would desire to follow, and would on
fitting occasions actually follow; but by no
means what he must do, or else break with his
religion. Only by hypotheses like these can the
form and the character of such laws be properly
explained, and if we keep them constantly in
mind, some at least of the difficulties which re-
sult from a comparison of the law and the his-
tories may be mitigated.
Such being the character of the Deuteronomic
code, the question has been raised whether its
introduction and acceptance by Josiah was not a
falling away from the spirituality of ancient re-
ligion. Many modern writers, supported by St.
Paul's dicta concerning the law, say that it was.
Indeed the very mention of law seems to depress
writers on religion in these days, and Deuter-
onomy appears to be to them a name of fear.
But whatever tendencies of modern thinking
may have brought this about, it is nevertheless
true that experience embodied in custom and law
is the kindly nurse, not the deadly enemy, of
moral and spiritual life. Without law a nation
would be absolutely helpless; and it is incon-
ceivable that at any stage of Israel's history they
were without this guide and support. As we
have seen, they never were. First they had cus-
tomary law; then along with that short special
codes, e. g., the Book of the Covenant and the
Deuteronomic code; and even when the whole
Pentateuchal law as we have it had been elabo-
rated, a good deal must still have been left to
custom. Consequently there was nothing so
startling and revolutionary in the introduction
of Deuteronomy as many have combined to
represent. Indeed it is difficult to see how it
altered anything in this respect. Of all forms of
law, customary law is perhaps that which de-
mands and receives most unswerving obedience.
Under it, therefore, the pressure of law was
heavier than it could be in any other form. It
56o
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
does not appear how the fact that those observ-
ing it did not think of that which they obeyed as
law, but simply custom, altered the essential
nature of their relation to it. They were guided
by ordinances which did not express their own
inward conviction, and were not a product of
their own thought. They obeyed ordinances
from without, and these ought therefore to have
had the same effect upon the moral and spiritual
life as written laws. For they cannot be said to
have regulated only civil life. Religious life
(even if the Book of the Covenant be Mosaic or
sub-Mosaic, as I believe; much more if it be
post-Davidic, as many say) must have been
largely regulated by the customs of Israel. If
law then be in its own nature, as the antinomians
tell us, destructive of spontaneity and prog-
ress, if it necessarily externalises religion, then
there would have been as little room for the
religion of the prophets before Deuteronomy as
after it.
But, as a matter of fact, no falling off in
spirituality took place after Deuteronomy.
Wellhausen says that with law freedom came to
an end, and this was the death of prophecy.
But he can support his thesis only by denying the
name of prophet to all the prophets after Jere-
miah. It is difficult to see the basis of such a
distinction. It is judged by this, if by nothing
else — that it compels Wellhausen to deny that the
author of Second Isaiah is a prophet. That he
wrote anonymously is held to prove that he felt
this himself. Now a view so extraordinarily
superficial has no root, and every reader of that
most touching and sublime of all the Old Testa-
ment books will simply stand amazed at the
depth of the critical prejudice which could dic-
tate such a judgment. If the post-Deuteronomic
prophets are not prophets, then there are no
prophets at all, and the whole discussion be-
comes a useless logomachy. But even if
Ezekiel and Second Isaiah and the rest are not
prophets, they are at least full of spiritual life
and power, so that the decay of spiritual religion
which the adoption of Deuteronomy is supposed
- to have brought about must be considered purely
imaginary on that ground also. And this con-
tention is strengthened by the theories of the
critical : school themselves. If the bulk of the
Psalms, as all critics incline to believe, or all of
, them, as some say, are post-exilic, then the first
. centuries of the post-exilic period must have
been the most spiritually minded epoch in
Israelite history. The depth of religious feeling
exhibited in the Psalms, and the comprehension
of the inwardness of man's true relation to God
by which they are penetrated, are the exact con-
trary of- the externality and superficiality which
the introduction of written law is said to have
produced. So long as the Psalms were being
written religious life must have been vigorous
and healthy, and to date the beginnings of Phari-
saic externalism from Josiah's day must conse-
quently be an error.
After what has been said it is scarcely neces-
sary to discuss Duhm's views of the opposition
between prophecy and Deuteronomy. It will be
sufficient to ask how the latter can have turned
against prophecy, when it is in its essence an
embodiment of prophetic principles in law, and
was introduced and supported by prophets.
But, it may be said, after all prophecy did decay,
and ultimately die, and that too during the
period after Deuteronomy. Is there not in that
admitted fact a presumption that this law did
work against prophecy? If so, then it is more
than met by the fact that the decay of spiritual
religion became noticeable only some centuries
after this, and that the immediate effect of Deu-
teronomy was rather to deepen and intensify re-
ligion, and to keep it alive amid all the vicissi-
tudes of the Captivity and Return. Moreover
the break-up of the national life was sufficient to
account for the slow decay and final cessation of
prophecy. From the first, prophecy had been
concerned with the building up of a nation which
should be faithful to Yahweh. Its main function
had been to interpret and to foretell the great
movements and crises of national life — to read
God's purpose in the great world-movements
and to proclaim it. With Israel's death as a
nation the field of prophecy became gradually
circumscribed, and ultimately its voice ceased.
Consequently, though in the main the final ces-
sation of prophecy was connected with the rise
of externalism in religion and with the great de-
cay of spiritual life in the two or three centuries
before Christ, the destruction of the nation would
account for the feebleness of prophecy during a
period when the inner spiritual life was flourish-
ing as it flourished after Deuteronomy. More-
over, as religion became more inward and per-
sonal, prophecy, in the Old Testament sense,
had less place. Though in New Testament times
spiritual life and spiritual originality and power
were more present than at any time in the
world's history, prophecy did not revive. In
the whole New Testament there is not one purely
prophetic book save the Revelation, and that is
apocalyptic more than simply prophetic; and
though there was an order of prophets in the
early Church, if they had any special function
other than that of preachers their office soon
died out. If then the denationalising of religion
and its growth in individualism and inwardness
in New Testament times prevented the revival
of prophecy, we may surely gather that the
same things, and not the introduction of writ-
ten law, brought it to an end in the Old Tes-
tament.
Nor does St. Paul's judgment as to the mean-
ing and use of law, in Galatians, when rightly
understood, contradict this. No doubt he seems
to say that the Mosaic law by its very nature as
law is incompatible with grace, that it necessarily
stands out of relation to faith, and that its prin-
ciple is a purely external one, so much wages for
so much work. Further, he clearly regards it as
having been interpolated into the history of
Israel between the promises given to Abraham
and the fulfilment of them in the redemption by
Christ, and as having served only to increase
sin and to drive men thus to Christ. But when
he says this he is replying mainly to the Phari-
saic view of the law which was represented by
the Judaizers, and finds himself all the more at
home in refuting it that it was his own view be-
fore he became a Christian. According to that
view, the whole law. both the moral and cere-
monial provisions of it, was necessary to obtain
moral righteousness, and the mere doing of the
legally prescribed things gave a claim to the
promised reward. So interpreted, law had all
the evil qualities he states, and stood in absolute
ho:t:lity to grace and faith, the great Christian
principles. The only difficulty is that St. Paul
does not say, as we should expect him to do,
that originally the law was not meant to be so
Deuteronomy xii.]
LAWS OF SACRIFICE.
56«
regarded. He seems to admit by his silence that
the Pharisaic view of the law was the right one.
But if he does, he cannot have meant to include
Deuteronomy. For there law is made to have
its root and ground in grace. It is given to
Israel as a token of the free love of God, and it
is a law of life which, if kept, would make them
a peculiar people unto God. Further, love to
God is to be the motive from which all obedience
springs, so that this law is bound up with both
grace and faith. But the probability is that St.
Paul admits the Pharisaic view only because it
is that view with which alone he has to contend
in the case in hand. For in Romans vii. he
gives us quite another conception of the Mosaic
law.* There he is thinking of it mainly from an
ethical point of view, and he regards it as full of
the Spirit of God, as a norm of moral life which
not only continues to be valid in Christianity,
but which finds in the Christian life the very ful-
filment which it was intended to have. It presses
home too the moral ideal upon the man with ex-
traordinary power, and marks and emphasises
the terrible divergence between his aspirations
and his actual performance. This is a much
higher office than that which he assigns to law in
Galatians; and hence one gathers that he is not
speaking in Galatians exhaustively and conclu-
sively, but is condemning rather a way of regard-
ing the Mosaic law with which he had once sym-
pathised than that law in its own essential char-
acter. In its moral aspects, as represented by
the Decalogue, the law is of eternal obligation.
From it comes the light which brings to the
Christian that moral unrest and dissatisfaction
which is one of God's Divinest gifts to His
people. In this aspect, the law is holy and just
and good: instead of favouring the critical view
St. Paul leaves it without any fragment of real
support.
Our conclusion is, therefore, that the anti-
nomianism, which makes the acknowledgment of
Deuteronomy by Josiah and his people the turn-
ing-point for the worse in the religious history
of Israel, is unfounded. The nation had always
been under law, and previous to Deuteronomy
under even written law. This code was not in
any previously unheard-of way made the law -of
the kingdom. Its very contents are conclusive
against that view, for it contains much that could
not be enforced by the State. Instead of trying
to do by external means that which the persua-
sions of the prophets had failed to do. Josiah
and his people did just what they would have had
to do, when they became convinced that the pro-
phetic principles ought to be carried out. They
made an agreement to follow these Divine com-
mands, these God-given principles, in actual life.
But there is no hint that they regarded Deuter-
onomy as the sum of the Divine ordinances for
the life of men. Indeed there are many refer-
ences to other Divine laws; and the priestly
oracle remained, after Deuteronomy as before it,
a source of Divine guidance. Deuteronomy
therefore did not destroy prophecy; the post-
exilic Psalms are proof that it did not destroy
spiritual life: and the Pauline view of the law,
in at least one series of passages, coincides en-
tirely with the view that law stated as it is stated
in Deuteronomy may be one of the mightiest
influences to mould, and enrich, and deepen,
moral and spiritual life.
♦Ritschl's " Rechtfertigung und Versohnung," vol. ii.,
pp. 3iifE.
CHAPTER XIV.
LAWS OF SACRIFICE.
Deuteronomy xii.
It is a characteristic of all the earlier codes of
law — the Book of the Covenant, the Deutero-
nomic Code, and the Law of Holiness — that at
the head of the series of laws which they contain
there should be a law of sacrifice. Probably,
too, each of the three had, as first section of all,
the Decalogue. The Book of the Covenant and
Deuteronomy undeniably have it so, and the
earlier element which forms the basis of Lev.
xvii.-xxvi. not improbably had originally the
same form. If so, we may assume that the order
of the precepts has in a measure been determined
by the order of the commandments. On this
account the laws for the cultus would naturally
come first. For just as the first commandment
is, " Thou shalt have no other god before Me,"
and the second forbids all idolatrous images, so
the laws begin with provisions meant in the
main to ward ofif idolatry. Israel's great call-
ing was to receive and to spread the truth con-
cerning God. That was the centre of the sacred
deposit of Divine and revealed truth committed
to that nation; and it is most instructive to see
how, not only in historical statements, but even
in the form in which early Israelite legislation is
handed down to us, the Decalogue dominates all
the details of it. It formulated in as concrete a
shape as was possible the Divine demand that
Israelites should love God and their neighbour,
and therefore the legislative provisions and
statutes begin with ordinances dealing with
sacrifice.
To us in modern times it may seem almost
bathos to connect such an antecedent with such
a consequent; but it seems so, only because we
have difficulty in apprehending the meaning and
importance of sacrifice in primitive religion;
For sacrifice had in Israel a meaning and impor-
tance of its own, and a present value at every
period, which in no way depended upon its typi-
cal or prophetic value as pointing forward to the
sacrifice of Christ. It supplied the religious
needs of men even apart from the clearness of
their knowledge about its ultimate purpose.
Sacrifice, especially in its simplest meaning, was
in heathenism absolutely essential as a means of
approach to God. To come before a great man
without a gift was in ancient days an outrage.
It was therefore inevitable that men should ap-
proach their gods in the same manner. Sacri-
ficial gifts expressed the dependent's joy in a
gracious lord, and also the homage and rever-
ence due from a subject to a king. Further, as
all good things were regarded as the gifts of the
gods to their worshippers, the sacrifices con-
veyed thanks for good gifts received, and joined
the gods and their worshippers by a common
participation in the Divine gift which connected
them as eaters at the same table. But sacrifices
had a higher reach of expression even than that.
As they were brought to the gods they were the
symbols of the self-devotion of the offerer to the
service of his god; and where there was need of
propitiation because of offence consciously
given, or offence felt by the deity for unknown
reasons, these gifts took on in some measure a
reconciling or propitiatory quality.
562
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
Now the Old Testament sacrifices had in them,
unquestionably, all these elements: but as Yah-
weh was high above all heathen deities in moral
character, they also took on a depth and intensity
of meaningywhich they could never have on the
soil of heathen religious conceptions. Along
this line of sacrificial ritual, therefore, all the
spiritual emotions of Israel flowed; and to
hold that sacrifice had no real place in the re-
ligion of Yahweh would be almost equivalent to
saying that neither love, nor penitence, nor
prayer, had any real place in it either. All these
found utterance in sacrifice and along with it;
and it has yet to be shown that they had any
regular and acceptable utterance otherwise. To
regulate sacrifice and keep it pure must, there-
fore, have been one chief means of guarding
against the degradation of Yahweh to the level
of the gods of the heathen.
But there is another and very important rea-
son for it. Both in the days when Moses parted
from his people, and also in the time of Manas-
seh, the people stood confronted by very .special
danger just at this point.
At the earlier period they were about to enter
upon intimate contact with the Canaanites, their
superiors in culture and in all the arts of civilised
life, but corrupted to the core. Further, the Ca-
naanite corruption was focussed in their religious
rites and worship, and evil could not fail to fol-
low if the people suffered themselves to be drawn
into any participation in it. For if Professor
Robertson Smith be right, the central point of
ancient sacrifice was the communion between the
god and his worshippers in the sacrificial feast.
They became of one kin with each other and
with the god, and this close relationship made
the communication of spiritual and moral infec-
tion almost a certainty.
In Manasseh's day again it was natural that
legislation on the same subject, and warnings of
even a more solemn kind, should be repeated.
A prophetic lawgiver writing at that date had
before him, not only the possibility of evil, but
actual experience of it. The laws and warnings
of the earlier code had been defied and neglected.
The faith of the chosen people had been mis-
erably perverted by contact with the Canaanites;
the whole history of prophecy had been a
struggle against corrupt and insincere worship;
and now the monstrous sacrifices to Moloch and
the invasion of Assyrian idolatry had degraded
Yahweh and destroyed His people, so that scarce
any hope of recovery remained. In bracing
himself for one more struggle with this des-
perate corruption, the Deuteronomist naturally
repeated in deeper tones the Mosaic warnings.
The command utterly to uproot and trample
under foot the symbols and instruments of Ca-
naanite worship, he brings, from the less promi-
nent place it occupies in the Book of the Cove-
nant, to the first place in his own code. To
I break with that and all other forms of idolatry,
utterly and decisively, had come to be the first
condition of any upward movement. The de-
grading and defiling bondage to idolatry into
which his people had fallen must end. With
trumpet tongue he calls upon them to break
down the Canaanite altars, dash in pieces their
obelisks, and burn their Asherim with fire.
To some moderns it may seem that such excess-
ive energy might, with better effect, have been
expended upon the denunciation of moral evils,
such as cruelty and lust and oppression, rather
than of idolatry. We have grown so accustomed
to the distinctions drawn by the Church of
Rome, and in later times by the neo-classicists,
between worshipping God through an image or
a picture, or in any natural object or natural
force, and the actual worship of the image or
picture or natural object itself, that we have
sophisticated our minds. But the author of
Deuteronomy knew by bitter experience that
such subtle, and, in great part, sophistical dis-
tinctions had no application to his people and
his time. Their worst immoralities were, he
knew well, rooted in their idol-worship. For
idolatry in any form binds all that is highest in
man to the sphere of nature, i. e., of moral indif-
ference. Just as a conception of God which
rigorously separated Him from nature, which
made His will the supreme impelling force in
the world, and which conceived His essential
attributes to be entirely ethical, was the fountain
of the higher life in Israel, so a lapse into idol-
atry of any kind was the negation of it all. No
doubt some moral life would have remained in
Israel, even if the lapse had become universal.
But, even at its best, this natural morality of self-
preservation l]as no future and no goal. It does
not lead the van of human progress; it merely
comes after, to ratify the results of it. Only
when social morality is taken up into a wider
sphere than its own, — only when it is conceived
as the path by which man can co-operate with a
sublime purpose lying beyond himself, — can it
maintain itself as the inspiration of human life,
impelling to progress and guiding it* Now, so
far as history teaches, this energy of moral life
has been attained only where the conception of
God which makes moral perfection to be His
essential nature has been accepted and cherished.
But no natural religion can rise to that; hence
idolatry must always be destructive of ethical
religion. It must destroy faith in the moral
character of God.
Fui'ther, it must destroy the moral character
of man. In the last resort all idolaters are
equally acceptable to their god, if only they
bring the prescribed gifts and accurately perform
the prescribed ceremonies. The lewd and the
chaste, the cruel and the merciful, the revengeful
and the forgiving, are all equally accepted when
they sacrifice. Non-moral or positively immoral
gods can care nothing about such diflferences.
Of this fact and its results no man acquainted
with the history of Israel could doubt. The
main zeal of the prophets was at all times di-
rected against those who were steeped in moral
evil, but were zealous in all that concerned sacri-
fice, and against the amazing folly of a people
who thought to bind the living God to their
cause and their interests by mere bribes, in the
shape of thousands of bullocks and ten thou-
sand rivers of oil. This conception was bound
up essentially with idolatry. But the evil of it
was intensified in the Semitic idolatries with
which Israel specially defiled itself. Their
cruelty and obscenity were unspeakable. Now
by Israel's idolatry Yahweh was made to appear
tolerant of Moloch and Baal, as if they were
equals. Every quality which the Mosaic reve-
lation had set forth as essential to the character
of Yahweh — His purity, His mercy, His truth —
was outraged by the society which His worship-
pers in Manasseh's days had thrust upon Him.
No reform, then, had the least chance of stability
* C/. Riehm, "Old Testament Theology," p. 25.
Deuteronomy xii.]
LAWS OF SACRIFICE.
563
till the axe was laid at the root of this wide-
spreading upas tree.
Deuterononi}', therefore, grapples first and
grapples thoroughly with the evil, and strikes it
a blow from which it was never to recover. The
inspired writer repeats with new energy the old
decrees of utter destruction against the Canaanite
sanctuaries; for though these were for the most
part no longer in Canaanite hands, the High
Places still existed; and the principle of that old
prohibition was more clamant for recognition
and realisation than it had ever been in the his-
tory of Israel before.
Then he goes on to proclaim the new law,
that no sacrifice should any longer be offered
save at the one central sanctuary chosen by Yah-
weh. There is no such provision in the Book
of the Covenant, and there is no hint in the legis-
lation of Deuteronomy that its author knew of
the Tabernacle and its sole right as a place of
sacrifice. From beginning to end of the code
he never mentions the Tabernacle nor the sacri-
fices there; and in the very terms in which he
permits the slaughter of animals for food in vv.
15, 16, and 20-25, though he obviously repeals a
custom which has been embodied in the Priestly
Code as a law (Lev. xvii. 3 fif.), he makes no
reference to that passage. Consequently this at
least may be said, that he may quite conceivably
have been ignorant of Lev. xvii. 3 fT. In igno-
rance of it, he might write as he has done; and if
not ignorant, it would be much more natural to
refer to it. When we add to this negative testi-
mony the positive testimony of verses 8 and 13,
which we have already discussed in Chapter I.,
there would seem to be little room for doubt
that the priestly law on this subject was not be-
fore the writer of Deuteronomy. Consequently
we are justified in regarding this as the first
written law actually promulgated on this sub-
ject. Hezekiah had attempted the same reform;
but he had, so far as we know, neither published
nor referred to any law commanding it, and his
work was entirely undone. The Deuteronomist,
more convinced than he that this step was abso-
lutely necessary to complete the Mosaic legisla-
tion on idolatry, and filled with the same inspi-
ration of the Almighty, completed it; and though
a reaction followed Josiah's enforcement of this
law also, its existence s^ved the life of the nation.
Its principles kept the nation holy, i. e., separate
to their God, during the Exile, and at the return
they were dominant in the formation of the
" congregation."
Certainly there is no lack of earnestness in the
way in which these principles are urged. With
that love of repetition which is a distinguishing
mark of this writer, he expresses the command-
ment first positively, then negatively. Then he
brings in the consequential alteration in the law
regarding the slaughtering of animals for food.
Again he returns to the command, explaining,
enlarging, insisting, and concludes with a reitera-
tion of the permission to slaughter. Eflforts, of
course, have been made to show that this repe-
tition is due to the amalgamation here of no
fewer than seven separate documents! But little
heed need be given to such fantastic attempts.
It is, once for all, a habit of this writer's mind
to shrink from no monotony of this kind. There
is not one important idea in his book which he
does not repeat again and again; and where repe-
tition is so constant a feature, and where the lan-
guage and thought is so consistent as it is here,
it is worse than uselei r to assert separate docu-
ments. The writer's e.irnestness is sufficient ex-
planation. He saw pfainly that, so long as the
provincial High Place;; existed and were popu-
lar, it would be impossible to secure purity of
worship. The heathen conceptions of the Ca-
naanites clung about their ancient sanctuaries,
and, like the mists from a fever swamp, infected
everything that came near. Inspection suffi-
ciently minute and constant to be of use was im-
practicable; there remained nothing but to de-
cree their abandonment. When the whole wor-
ship of the people was centred at Jerusalem, cor-
ruption of the idolatrous kind would, it was
hoped, be impossible. There, a pious king could
watch over it; there, Hhe Temple priesthood had
attained to worthier ideas in regard to sacrifice
and the fulfilment of the law than the priests else-
where. Josiah accordingly rigorously enforced
this new law.
Such a change, aim<:d solely at religious ends,
did not stop there. In many ways it affected the
social life of the peopL'. ; in vv. 15, 16, and 20, 24,
the author meets one hardship connected with
the new law, by allowing men to slay for food at
a distance from the altvr. According to ancient
custom, no flesh could be eaten by any Israelite,
save when the fat and the blood had been pre-
sented at the altar. Duiing the wilderness jour-
ney there would be little difficulty regarding this.
In the desert very little meat is eaten; and so
long as life was nomadic there would be no hard-
ship in demanding that those who wished to
make sacrificial feasts should wander towards
the central place of worship rather than from it.
It has been disputed whether there was in those
days a tabernacle such as the Priestly Code de-
scribes; but there certainly was, according to the
earliest documents, a tent in which Yahweh re-
vealed Himself and gave responses. As we have
seen, there must have been satri.'ice in connec-
tion with it; and though worship at other places
where Yahweh had made His name to be re-
membered was permitted, this sanctuary in the
camp must have had a certain pr?-eminence. A
tendency, but according to the v/ords of Deu-
teronomy nothing stronger than a tendency,
must have shown itself to make this the main
place of worship.
When the people crossed the Jordan into the
land promised to the fathers, and had abandoned
the nomadic life, great difficulty must have
arisen. For those at a distance from the place
where the Tabernacle was set up, the eating of
meat and the enjoyment of sacrificial feasts
would, by this ancient customary law, have been
rendered impossible, if the attendance at one
sanctuary had been obligatory. Only if men
could come to local sanctuaries, each in his own
neighbourhood, could the religious character of
the festivals at which meat was eaten be pre-
served. The nature of men's occupations, now
that they had become settled agriculturists, and
the dangers from the Canaanites so long as they
were not entirely subdued and absorbed, alike
forbade such long and frequent journeys to a
central sanctuary. The conquest must conse-
quently at once have checked any tendency to
centralisation that may have existed; and there
is reason to believe that the acceptance of the
Canaanite High Places as sanctuaries of Yah-
weh was in great part caused by the demands of
this ancient law concerning the " zebhach." In
any case it must have helped to overcome any
5^4
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
scruples that may have existed. But when the
Tabernacle and Ark were brought to Zion, and
still more when the Temple was built, the cen-
tripetal tendency, never altogether dead, must
have revived. For there was peace throughout
the land and beyond it. No danger from the Ca-
naanites existed; and the political centralisation
which Solomon aimed at, and actually carried
out, as well as the superior magnificence of the
Solomonic Temple and its priests, must have at-
tracted to Jerusalem the thoughts and the rever-
ence of the whole people. What Deuteronomy
now makes law may have then first arisen as a
demand of the Jerusalem priests. At all events,
the very existence of the Temple must have been
a menace to the High Places; and we may be
sure that among the motives which led the ten
tribes to reject the Davidic house, jealousy for
the local sanctuaries must have been prominent.
But the separation of the ten tribes would only
strengthen the claim of the Temple on Zion to
be for Judah the one true place of worship. The
territory ruled from Jerusalem was now so small
that resort to the central sanctuary was com-
paratively easy. The glorious memories of the
Davidic and Solomonic time would centre round
Jerusalem. Any local sanctuaries would be en-
tirely dwarfed and overshadowed by the splen-
dour and the, at least comparative, purity of the
worship there. Priests of local altars too must
inevitably have sunk in the popular estimation,
and even in their own, to a secondary and sub-
ordinate position, as compared with the carefully
organised and strictly graded Jerusalem priests.
Even without a positive command, therefore, the
people of Judah must have been gradually grow-
ing into the habit of seeking Yahweh at Jeru-
salem on all more solemn religious occasions;
and though the High Places might exist, their
repute in the Southern Kingdom must have been
decreasing. Of course if a command was given
in the Mosaic time which had been neglected, the
tendencies here traced must have been stronger
and more definite than we have depicted them.
When the prophetic teachings of Isaiah which
proclaimed Jerusalem to be " Ariel," the " sac-
rificial hearth," or " the hearth of God," were so
wondrously confirmed by the destruction of Sen-
nacherib's host before the city, the unique posi-
tion of Zion must have been secured; and after
that only those who were set- upon idolatry can
have had much interest in the High Places.
Hezekiah's effort to abolish these latter is quite
intelligible in these circumstances; and we may
feel assured that, as Wellhausen says,* " The
Jewish royal temple had early overshadowed the
other sanctuaries, and in the course of the
seventh century they were extinct or verging on
extinction."
Along with this there must have grown up a
measure of laxity in regard to the provision that
all slaughtering for food should take place at
the sanctuary. Many would doubtless go to
Zion, many would continue to resort to the
High Places, and a number, from a mere halting
between two opinions, would probably take their
" zebhachim " to neither. Consequently the law
before us would by no means be so revolutionary
as Duhm, for instance, pictures it. He says: " I
do not know if in the whole history of the world
a law can be pointed to which was so fitted to
change a whole people in its innermost nature
and in its outward appearance, at one stroke, as
* Wellhausen, " History," p. 420.
this was. The Catholic Church even has never
by all her laws succeeded in anything in the
least like it." But we have seen evidence of a
very strong and continuous pressure to this
point, at least in Judah. History during cen-
turies had justified and intensified it; so that in
all probability the true worshippers of Yahweh
found in the new law not so much a revolution
as a ratification of their already ancient practice.
To idolaters, of course, its adoption must have
meant a cessation of their idolatry; but the
change in the people and in their life would,
though extensive, be only such as any ordinary
reform would produce. Duhm overlooks alto-
gether the very small territory which the law
affected. A long day's walk would bring men
from Jericho, from Hebron, from the borders of
the Philistine country, and from Shechem and
Samaria to Jerusalem. If Deuteronomy made
a revolution, it must have been confined within
the modest limits of substituting a whole for a
half-day's journey to the Sanctuary.
Moreover it is a mistake to say that sacrifice
at one central sanctuary " took religion away
from the people," as Duhm says. If spiritual re-
ligion be meant, it ultimately brought religion
more vitally home to them. For when the
priestly system was fully carried out, the de-
mands of household religion were met, as the
post-exilic Psalms show, by the adoption of the
practice of household prayer without reference
to sacrifice, and finally by the institution of the
synagogue. A more spiritual method of ap-
proach to God was substituted for a less spiritual
in the remote places and in the homes of the
people. And the public worship even gained.
It became deeper, and more penetrated with a
sense of the necessity of deliverance from sin.
It is true, of course, that in the end Pharisaic
legalism perverted the new forms of worship, as
heathen externalism had perverted the old. But
in neither case was the perversion a necessity.
In both it was simply a manifestation of the
materialistic tendency which dogs the footsteps
of even the most spiritual religion, when it has
to realise itself in the life of man. It is enough
for the justification of the whole movement led
by Josiah to say that it held the Judasan exiles
together; that it kept alive in their hearts, as
nothing else did, their faith in God and in their
future; and that on their return it gave them the
form which their institutions could most profit-
ably take. Further, under the forms of religious
and social life which this movement generated,
the true, heartfelt piety which the prophets so
mourned the want of became more common than
ever it had been before.
The establishment of the central altar as the
only one was the main object of this law; but
there is much to be learned from the very terms
in which this is expressed. They breathe the
same love for man and sympathy with the poor
which forms one of the most attractive charac-
teristics of our book. The gracious bonds of
family afifection, the kindly feeling that should
unite masters and servants, the helpfulness
which ought to distinguish the conduct of the
rich to the poor, and above all the cheerful en-
joyment of the results of honest labour, are to
be preserved and sanctified even in the ritual of
sacrifice. " Thou shalt rejoice before Yahweh
in all that thou puttest thine hand unto," is here
the motto, if we may so speak, of religious
service. That, indeed, is to be made the oppor-
OLD TESTAMENT SACRIFICE AND CHRISTIANITY.
565
tunity for the discharge of all humane and
brotherly duties; and the religious life is at its
highest when the worshipper rejoices himself,
and shares and sheds abroad his joy upon others.
The love of God is here most intimately blended
with love of the brethren. Masters and servants,
slaves and free, the high and the low, are to be
reminded of their equal standing in the sight of
God, by their common participation in the sacri-
ficial meals; and the poorest are to be permitted
an equal enjoyment of the luxuries of the rich
in these solemn approaches to Yahweh. The
Deuteronomist here reaches the highest stage of
religious life, in that he shows himself in nowise
afraid of human joy. As we have seen, he knows
the value of austerity in religion. He is well
enough aware that war against evil is not made
with rose-water. But then he is equally far from
the extreme of suspecting all affection not di-
rectly turned to God, of regarding natural glad-
ness as a ruinous snare to the soul. This finely
balanced, this just attitude to all aspects of life,
is a most notable thing at this epoch in the his-
tory of the world, and considering the circum-
stances of the time it is little short of a marvel.
It is true, of course, that the religion of Israel
was always finely human. It could run into ex-
cesses, and was marked by many imperfections;
but asceticism, the doctrine which holds pain
and self-denial to be in themselves good, when
it did intrude into Israel, always came from
without. Nevertheless the heartiness and thor-
oughness with which all gracious human feel-
ings and all kindly human relations are here
taken up into religion is remarkable, even in the
Old Testament. More, perhaps, than anything
else in this book, it shows the sweetening and
wholesome effect of demanding supreme love
to God as man's first duty. " If any man come
to Me and hate not his father and mother," says
Christ, " he cannot be My disciple," * and many
purblind critics have found this to be a hard
saying. But all who know men know, that when
God in Christ is made so much the supreme ob-
ject of love that even the most sacred human
obligations seem to be disregarded in compari-
son, the human affection so thrust into the back-
ground is only made richer far than it otherwise
could be.
CHAPTER XV.
THE RELATION OF OLD TESTAMENT
SACRIFICE TO CHRISTIANITY.
But it may be asked. What is the relation of
this Divinely sanctioned ritual law of sacrifice
to our religion in its present phase? To that
question various answers are being returned, and
indeed it may be said that on this point almost
all the main differences of Christians turn. The
Church of Rome maintains in essence the sacer-
dotal view of the later Old Testament times,
though in a spiritualised Christian shape, and to
this the High Anglican view is a more or less
pronounced return. The Protestant Churches, on
the other hand, regard priests and sacrifices as
anachronisms since the death of Christ. In that,
for the most part, they regard the significance
of sacrifice as being summed up and completed;
and the present dispensation is for them the real-
isation in embryo of that which Old Testament
* Luke xiv. 26.
saints looked forward to — a people of God, every
true member of which is both priest and prophet,
i. e., has free and unrestricted access to God, and
is authorised and required to speak in His name.
The interest of Protestant Christians, therefore,
in priesthood and sacrifice in the Old Testa-
ment sense, though very great and enduring,
has no connection with the continuation of sac-
rifice. They look upon the Old Testament ritual
as wholly obsolete now. It was simply a stage
in the religious development of the chosen
people, and as such it has no claim to be con-
tinued among Christians.
By a curious allegorical process, however,
some devout Protestants keep alive their interest
in Old Testament ritual by finding in it an
elaborate symbolism covering the whole field of
evangelical theology. But this revivification of
the old law is too arbitrary and subjective, as
well as too improbable, to have an abiding place
in Christianity. It is, moreover, useless for the
guidance of life; for all that is thus ingeniously
put into the Levitical ordinances is found more
clearly and directly expressed elsewhere. The
amount of relig:ious symbolism in the earlier
stages of Israelite religion is small, and very
simple and direct. Even in the most elaborate
parts of the Levitical legislation, e. g., in the di-
rections regarding the Tabernacle, the purposely
allegorical element is kept within comparatively
narrow limits; and we may boldly say that the
mind which delights in finding spiritual mys-
teries in every detail of the sacrificial ritual is
Rabbinical rather than Christian. On the other
hand we need not enter upon a discussion of
the view held by " Modern " or Broad Church
theologians and by Unitarians, that sacrifice
was merely a heathen form taken over into Mo-
saism, that it had no special significance there,
and that the ideas connected with it have abso-
lutely no place in enlightened Christian the-
ology. The Christianity which attaches no sac-
rificial signification to the death of Christ has,
so far as I know, never shown itself to be a type
of religion able to create a future, and it is only
with types of Christianity that do and can live
Ave have to do. Our question here therefore is
limited to this. Which of the two types of view,
the Roman Catholic or the Protestant, is truest
to the Old Testament teaching?
Externally, perhaps, the evidence seems to
favour the Roman Catholic position; for the
prophets either directly say, or imply, that sacri-
fice shall be restored with new purity and power
in the Messianic time. This is so patent a fact
that it led Edward Irving to say that it was the
Old Testament economy that should abide, and
that of the New Testament which should pass
away. But the inner progress and development
of Old Testament religion is quite as decisively
on the other side. As we have seen. Old Testa-
ment piety had at the beginning almost no recog-
nised expression save in connection with sacri-
fice, and the Exile first trained the people to
faithfulness to God without it, sowing the seed
of a religious life largely separate from the sacri-
ficial ritual. Then the ordinance demanding sac-
rifice at one central altar, which, though intro-
duced by Deuteronomy, was made the exclusive
law only by the post-exilic community, furthered
the growth of these germs, so that they produced
the synagogue system. This completed the sev-
erance of the ordinary daily religion of the bulk
of the people from sacrificial ritual, so far as that
566
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
was attained within the limits of Judaism, and
prepared the way for Pauline Christianity, in
which all allegiance to ritual Judaism is cast off.
Now, as between the external and internal evi-
dence, there can be little doubt that the latter
has by far the greater weight, especially as the
external evidence can, perfectly well, be read in
a dififerent sense. The Old Testament promises
that sacrifice should be restored may be held to
have been fulfilled by the sacrificial death of
Christ, which completed and filled up all that
had gone before. In that case the evidence that
sacrifice and ritual are now obsolete for Chris-
tians is left standing alone, and the Protestant
view is justified.
And the case for this view is strengthened im-
measurably by observing that the modern sacer-
dotalism has taken up as essential what was the
main vice of sacrificial worship in the old
economy. That was, as we have seen, the tend-
ency to rest on the mere performance of the
external rite, without reference to the disposi-
tion of the heart or even to conduct. Rivers of
oil and hecatombs of victims were thought
sufficient to meet all possible demands on God's
part, and against this the polemic of the prophets
is unceasing. Now in almost all modern sacer-
dotalism the doctrine of the efificacy of sacra-
ments duly administered, apart from right dis-
positions in either him who administers them or
in him who receives them, has been affirmed.
It is not now, as it was in the " old time," an evil
tendency which had to be assiduously fought
against, but which could not be overcome. It
is openly incorporated in the orthodox teaching
and is distinctly provided for in the ideal of
Christian worship. That marks a considerable
falling away from the prophetic ideal: it can
hardly be regarded as the appointed end of that
great religious movement which the prophets
dominated and directed for so long. The teach-
ing of Deuteronomy certainly is, that wherever
mere external acts are supposed to have power
to secure entrance into the spiritual world of life
and peace, there the character of God is mis-
conceived and religion degraded. What it de-
mands is the inward and spiritual allegiance of
faithful men to God. What it depicts as the
essence of religious life is a set of the whole
nature Godward, as deep and irresistible as the
set of the tides —
" Such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam."
Under no sacerdotal system can that view be
unreservedly accepted, and therein lies the con-
demnation of every such system. So far as it is
allowed to prevail, the force of the prophetic
polemic has to be ignored or evaded, and in
greater or less degree the same spiritual decay
which the prophets mourned over in Israel must
appear.
But it is not only where trust in the mere
opus operatum is theoretically justified that it
makes its baleful presence felt. It may surrepti-
tiously creep in where the door is theoretically
shut against it. The tendency is very deep-
seated in human nature; and many evangelical
preachers, who repudiate all sacramentarianism,
and throw the full emphasis of Christian re-
ligious life upon grace and faith, yet bring back
again in subtler shape that very thing which they
have rejected. For example, instead of the re-
ception of the sacrament at the hands of ordained
ministers, a man's acceptance with God is some-
times made to depend upon a declaration of be-
lief that Christ has died for him, or that he has
been redeemed and saved by Christ. Wherever
such statements are forced upon men, there is a
tendency to assume that a decisive step in the
spiritual life is taken by the mere utterance of
them. The motives which actuate the utterer
are taken for granted; the existence of such a set
of the spiritual nature to God as Deuteronomy
demands is supposed to be proved by the mere
spoken words; and men who cannot or will not
say such things glibly are unchurched without
mercy. What is that but the opus operatum in its
most offensive shape? But in whatever shape it
appears, the Deuteronomic demand for love to
God, with the heart and soul and strength, as
essential to all true spiritual service and sacrifice,
condemns it. Love to God and love to men are
the main things in true religion. All else is
subordinate and secondary. Sacrifice and ritual
without these are dead forms. That is the Deu-
teronomic teaching, and by it, once for all, the
true relation of the cultus to the life is fixed.
Nevertheless the priestly and sacrificial system
of the Old Testament has even for Christians a
present importance, for it is an adumbration of
that which was to be done in the death of Christ.
It has an unspeakable value, when rightly used,
as an object-lesson in the elements which are
essential to a right approach to a Holy God on
the part of sinful men. Even in heathenism
there were such foreshadowings; and nothing is
more fitted to exalt our views of the Divine wis-
dom than to trace, as we can now do, the ways
in which man's seekings after God, even beyond
the bounds of the chosen people, took forms that
were afterwards absorbed and justified in the re-
deeming work of our Blessed Lord. For
example, Professor Robertson Smith says of
certain ancient heathen piacular sacrifices, " The
dreadful sacrifice is performed, not with savage
joy, but with awful sorrow, and in the mystic
sacrifices the deity himself suffers with and for
the sins of his people and lives again in their new
life." Now if we admit that he is not unduly
importing into these sacrifices ideas which are
really foreign to them, surely awe is the only
adequate emotion wherev/ith a believer in Christ
can meet such a strange prophecy, in the lowest
religion, of that which is deepest in the highest.*
The sacrificial system in general was founded, in
part at least, on belief in the possibility and de-
sirability of communion with God. In the sacri-
ficial feasts this was supposed to be attained, and
the essential religious needs of mankind found
expression in much of the ritual. If the death
of the god, and his returning to life again in his
people found a prominent place in piacular sacri-
fices in various lands, that suggests that in some
dim way even heathen men had learned that sin
cannot be removed and forgiven without cost to
God as well as to man, and that communion in
suffering as well as in joy is a necessary element
of life with God. The human heart. Divinely
biassed, asserted itself in effort after such asso-
ciation with Deity, and in the feeling that sin
was that element in life which it would make the
highest demand upon the Divine love to set
effectively aside.
But if such preparation for the fulness of the
time was going on in heathenism, if the mind
and heart of man, driven forward by Divinely
* "Ency. Brit.," vol. xxi., p. 138.
OLD TESTAMENT SACRIFICE AND CHRISTIANITY.
567
ordered experience and its own needs, could pro-
duce such forecasts in the ritual of heathen re-
ligion, we surely must admit that the religious
ritual in Israel had an even more intimate con-
nection with that which was to come. For we
claim that in guiding the destinies of Israel God
was, in an exceptional manner, revealing Him-
self, that among them He established the true
religion, unfolded it in their history, and pre-
pared as nowhere else for the advent of Him
who should make real and objective the union of
God and man. Here consequently, if anywhere,
we should expect to find the permanent factors
in religion recognised even in the forms of wor-
ship, and the less permanent allowed to fall away.
We should also expect the ritual of the cultus to
grow in depth of meaning with time, and that it
would more and more recognise the moral and
spiritual elements in life. Finally, we should
expect that it would be the parent of concep-
tions rising above and beyond itself, and more
fully consonant with the revelation given by
Christ than anything in heathenism.
Now all these expectations would seem to have
been fulfilled; and it is reasonable to assume that
those sacrificial ideas which corresponded to the
deepened consciousness of sin, and synchronised
apparently with the decay of Israel's political in-
dependence, are rightly applied to the elucida-
tion of the meaning of Christ's death. Of course
mistakes may be and have been made in the ap-
plication of this principle; the most common
being that of forcing every detail of the imper-
fect and temporary provision into the interpreta-
tion of the perfect and eternal. Sometimes,
too, the significance of the life and coming of
Christ are obscured by a too exclusive attention
to His sacrificial death. But the principle in
itself must be ^ound, if Christianity is in any
sense to be regarded as the completion and full
development of the Old Testament religion.
Besides the immediate significance of sacrifice
which the worshippers perceived and by which
they were edified, there was another significance
which belonged to it as a step in the long prog-
ress which had been marked out for this people
in the Divine purpose. Regarded from that
standpoint, the sacrifices, and the ritual con-
nected with them, had a meaning for the future
also, were in fact typical of the final sacrifice
which would need to be offered only once for
all. How much of this was understood by the
men of ancient Israel we have no means of know-
ing. Some, doubtless, had a faint perception of
it; but at its clearest it was probably more a dis-
satisfaction with what they had, leading them to
look for some better sacrifice, than any more
definite understanding. But what they only
dimly guessed was, as we can now see, the inner
meaning of all; and it is perfectly legitimate to
use both the provisional and the perfected reve-
lations to explain each other. On these grounds
the New Testament freely makes use of the an-
cient ritual to bring out the full significance of
the sacrifice of Christ.
No doubt a different view has to be reckoned
with. Many say that the whole of this typical
reference is a begging of the question. In the
infancy of mankind sacrifice was a natural way
of expressing adoration and of seeking the
favour of the gods. In the heathen world it
reached its highest manifestation in those piacu-
lar sacrifices of which Robertson Smith speaks,
but which nevertheless were merely an outgrowth
of Totemism. In Israel sacrifice was taken up
by the religion of Yahweh and em.bodied in it.
The spiritual forces which were at work in that
nation used it as a means whereby to express
themselves; and when Christ came to complete
the revelation. His purely ethical and spiritual
work was unavoidably expressed in sacrificial
terms. But that is no guarantee that the essen-
tial thing in the work of Christ was sacrifice.
On the contrary, the sacrificial language used
about it is of no real importance. It is simply
the natural and unavoidable form of expression,
in that place and at that time, for any spiritual
deliverance. In short, had there been really
nothing sacrificial in the death of Christ, the re-
ligious meaning and significance of it would
have been expressed in sacrificial language, for
no other was available. Consequently the pres-
ence of such language in the New Testament
does not prove that the sacrificial meaning be-
longs to its main and permanent significance.
The sacrificial idea, on this view of things, be-
longs, both in Israel and in heathenism, to the
elements which Christianity superseded and did
away with; and it is consequently an anachro-
nism to bring it in to explain and elucidate
anything done or taught under this new dis-
pensation.
But such a view is singularly narrow, and un-
just to the past. It surely is more honouring to
both God and man to suppose that the capital
religious ideas of the race, those ideas which
have been everywhere present and have been
seen to deepen and refine with every advance
man has made, have permanent value. More-
over, on any view, it is probable that in them the
essential religious needs of human nature have
found expression. If so, we should expect that
they would in the end be met, and that the per-
fect religion, when it did come, would not ignore
but satisfy the demand which the nature of man
and the providence of God had originated and
combined to strengthen. Further, it is the very
essence of the Scriptural view of Christ that He
perfected and carried to their highest power all
the essential features in the religious constitu-
tion of Israel. He was indeed the true Israel,
and all Israel's tasks fell to Him. As Prophet.
Priest, and Messianic King alike. He excelled
all His predecessors, who were what they were
only because they had, in their degree, done part
of the work which He was to come to finish.
Apart from the religion of the Old Testament,
therefore, Christ is unintelligible, and that, in
turn, without Him, has neither a progress nor a
goal. Belief in a Divine direction of the world
would in itself be sufficient to forbid the separa-
tion of one from the other. If so, it will follow
that the sacrificial idea is essential to the inter-
pretation of our Lord's work. That idea grew
in complexity with the growth of the higher re-
ligion. It was at its deepest when religious
thought and feeling had done its most perfect
work; and on every principle of evolution we
should expect that, instead of disappearing at
the next stage, it would, though transformed,
be more influential than ever. It is so if Christ's
death is regarded from the point of view of sac-
rifice; whereas, if that is laid aside like a worn-
out garment, it can never have been anything
anywhere but an excrescence and a superstition.
That has not been so; the essential ideas con-
nected with sacrifice, and forgiveness by means
of it, were lessons Divinely taught in the child-
568
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
hood of the world, to prepare men to under-
stand the Divinest mystery of history when it
should be manifested to the world.
CHAPTER XVI.
LAWS AGAINST IDOLATROUS ACTS
AND CUSTOMS.
Deuteronomy xiii., xiv.
Having thus set forth the law which was to
crown and complete the long resistance of faith-
ful Israel to idolatry, our author goes on to pro-
hibit and to decree punishment for any action
likely to lead to the worship of false gods. He
absolutely forbids any inquiry into the religions
of the Canaanites. " Take heed to thyself that
thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How
do these nations serve their gods? even so will
I do likewise." All that was acceptable to Yah-
weh was included in the law of Israel, and be-
yond that they were on no account to go in their
worship. " What thing soever I command you,
that shall ye observe to do: thou shalt not add
thereto nor diminish from it." But it should be
observed that the inquiry here forbidden has
nothing in common with the scientific inquiries
of Comparative Religion in our time. Curiosity
of that kind, supported by the motive of discov-
ering how religion had grown, was unknown at
that early age of the world, probably everywhere,
certainly in Israel. The only curiosity powerful
enough to result in action then was that which
tried to learn how the ritual might be made more
potent in its influence over Yahweh by gathering
attractive features from every known religion.
That was one of the distinguishing charac-
teristics of Manasseh's reign. The Canaanite
religions, the religions of Egypt and Assyria,
were all laid under contribution; and wherever
there was a feature which promised additional
power with God or the gods, that was eagerly
adopted. Israel had lost faith in Yahweh, owing
to the successes of Assyria. In unbelieving ter-
ror men were wildly grasping at any means of
safety. They worshipped Yahweh, lest He
should do them harm, but they joined with Him
the gods of their foes, to secure if possible their
favour also. Inquiry into other religions, with
the intent of adopting something from them
which would make either Yahweh or the strange
gods, or both, propitious to them, was rife.
Like the heathen population who had been trans-
ported by Assyria into the territory of the ten
tribes, men " feared Yahweh, and served their
graven images." All that is here sternly con-
demned, and Judah is taught to look only to the
Divine commands for effective means of ap-
proach to their God. The prohibition, therefore,
does not import mere fanatical opposition to
knowledge. It is a necessary practical meas-
ure of defence against idolatry; and only those
^can disapprove of it who are incapable of
estimating the value which the true religion in
its Old Testament shape had and has for the
world. To preserve that was the high and
unique calling of Israel. Any narrowness, real
or supposed, which this great task imposed upon
that people, is amply compensated for by their
guardianship of the spiritual life of mankind.
But if inquiry into lower religions was for-
bidden, there could be nothing but the sternest
condemnation for those who had inquired, and
then endeavoured to seduce the chosen people.
Deuteronomy, therefore, takes three typical
cases — first, seduction by one who was respected
because of high religious office, then seduction by
one who had influence because of close bonds of
natural affection, and lastly that of a community
which would be likely to have influence by force
of numbers— and gives inexorably stern direc-
tions how such evil is to be met. There can be
little doubt that the cases are not imaginary. In
the evil days which the Deuteronomist had fallen
upon they were probably of frequent occurrence,
and they are, consequently, provided against as
real and present evils. Naturally the writer takes
the most difficult case first. If an Israelite
prophet, with all his religious prestige as a con-
fidant of Yahweh, and still more with the pres-
tige of successful prediction in his favour, shall
attempt to lead men to join other gods to Yah-
weh in their worship — for that and not rejection
of Yahweh for the exclusive service of strange
gods is almost certainly meant — then they were
not to listen to him. They were to fall back
upon the original principle of the Mosaic teach-
ing as it was restated in Deuteronomy, that Yah-
weh alone was to be their God. Some lynx-
eyed critics have discovered here the cloven hoof
of legalism. They think they see here the free
spirit of prophecy, to which untrammelled initia-
tive was the very breath of life, subjected to the
bondage of written law, and so doomed to death.
But probably such a mood is unnecessarily
elegiac. It is not to written law that prophecy
is subjected here. It is the actual life-principle
of Yahwism in its simplest form which prophecy
is required to respect; that is, ultimately, it is
called upon simply to respect .itself. Its own
existence depended upon faithfulness to Yah-
weh. If it had a mission at all, it was to pro-
claim Him and to declare His character. If it
had a distinction which severed it from mere
heathen soothsaying, it was that it had been
raised by the inspiration of Yahweh into the
region of " the true, the good, the eternal," and
its whole power lay in its keeping open the
communication with that region. It is therefore
only the law of its own inner being to which
prophecy is here bound; and the people are in-
structed that, whatever reputation or even super-
natural power it might have attained to, it was
to be obeyed only when true to itself and to the
faith. Nothing was to make men stagger from
that foundation. Not even the working of
miracles was to mislead the people, for onlj' on
the plane of Yahweh's revelation had even
miracle any worth. This is the sound and
wholesome doctrine of true prophecy, and other
utterances on the subject in our book must be
taken in conjunction with it. Religious faith-
fulness, not foretelling, is the essence of it, and
by that the prophet is to be inexorably judged.
If any prophet, therefore, leads men to strange
gods, his character and his powers only make
him more dangerous and his punishment more
inexorable. " That prophet, or that dreamer of
dreams, shall be put to death." He comes under
the ban. " So shalt thou put away the evil from
the midst of thee."
Similarly, when family ties and family affec-
tion are perverted to be instruments of seduc-
tion, they are to be disregarded, just as religious
reputation and miraculous power were to be set
aside. If a brother, or a son, or a daughter, or
Deuteronomy xiii , xiv.] LAWS AGAINST IDOLATROUS ACTS.
569
a wife, or a friend, shall secretly entice a man to
" serve other gods," then he shall not only not
yield, but he must slay the tempter. It is char-
acteristic of the Deuteronomist that, by the
qualifications of the various relationships he
mentions, he should show his sympathy and his
insight into the depths of both family affection
and friendship. " Thy brother, the son of thy
mother," " the wife of thy bosom," " the friend
which is as thine own soul," even these, near as
they are to thee, must be sacrificed if they are
false to Israel and to Israel's God. Nay more,
"Thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall
be upon him to put him to death, and afterwards
the hand of all the people, and thou shalt stone
him with stones that he die." Upon him, too,
the ban shall be laid.
Nor, finally, shall their multitude shield those
who suffered themselves to be perverted. If a
city should have been led away by sons of Be-
lial, i. e., by worthless men. to worship strange
gods, then the whole city was to be put to the
ban. It was to be immediately stormed, every
living creature put to death, and all the spoil of
it burnt "unto Yahweh their God"; and the
ruins were to be a " mound for ever " — that is,
a place accursed. Only on these terms could
Yahweh be turned away from the fierceness of
His anger at such treason and unfaithfulness
among His people. The Canaanites had been
condemned to death that their idolatries and
vices might not corrupt the spiritual faith of
Israel. There was no other way, if the treasure
which had been committed to this nation was to
be preserved. As Robertson Smith has said,
■" Experience shows that primitive religious be-
liefs are practically indestructible except by the
destruction of the race in which they are en-
grained." But if so, it was perhaps even more
necessary that idolaters within Israel should be
also extirpated. We may think the punishment
harsh; and our modern doctrines concerning
toleration can by no ingenuity be brought into
harmony with it. But the times were fierce,
and men were not easily restrained. In more
civilised communities excessive severity in pun-
ishment defeats itself, for it enlists sympathy on
the side of the criminal. But among a people
like the Hebrews, probably severity succeeded
where mercy would have been flouted. In India
ov administrators have had to confess that the
horrible recklessness and severity of punishment
in the Mahratta states of the old type suppressed
crime as the infinitely more -just and better
organised but milder British police organisations
could: not then do. " Probably the success of
barbarous methods of, repressing crime is best
explained by their origin in and close connec-
tion with a primitive state of society. Because
punishments were inhuman, they struck terror
where no other motive would deter from
crime." * In other and Scriptural words, the
hardness of men's hearts made such harshness
unavoidable.
Taking the whole of this thirteenth chapter
into consideration, therefore, we see how high
and severe were the demands which Old Testa-
ment religion, as taught in Deuteronomy, made
upon its votaries. It presupposes on the part of
the people an insight into the fundamentally
spiritual nature of their faith entirely unobscured
by ritual and sacrifice. They were expected
to pass beyond the teachings of accredited
♦ Tupper, "Our Indian Protectorate," p. 248.
spiritual guides, beyond even the evidence of
supernatural power, and to test all by the moral
and spiritual truth, once delivered to them by
prophet and by miracle, and now a secure pos-
session. Spiritual truth received and lived by is
thus set above everything else as the test and the
judge of all. Other things were merely ladders
by which men had been brought to the truth in
religion. Once there, nothing should move
them; and any further guidance which purported
to come from even the heavenly places was to
be tried and accepted, only if it corroborated
the fundamental truths already received and at-
tested by experience in actual life. Loyalty to
ascertained truth, that is, is greater than loyalty
to teachers, or to that which seems to be super-
natural; and the chief power for which a prophet
is to be reverenced is not that by which he gives
a true forecast of the future, but that which im-
pels him to speak the truth about God.
Even at this day, and for believers in Christ,
after all the teaching and experience of eighteen
Christian centuries, this is a high, almost an un-
attainable, standard to set up. Even to-day it
is thought an advanced position that miracles as
a security for truth are subordinate and inferior
to the light of the truth itself as exhibited in the
lives of faithful men. Yet that is precisely what
the Deuteronomist teaches. He has no doubt
about miracles. He regards them as being Di-
vinely sent, even when they might be made use
of to mislead; but he calls upon his people to
disregard them if they seem to point towards un-
faithfulness to God. Their supreme trust is to
be that Yahweh cannot deny Himself. If he
seem to do so by giving the sanction of miracle
to teaching which denies Him, that is only to
prove men, to know whether they love Yahweh
their God with all their heart and with all their
soul. The inner certainty of those who have
had communion with Yahweh is to override
everything else. " Whosoever loves God with a
pure heart," says Calvin, " is armed with the in-
vincible power of the Divine Spirit, that he
should not be ensnared by falsehoods." * This
has always been the confidence of religious re-
formers who have had real power. Luther, for
example, took his stand upon the New Testa-
ment and his own personal experience; and by
what he knew of God he judged all that the most
venerable tradition, and the authority of the
Church, and the examples of saintly men claimed
to set forth as binding upon him. " Here stand
I: I can do no other: God help me." He felt
that he had hold of the heart of the revelation of
God as it was made in Christ, and he rejected,
without scruple, whatever in itself or in its re-
sults contradicted or obscured that. Inspired
and upheld by this consciousness, he faced a hos- ■
tile world and a raging Church with equanimity.
It is always so that abuses have been removed
and innovations that are hurtful warded off in
the Church of God.
But there is a difificulty here. As against the
historical examples which show how much good
may be wrought by this unshaken mind when
accompanied by adequate insight, many, perhaps
even more, instances can be adduced where un-
bending assertion of individual conviction has
led to fanaticism and irreligion; or, as has even
more frequently been the case, has blinded men's
eyes, and made them resist with immovable ob-
stinacy teachings on which the future of religion
♦ "Commentary on Pentateuch," vol. i., p. 448.
57°
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
depended. On the altar of uncompromising
fidelity to the letter of the faith delivered to
them, men in all ages have offered up love and
gentleness and fairness, and that open mind to
which alone God can speak. How then can they
be sure, when they disregard their teachers and
defy even signs from heaven, that they are really
only holding up the banner of faith in an evil
day, and are not hardening themselves against
God? The answer is that, since the matter con-
cerns the spiritual life, there are no clear, me-
chanical dividing lines which can be pointed out
and respected. Nothing but spiritual insight
can teach a man what the absolutely essential
and the less essential elements of religion are.
Nothing else can give him that power of distin-
guishing great things from small which here is
of such cardinal importance. Probably the
nearest approach to elTective guidance may be
found in this principle, that when all points in a
man's faith are to him equally important, when
he frets as much in regard to divergence from his
own religious practices as in regard to denial of
the faith altogether, he must certainly be wrong.
Such a temper must necessarily resist all change;
and since progress is as much a law in the re-
ligious life as in any other, it must be found at
times fighting against God. Otherwise, stagna-
tion would be the test of truth, and the principles
of the Christian faith would be branded as so
shallow and so easily exhausted, that their
whole significance could be seized and set forth
at once by the generation which heard the
apostles. That was far from being the case.
The post-apostolic Church, for instance, did not
understand St. Paul. It turned rather to the
simpler ideas of the mass of Christians, and
elaborated its doctrines almost entirely on that
basis. During the centuries since then many
lessons of unspeakable value have been learned
by the Christian world. The Church has been
enriched by the thoughts and teachings of multi-
tudes of men of genius. The providential
chances and changes of all these centuries have
immensely widened and deepened Christian ex-
perience. Stagnation consequently cannot be
made the test of Christian truth. We must be
open to new light on the meaning of Divine
revelation, or we fail altogether, as the Israelites
would have done had they refused to accept the
teaching of any prophet after the first. This
much may, however, be said on the affirmative
side, that when a man has thoughtfully and
prayerfully decided that the central element of
his faith is attacked, he cannot but resist, and if
he is faithful he will resist in the spirit of the
passage we are discussing. His assertion of his
individual conviction, even if it be mistaken, will
do little harm. Time will be in favour of the
truth. But mistake will be rare, indeed, when
men are taught to assert in this manner only the
things by which the soul lives, when only the
actual channels of communion with God are thus
defended to the uttermost. These any thought-
ful, patient man who looks for and yields to the
guidance of the Holy Spirit of Christ will almost
infallibly recognise, and by these he will take his
stand, for he can do no other.
But precautions against idolatry are not ex-
hausted by the war declared upon men who
might attempt to lead the Israelite into evil.
Besides insidious human enemies, there were
also insidious customs originating in heathenism,
and still redolent of idolatry even when they were
severed from any overt connection with it. An-
cient rituals, ancient superstitions, hateful rem-
nants of bloodthirsty pagan rites, were being re-
vived in the Deuteronomist's day on every hand,
because faith in the higher religion that had
superseded them had been shaken. Like streams
from hidden reservoirs suddenly reopened, idola-
trous and magical practices were overflowing the
land, and were finding in popular customs, harm-
less in better days, channels for their return into
the life of those who had formerly risen above
them.
Some of these were more hurtful than others,
and two are singled out at the beginning of chap-
ter xiv. as those which a people holy unto Yah-
weh must specially avoid: " Ye shall not cut
yourselves, nor make any baldness between your
eyes for the dead." The grounds for avoiding
these practices are first given, and we may prob-
ably assume that they are the grounds also for
the other enactments which follow. They are
these: " Ye are the children of Yahweh your
God," and " Thou art a holy people unto Yah-
weh thy God, and Yahweh hath chosen thee to
be a peculiar people unto Himself, out of all
peoples that are upon the face of the earth."
The last of these reasons is common to the
Exodus code with Deuteronomy, and comei^
even more prominently into view in the Leviti-
cal law. Just as Yahweh alone was to be their
God, they alone were to be Yahweh's people,
and they were to be holy to Him, i. e., were to
separate themselves to Him; for in its earliest
meaning to be holy is simply to be separate to
Yahweh. This whole dispensation of law, that
is, was meant to separate the people of Israel
from the idolatrous world, and in this separation
we have the key to much that would otherwise
be hard to comprehend. Looked at from the
point of view of revelation, petty details about
tonsure, about clean and unclean animals, and
so on, seem incredibly unworthy; and many have
said to themselves. How can the God of the
whole earth have really been the author of laws
dealing with such trivialities? But when we re-
gard these as provisions intended to secure the
separation of the chosen people, they assume-
quite another aspect. Then we see that they had
to be framed in contrast to the idolatries of the
surrounding nations, and are not meant to have
further spiritual or moral significance.
But the first reason given is a higher and more
important one, which occurs here for the firsv
time in Deuteronomy: " Ye are the children of
Yahweh your God." In heathen lands such a
title of honour was common, because physically
most worshippers of false gods were regarded
as their children. But in Israel, where such
physical sonship Would have been rejected with
horror as impairing the Divine holiness, the
spiritual sonship was asserted of the individual
much more slowly. In Yahweh's command to
Moses to threaten Pharaoh with the death of hi.s
firstborn son, and in Hosea xi. i, Israel col-
lectively is called Yahweh's firstborn and His
son. In Hosea i. lo it is prophesied that in the
Messianic time, " in the place where it was said
unto them. Ye are not My people, it shall be
said unto them. Ye are the sons <M the living
God." But here for the first time this high
title is bestowed upon the actual individual
Israelites. It was perhaps implied in the Deu-
teronomist's view of God's fatherly treatment
of the nation in the desert, and still more in his.
Deuteronomy xiii.xiv] LAWS AGAINST IDOLATROUS ACTS.
571
demand for the love of the individual heart. Yet
only here is it brought plainly forth as a ground
for the regulation of life according to Yahweh's
commands. Each son of Israel is also a son of
God; and by none of his acts or habits should
he bring disgrace upon his spiritual Father.
Likeness to God is expected and demanded of
him. It is his function in the world to represent
Him, to give expression to the Divine character
in all his ways. This is the Israelite's high
calling, and the religious application of noblesse
oblige to such matters as follow, gives a dignity
and importance to all of them such as in their
own nature they could hardly claim.
" Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any
baldness between your eyes for the dead."
Israel was not to express grief for the dead in
these ways, first because that was the custom of
other nations, and secondly still more because
the origin and meaning of such rites was idola-
trous, and as such altogether unworthy of Yah-
weh's sons. " Both," says Robertson Smith,
" occur not only in mourning, but in the worship
of the gods, and belong to the sphere of heathen
superstition." * Elsewhere he explains the cut-
ting of themselves to be the making of a blood
covenant with the dead, just as the priests of
Baal in their worship tried to get their god to
come to their help by making a covenant of
blood with him at his altar.f This naturally
tended to bring in the superstitions of necro-
mancy, and opened the way also for the worship
of the dead. Many traces of its previous exist-
ence among the Israelite tribes are to be found
in the Scriptures; and the probability is that as
ancestor-worship ruled the life and shaped the
thoughts of Greeks and Romans till Christianity
appeared, so Yahwism alone had broken its
power over Israel. But such superstitions die
hard, and in the general recrudescence of almost
forgotten forms of heathenism at this time, this
cult may very well have been reasserting itself.
As for the shaving of the front part of the head,
that had a precisely similar import. " It had
exactly the same sense as the offering of the
mourner's blood." t " When the hair of the
living is deposited with the dead, and the hair
of the dead remains with the living, a perma-
nent bond of connection unites the two."
The prohibition as food of the animals and
birds called " unclean " was another measure
obviously of the same nature as the prohibition
of heathen mourning practices; but in its details
it is more difficult to explain. Probably, how-
ever, it was a more potent instrument of separa-
tion than any other. In India to-day the gulf
between the flesh-eater and the orthodox vege-
tarian Hindu is utterly impassable; and in the
east of Europe and in Palestine, where the Jew-
ish restrictions as to food are still regarded, the
orthodox Jew is separated from all Gentiles as
by a wall. In travelling he never appears at
meals with his fellow-travellers. All the food he
requires he carries with him in a basket; and at
every place where he stops it is the duty of the
Jewish community to supply him with proper
food, that he may not be tempted to defile him-
self with anything unclean. But it is very diffi-
cult for us now to bring the individual prohibi-
tions under one head, and it seems impossible to
explain them from any one point of view.
* "The Old Testament in the Jewish Church," p. 366.
t " Religion of the Semites," p. 304.
Xlbid., p. 306.
Some of the animals and birds prohibited were
probably, then, animals eaten in connection with
idolatrous feasts by the neighbouring heathen.
Isa. Ixv. 4 shows that swine's flesh was eaten at
sacrificial meals by idolaters, and from the ex-
pression " broth of abominable things is in their
vessels " it is clear that the flesh of other animals
was so used. All these would necessarily be
prohibited to Israel; but beyond a few, such as
the swine, which was sacrificed to Tammuz or
Adonis, and the mouse and the wild ass, we have
no means of knowing what they were. That
this is a vera causa of such prohibitions is shown
by the facts mentioned by Professor Robertson
Smith, that " Simeon Stylites forbade his Sar-
acen converts to eat the flesh of the camel,
which was the chief element in the sacrificial
meals of the Arabs, and our own prejudice
against the use of horse-flesh is a relic of an old
ecclesiastical prohibition framed at the time when
the eating of such food was an act of worship to
Odin." The very ancient and stringent prohi-
bition of blood as an article of diet is probably
to be accounted for in this way also. Blood was
eaten at heathen sacrificial feasts; without other
reason that would be sufificient. These are the
general lines which must have determined the
list of clean animals in the view of the lawgiver,
since he brings them in under the head of idol-
atry and under the two general grounds we have
discussed.
Jewish writers, however, especially since Mai-
monides, have regarded these prohibitions as
aiming primarily at sanitary ends, and as a proof
of their efficacy have adduced the unusually high
average health of the Jews, and their almost
complete exemption from certain classes of dis-
ease. No such point of view is suggested in the
Scriptures themselves, for it would surely be
rather far-fetched to class possible disease as an
infringement of the holiness demanded of Israel,
or as a thing unworthy of Yahweh's sons.
Nevertheless a general view of the list of clean
animals here given would support the idea that
sanitary considerations also had something to do
with the classification. The practical effect of the
rule laid down is to exclude all the carnivora
among quadrupeds, and so far as we can inter-
pret the nomenclature, the raptores among
birds.* " Amongst fish, those which were al-
lowed contain unquestionably the most whole-
some varieties." Further, the nations of an-
tiquity which developed such categories of clean
and unclean animals seem in the main to have
taken the same line. The ground of this prob-
ably is the natural disgust with which unclean
feeders are always regarded. Animals and birds
especially which feed, or may be supposed to
feed, on carrion, are everywhere disliked, and as
a rule they are unsuitable for food. Grass-eat-
ing animals, on the other hand, are always
regarded as clean. Scaleless fish, too, are gener-
ally more or less slimy to the touch, and with
them reptiles are altogether forbidden. All this
seems to show that a natural sentiment of dis-
gust, for whatever reason felt, was active in the
selection of the animals marked unclean by men
of every race. The pre-Mosaic customary law
on this subject would, of course, have this char-,
acteristic in common with similar laws of primi-
tive nations. When the worship of Yahweh was
introduced, most of this would be taken over,
only such modifications being introduced as the
* Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible," vol. iii. p. isSy.
57*
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
higher religion demanded. In some main ele-
ments, therefore, the Mosaic law on this subject
would be a repetition of what is to be found else-
where. Hence a general tendency to health may '
be expected; for besides the guidance which
healthy disgust would give, a long experience
must also have been registered in such laws.
The influence of them in promoting health has
recently been acknowledged by the Lancet;
and though that reason for observing them is
not mentioned in Scripture, we may view it as
a proof that the Jewish legislators were under
an influence which brought them, perhaps even
when they knew it not, into relation with what
was wholesome in the practices and customs of
their place and time.
Beyond these three reasons for the laws re-
garding food, all is the wildest speculation. If
other reasons underlie these laws, we cannot
now ascertain what they were. For a time it
was the custom to ascribe the Jewish laws to
Persian influence, though from the nature of
the case such laws must have been part of the
heritage of Israel from pre-Mosaic time. Even
to-day Jewish writers ascribe them to the evil
effect which bad food has upon the soul, either
by infecting it with the characteristics of the un-
clean beasts, or by rendering it impenetrable to
good influences.* But, as usual, it is the alle-
gorical interpreters who carry ofif the palm.
Animals that chew the cud were to be eaten, be-
cause they symbolised those who " read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest" the Divine law:
those which divide the hoof are examples of
those who distinguish between good and bad
actions; and in the ostrich one interpreter finds
an analogue to the bad commentators who per-
vert the words of Holy Scripture.
Hitherto in chapter xiv. we have been deal-
ing with material to which a parallel can be
found only in the small code of laws contained
in Lev. xvii.-xxvi., commonly called the Law
of Holiness, and in the Priestly Code.f But the
two remaining directions regarding food, which
are contained in the twenty-first verse, are paral-
lel to prohibitions in the Law of the Covenant.
The first, " Ye shall not eat of anything that
dieth of itself . . . for thou art an holy people
unto Yahweh thy God," is parallel to Exod.
xxii. 31. " And ye shall be' holy men unto Me:
therefore ye shall not eat any flesh that is torn
of beasts in the field," and to Lev. xvii. 15,
" Every soul that eateth that which dieth of
itself, or that which is torn of beasts, whether
he be homeborn or a stranger, he shall wash his
clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be un-
clean until the evening." The ground for pro-
hibiting such food, was, of course, that the
blood was in it. But there is a divergence be-
tween the parallel laws, which is seen clearly
when we take into account the destination of the
flesh of the animal so dying. In Exodus it is
said, " To the dogs shall ye cast it." In Deu-
teronomy the command is, " To the stranger
within thy gates ye shall give it, and he shall
eat of it, or ye may sell it unto a foreigner." In
Leviticus it is taken for granted that an Israelite
and also a stranger may eat either of the nebhelah,
that which dieth of itself, or the terephah, that
* Dillmann, "Deuteronomy." p. 483.
t This, of course, does not show that P must have been
known to D, but it proves that as regards material P and
D have drawn from the same source, and that ol ler docu-
ments, or customs at least, underlie both.
which is torn; and if either do so it is prescribed
only that he should wash, and should be unclean
until the evening.
Here, therefore, we have one of the cases in
which the traditional hypothesis — that the Law
of the Covenant was given at Sinai when Israel
arrived there, the laws of the Priestly Code
probably not many weeks after, and the code of
Deuteronomy only thirty-eight or thirty-nine
years later, but before the laws had come fully
into efifect by the occupation of Canaan — raises
a difficulty. Why should the Sinaitic law say
that terephah is not to be eaten by any one, but
cast to the dogs, and the Levitical law in so
short a time after make the eating of that and
nebhelah mere cause of subordinate uncleanness
to both Israelite and stranger, while Deuter-
onomy permits the Israelite either to give the
nebhelah to the stranger that he may eat it, or to
make it an article of traffic with the foreigner?
Keil's explanation is certainly feasible, that in
Exodus we have the law, in Leviticus the provi-
sion for accidental, or perhaps wilful, disobedi-
ence of it under the pressure of hunger, while
in Deuteronomy we have a permission to sell,
lest on the plea of waste the law might be ig-
nored. But the position of the " ger," or stran-
ger, is not accounted for. In Leviticus he is
bound to the worship of Yahweh, and can no
more eat nebhelah or terephah than the native
Israelite can, while in Deuteronomy he is on a
lower stage than the Israelite as regards cere-
monial cleanness, and much on the same level as
the nokhri, the foreigner, who in Deuteronomy
is dealt with as an inferior, not bound to the
same scrupulosity as the Israelite (Deut. xv. 3,
23, 29). There does not appear to be any ex-
planation of such a change in less than forty
years; more especially as the moment at which
the change would on that hypothesis be made
was precisely the moment when the stranger was
about for the first tim.e to become an important
element in Israelite life. If, on the other hand,
the order of the codes be Exodus, Deuteronomy,
Leviticus, then the Exodus law, which does not
consider the stranger, would suit the earliest
stage of Israel's history, when the stranger
would generally be a spy. Later, he crept into
Israelite life, and gradually received more and
more consideration; especially in the days of
Solomon, when the Chronicler estimates the
ntimber of the strangers at over a hundred and
fifty thousand. But he was not recognised at
that stage as fully bound to all an Israelite's
duties, or as possessed of all an Israelite's privi-
leges, and that is precisely the position he occu-
pies in Deuteronomy. In the Priestly Code,
however, at a time when the stranger had prac-
tically become a proselyte, the ideal Kingdom of
God includes the " stranger," and gives him a
position which differs little from that of the
homeborn. That would make these different
laws answer to different periods of Israel's his-
tory, and would coincide with what has been
otherwise found to be the order of Israel's legal
development.
The second prohibition, which runs parallel to
what we find in Exodus, is the somewhat enig-
matical one that a kid should not be sodden in
its mother's milk. What it was in this act which
made it seem necessary to issue such a com-
mand cannot now be ascertained with any cer-
tainty. Most probably it was connected in some
way with heathen ceremonies, perhaps at a har-
Deuteronomy xvii. I4-20.] SPEAKERS FOR GOD— I. THE KING.
S73
vest feast; for, as we have seen, it is a ruling
motive throughout all this section that the
Israelites should reject everything which among
their neighbours was connected with idolatry.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SPEAKERS FOR GOD— I. THE KING.
Deuteronomy xvii. 14-20.
In approaching the main section of the legis-
lation it will be necessary, in accordance with the
expository character of the series to which this
volume belongs, to abandon the consecutive
character of the comment. It would lead us too
far into archaeology to discuss the meaning and
origin of all the legal provisions which follow.
Moreover nothing short of an extensive com-
mentary would do them justice, and for our
purpose we must endeavour to group the pre-
scriptions of the code, and discuss them so. As
it stands there is no arrangement traceable. So
utterly without order is it, that it can hardly be
thought that it is in the exact shape in which it
left its author's hands. Transpositions and mis-
placements must, one thinks, have taken place
to some extent. We are thus left free to make
our own arrangements, and it would appear most
fitting to discuss the code under the five heads
of National Life, Economic Life, and three fun-
damental qualities of a healthy national life —
Purity, Justice, and the Treatment of the Poor.
Every phase of the laws which remain for dis-
cussion can easily be brought under these head?,
and this chapter will discuss the first of them, the
organisation of the national life.
It is a striking instance of the accuracy of the
national memory that there is a clear and con-
scious testimony to the fact that for long there
was no king in Israel. Had the later historians
been at the mercy of a tradition so deeply in-
fluenced by later times as it pleases some critics
to suppose, it would seem inexplicable that
Moses should not have been represented as a
king, and especially that the conquest should
not have been represented as a king's work.
Evidently there was a perfectly clear national
consciousness of the earlier circumstances of the
nation, and it presents us with an outline of the
original constitution which is very simple and
credible. According to this the tribes whom
Moses led were ruled in the main by their own
sheikhs or elders. Under these again were the
clans or fathers' houses similarly governed; and
lastly, there were the families in the wider sense,
made up of the individual households and gov-
erned by their heads. So far as can be gath-
ered, Moses did not interfere with this funda-
mental organisation at all. He added to it only
his own supremacy, as the mediator and means
of communication between Yahweh and His
people. As such, his decision was final in all
matters too difficult for the sheikhs and judges.
15ut the fundamental point never lost sight of
was that Yahweh alone was their ruler, their
legislator, their leader in war, and the doer of
justice among His people. From the very first
moment of Israel's national existence therefore,
from the moment that it passed the Red Sea,
Yahweh was acknowledged as King, and Moses
was simply His representative. That 'is the car-
dinal fact in this nation's life, and amid all the
37_Vol. I.
difficulties and changes of its later history that
was always held to. Even when kings were ap-
pointed, they were regarded only as the viceroys
of Yahweh. In this 'way the whole of the
national affairs received a religious colour; and
those who look at them from a religious stand-
point have a justification which would have been
less manifest under other circumstances.
It is, therefore, no delusion of later times
which finds in Israelite institutions a deep re-
ligious meaning. Nor is the persistence with
which the Scriptural historians regard only the
religious aspects of national life to be laid as a
fault to their charge. It is nothing to the pur-
pose to say that the bulk of the people had no
thoughts of that kind, that the whole fabric of
the national institutions appeared to them in a
different light. We have no right to lower the
meaning of things to the gross materialism of
the populace. One would almost think, to hear
some Old Testament critics speak, that in this
most ideal realm of religion we can be safe from
illusion only when ideal points of view are
abandoned, that only in the commonest light of
common day have we any security that we are
not deceiving ourselves. But most of these same
men would resent it bitterly if that standard were
applied to the history of the lands they them-
selves love. What Englishman would think
that Great Britain's career and destiny were
rightly estimated if imperial sentiment and hu-
manitarian aims were thrust aside in favour of
purely material considerations? Why then
should it be supposed that the views and opinions
of the multitude are the only safe criterion to be
applied to the institutions of God's ancient
people?
In truth, there is no reason why we should
think so. The Divine kingship made it impos-
sible that the higher minds should be content
with the low aims of the opportunists of their
day, whether tb?se were of the multitude or not.
Even the entrance into Canaan, which to the
mass of the people was, in the first place, a mere
acquisition of territory and wealth, was idealised
for the leaders of the people by the thought that
it was the land promised by Yahweh to their
fathers, the land in which they should live in
communion with Him. Generally, it may be
said that the desire for communion with God was
the impelling and formative power in Israel.
The thoughts of even the dullest and most
earthly were touched by that ideal at times; and
no leader, whether royal, or priestly, or pro-
phetic, ever really succeeded among this people
who did not keep that persistently in view as
the true goal of his efforts. Moreover this gave
its depth of meaning to the whole movement of
history in Israel. Every triumph and defeat,
every lapse and every reform had, owing to this
direction of the people's efforts, a significance
far beyond itself. These were not merely inci-
dents in the history of an obscure people; they
were the pulsations and movements of the
world's advance to the full revelation of God.
All that would have been wholly national or
tribal in the institutions and arrangements of an
ordinary people was in Israel lifted up into the
religious sphere; and the orders of men who
spoke for the invisible King — the earthly king,
the priest, and the prophet — became naturally the
organs of the national life.
The king's position was entirely dependent
upon Yahweh. He was to be chosen by Yah-
574
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
weh, he was to act for Yahweh, and no king
could rightly fill his place in Israel who was not
loyal to that conception. It is in this sense that
David was the man after God's own heart. He,
in contrast to Saul and to many of the later
kings, accepted with entire loyalty, notwithstand-
ing his great natural powers, the position of
viceroy for Yahweh. It is, therefore, an essen-
tial truth which underlies the Scriptural judg-
ment that the kings who made themselves, or
attempted to make themselves, independent of
Yahweh, were false to Israel and to their true
calling. And this is why Samuel, when the
people demanded a king, regarded the movement
with stern disapproval, and why he received an
oracle denouncing the movement as a falling
away from Yahweh. For, in the first place, the
motive for the people's request, their desire to
be like other nations, was in itself a rejection of
their God. It repudiated, in part at least, the
position of Israel as His peculiar people, and im-
plied that an earthly king would do more for
them than Yahweh had done; whereas if they
had been faithful and united enough in spirit
they would have found victory easy. In the
second, the request in itself was a confession of
unfitness for their high national calling; it was
a confession of failure under the conditions
which had been Divinely appointed for them.
Not only in the eyes of the Biblical historian
therefore, but as a plain matter of fact, the de-
mand was an expression of dissatisfaction on the
people's part with their invisible King. They
needed something less spiritual than Yahweh's
invisible presence and the prophetic word to
guide them. But since they had declared them-
selves thus. unfaithful, Yahweh had to deal with
them at that level, and granted their request as
a concession to their unbelief and hardness of
heart.
That is the representation of the Books of
Samuel; and the absence of any similar law from
the codes before Deuteronomy confirms the
view that the earthly kingship was not an essen-
tial part of the polity of Israel, but a mere epi-
sode. Nowhere in legislation save here in Deu-
teronomy is the king ever mentioned, and no-
where, not even here, is any provision made for
his maintenance. No civil taxes are appointed
by any law, while the most ample provision is
made for the presentation direct to Yahweh, as
Lord paramount, of tithes and firstfruits.
The history and the law alike agree therefore
in regarding the kingship as somewhat of an
excrescence upon the national polity; and this
law, where alone the king's existence is recog-
nised, confines itself strictly to securing the theo-
cratic character of the constitution. He must
be chosen by Yahweh; he must be a born wor-
shipper of Yahweh, not a foreigner; and he must
rule in accordance with the law given by Yah-
weh. Further, the ideal Israelite king must be
on his guard against the grossly voluptuous
luxury which Oriental sovereigns have never
been able to resist, either in ancient or modern
times; and also against the lust for war and con-
quest which was the ruling passion of Assyrian
and Egyptian kings. Evidently too the ideal
king of Israel was, like Bedouin sheikhs now,
expected to be rich, able to maintain his state
out of his own revenues. The tribute paid by
subject peoples, together with the booty taken in
war and the profits of trade, were his only legiti-
mate sources of income beyond his own wealth.
Every other exaction was more or less of an
oppression. He had no right to make any
claims upon the land, for that was held direct of
Yahweh. Nor were there any regular taxes, so
far as the Old Testament informs us. The only
approach to that would appear to be that the
presents with which his subjects voluntarily ap-
proached the king were sometimes and by some
rulers made permanent demands; at least that
would seem to be the meaning of the somewhat
obscure statement in i Sam. xvii. 25 that King
Saul would reward the slayer of Goliath by mak-
ing " his father's house free in Israel." Some
kind of regular exaction from which the victori-
ous champion's family should be free must here
be referred to; but it would not be safe, in the
absence of all other evidence, to suppose that
regular taxes in the modern sense are referred
to. More probably something of the nature of
the " benevolences " which Edward IV. intro-
duced into England as a source of revenue is
meant. If a popular and powerful king of Israel
was in want of money, he could always secure it
by ordering those able to afiford handsome
presents to appear yearly before him with Stich
gifts as a loyal subject should offer. For the
convenience of all parties an indication of how
much would be expected might be made, and
then he would have what to all intents and pur-
poses would be a tax. Along with this he might
also enforce the corvee; but such things were al-
ways regarded as excesses of despotic power.
That Samuel in his mishpat hammelekh (i Sam.
viil. 15) warns the people that the king would
demand of them a tithe of their cereal crops and
o^f the fruit of their vineyards and of their sheep,
does not contradict this reading of the passage
in I Sam. xvii. For though chapter viii. belongs,
to the later portion of i Samuel and may there-
fore represent what the kings had actually
claimed, yet it in no way endorses such demand.s.
On the contrary, it indicates that such exac-
tions would bring the people into slavery to the
king by the phrase " And ye shall be to him for
slaves." All that is mentioned there, conse-
quently, is part of the evil the kingship would
bring with it, and cannot in any way be regarded'
as a legal provision for the maintenance of
royalty.
It is not probable, therefore, that in these pre-
scriptions the author of Deuteronomy is repeat-
ing a more ancient law. No such law has come
down to us. Dillmann supposes the provision
that the king should always be an Israelite to be
ancient; and indeed at first sight it is difficult to
see why such a provision should be introduced
for the first time in the last days of the Southern^
Kingdom, where the kingship had so long been
confined, not only to Israelites, but to the
Davidic line. But Jer. xxxii. 21 — " Their poten-
tate shall be of themselves, and their governor
shall proceed from the midst of them " — shows
that, whatever the cause might be, there was in
the first years of the sixth century a longing for
a native king similar to that here expressed. In.
any case, as the obvious intention here is to
make entire submission to Yahweh the condition
of any legitimate kingship, it was only consist-
ent to require expressly that the king should be-
one of Yahweh's people. That motive would
be quite sufficient to account for raising what
had been the invariable practice into a formu-
lated law; and no other of the prescriptions need'
have been ancient. On the other hand, the-
Deuteronomy xvii. I4-20.] SPEAKERS FOR GOD— I. THE KING.
575
curious phrase " Only he shall not multiply
horses to himself, nor cause the people to re-
turn to Egypt to the end that he should multiply
horses; forasmuch as Yahweh hath said unto
you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that
way," can hardly belong to the Mosaic time.
There was no doubt then much danger that the
people should wish to return to Egypt; but that
a king should cause them to return for horses, is
too much of a subordinate detail to have been
portion of a Mosaic prophecy. If, as is most
probable, the phrase condemns the sending of
Israelites into Egypt to buy horses and chariots,
it can have been written only after Solomon's
days. Before that time Israel, as an almost ex-
clusively mountain people, regarded horses and
chariots with dislike, and usually destroyed them
when they fell into their hands. With the exten-
sion of their power over the plains and the
growth of a lust for conquest, they sought after
chariots eagerly. To procure them they entered
into alliances with Egypt which the prophets
denounced, and which brought to the nation
nothing but evil. It was natural, therefore, that
the Deuteronomist should specially mention this
detail, and should support it by reference to a
Divine promise, which does not appear in our
Bible, but which probably was found in either
the Yahwistic or the Elohistic narrative.
But whether the whole is Deuteronomic or
not, there can be no question that the command
that the king shall have " a copy of this law "
prepared for him and shall read constantly
therein is so; and perhaps of all the prescriptions
this is the most important. In purely Eastern
states there is no legislature at all, and the
greater part of the criminal jurisdiction espe-
cially is carried on without any reference to
fixed law save in cases affecting religion. This
was the case in the Mahratta states in India so
long as they were independent. The ruler and
the officers he appointed administered justice,
solely according to custom and their own
notions of rectitude, " without advertence to any
law except the popular notions of customary
law." * Now in Israel the state of things was
entirely similar, save in so far as the fundamental
principles of Yahwistic religion had been formu-
lated. In all other respects customary law ruled
everything. But it was the religious influence
that gave its highest and best developments to
the life of Israel. It was this, too, which brought
to such early maturity in Israel the principles of
justice, mercy, and freedom. Elsewhere these
were of exceedingly slow growth. In Israel,
the influence of the lofty religious ideas im-
planted in the nation by Moses did for them what
the influence of the higher political and social
ideas of the governing Englishmen are said to
do, under favourable circumstances, for the In-
dian peoples. Without disturbing the general
harmony which must subsist between all parts of
the organism of the State if the nation's life is to
be healthy, and without putting it out of rela-
tion with its surroundings, that influence has
been, and is still, moving the more backward In-
dian societies along the natural paths of human
progress at a greatly accelerated speed. f In a
similar way the Israelite people was moved by
the Mosaic influence, in its aspirations at least,
with an elsewhere unexampled speed and cer-
tainty, towards an ideal of national life which no
* Tupper, " Our Indian Protectorate," pp. 248, 249.
i Jbid.^ p. 321.
nation since has even endeavoured to realise.
But whenever the kings threw off the yoke of
Yahweh and plunged into idolatry, then the
evils of despotic Oriental rule made their ap-
pearance unchecked. These evils have been
enumerated in the following words by one well
acquainted with Oriental states: " Cruelty, super-
stition, callous indifference to the security of the
weaker and poorer classes, avarice, corruption,
disorder in all public affairs, and open brigand-
age." With the exception perhaps of the last,
these are precisely the sins which the prophets
are continually denouncing. Long before Heze-
kiah they were rampant, especially in the
Northern Kingdom, and in the evil days be-
tween Hezekiah and Josiah, when we suppose
Deuteronomy to have been written, they were
indulged in without shame or compunction.
The result was that an inarticulate cry, like
that we hear to-day from Persia in the articulate
form of newspaper articles, must have filled the
hearts of all righteous men and the multitude of
the oppressed. What it would be we may learn
from the following extract from a letter written
from Persia to the Kamin. i. e., " Law," a
Persian newspaper published in London, and
translated by Arminius Vamb6ry in the
Deutsche Rundschau for October, 1893: " Oh.
brothers, behold how deeply we have sunk into
the sea of ignominy and shame. Tyranny,
famine, disease, poverty, calamity, decay of
character, and all the misery in the world has
overflowed our country. The cause of all this
misfortune lies in this, that we have no laws:
only in this, that our conscienceless and foolish
great ones have wilfully and purposely rejected,
trodden under foot, and destroyed the laws of
the sacred code, . . . We are men, and would
have laws! It is not new laws we ask for, but
we desire that our secular and spiritual heads
should assemble and press for the enforcement
of the holy laws of the sacred code. Therefore
we ask of you this one thing, that you should
proclaim: ' We are men, and would have laws.* "
The East is so perennially the same, that the
two thousand five hundred years which separate
that pathetic cry from the prayers of the true
Israel in Manasseh's and Amon's days make no
radical difference. The situation was the same,
and the need was the same. Hence came this
prophetic and priestly redaction of the Law of
the Covenant. " They were men, and would
have laws." They sought to be freed from the
greed, the cruelty, and the lawlessness of their
rulers; and having produced their revised code,
they wished to secure that it should not disap-
pear from memory, as the more ancient law had
been suffered to do. It must be kept continually
before the king's mind. " It shall be with him,
and he shall read therein all the days of his life;
that he may learn to fear Yahweh his God, to
keep all the words of this law and these statutes
to do them." In this way it was thought that
future " great ones " would be prevented from
" rejecting, treading under foot, and destroying
the laws of the sacred code."
But the king of Israel was not only to be a
law-abiding and a law-enforcing king. He was
to learn from this new law even a deeper lesson.
He was to read daily in the law, " that his heart
might not be lifted up above his brethren."
Oriental despots either openly claim that they
are of higher and purer blood than their subjects,
or they deal with these latter as if they had
576
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
nothing in common with them. In the laws of
Manu it is said, " Even an infant king must not
be despised (from an idea) that he is a (mere)
mortal; for he is a great deity in human form."
It was not to be so in Israel. His subjects
were the Israelite king's " brethren." They all
stood in the same relation to their God. All
equally had shared Yahweh's favour in being
delivered from the bondage of Egypt. Each had
the same rights, the same privileges, the same
claims to justice and consideration as the king
himself had. That, this law was to teach the
king; and when he had learned the lesson, it is
taken for granted that the root from which the
other evils spring would be destroyed.
Such, then, the ruler of Israel was to be. He
was to feel, first of all his responsibility to God.
Then he was to deny himself to the lust of con-
quest, to the voluptuous pleasures of the flesh,
to the most devouring lust of all, the love of
money. Last of all, and above all, he was to
acknowledge his equality with the poorest of the
people in the sight of God. Could there be
even yet a nobler ideal set before the kings of
the world than this? The reign of only one
king of Israel, Josiah, promised its realisation.
That seemed, indeed, to be " the fair beginning
of a time." But it was not so; it proved to be
only an afterglow, a mere prelude to the night.
None of his successors made even an attempt
to imitate him, and the destruction of the Jewish
State put an end to all hope of the appearance
of the Yahwistic king in Israel. Elsewhere, be-
fore the coming of Christ, he did not appear.
Since Christ's coming, here and there, at rare
intervals, siich' rulers have been found. But in
the East perhaps the only rulers who can be said
to have made any attempt in this direction are
the best of the great uncrowned kings of India,
the British viceroys.
Such, for example, was Lord Lawrence's aim,
and his reward. Erom the beginning to the end
of his Indian career he lived a pure and simple
life, laboured with untiring energy for the good
of the people, and kept in his mind, as his aspi-
rations for his Punjaub peasantry show, the Old
Testament ideal of both ruler and ruled. He
was, too, entirely free from the lust of conquest,
as some Indian viceroys have not perhaps been;
and he did all his work under a solemn sense of
responsibility to God. To a large extent, the
Biblical ideal made him what he was as a ruler,
and the life and power of that ideal now, in such
men, sufficiently show the truth of the prophetic
and priestly insight which is embodied here.
Many who have disregarded these rules have
done great things for the world; but we are only
the more' sure, after two thousand five hundred
years, that on these lines alone can the ruler at-
tain his highest and purest eminence. All the
aspirations of men to-day are towards a state of
things in which rulers, whether they be any
longer kings or no, shall stand on a level of
brotherhood with their subjects, and shall set
the good of the ruled before them as their sole
aim. All men are dreaming now of a future in
which personal ambition shall have little scope,
in which none will be for himself or for a party,
but " all will be for the State." If ever that
good dream be realised, rulers of the Deuter-
onomic type will be universal; and the depth of
wisdom embodied 'in the laws of this small and
obscure Oriental people, so many ages ago, will
be manifested in a general political and social
happiness such as has never yet been seen, on
any large scale at least, in the history of men.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SPEAKERS FOR GOD.— II. THE PRIEST.
Deuteronomy xviii. i-8.
The priesthood naturally follows the kingship
in the regulations regarding the position of the
governing classes. But it was an older and
much more radical constituent in the polity of
Israel than we have seen the kingship to be.
Originally, the priests were the normal and
regular exponents of Yahweh's will. They re-
ceived and gave forth to the people oracles from
Him, and they were the fountain of moral and
spiritual guidance. The Torah of the priests,
which on the older view was the Pentateuch as
we have it, or its substance at least, which Moses
had put into their hands, is much more probably
now regarded as the guidance given by means
of the sacred lot and the Urim and Thummim.
Because of their special nearness to and intimacy
with God, the priests were in contact with the
Divine will and could receive special Divine
guidance; and in days when the voice of
prophecy was dumb, or in matters which it left
untouched, the priestly Torah. or direction, was
the one authorised Divine voice. But this was
not the only function of the priests. Sacrificial
worship was a more fundamental function.
Wellhausen and his school indeed seem inclined
to deny that as priests of Yahweh they had any
Divinely ordered connection with sacrifice. But
the truer view is that their power to give Torah
to Israel depended entirely upon their being the
custodians of the places where Yahweh had
caused His name to be remembered. The theory
was that, as they approached Him with sacrifices
in His sanctuaries, they consequently could
speak for Him; so that the guarding of His
shrines, and the offering of the people's sacrifices
there were their first duties. In fact they were
the mediators between Yahweh and Israel.
Yahweh was King, but He was invisible, and
the priests were His visible earthly representa-
tives. The dues, which in a merely secular state
would have gone to the king, as rent for the
lands held of him, were employed for their ap-
pointed uses by the priests, as the servants and
representatives of the heavenly King who had
bestowed the land upon Israel and allotted to
each family its portion. Occupying a middle
position, then, between the two parties to the
Covenant by which Israel had become Yah-
weh's chosen people, they spoke for the people
when they appeared before Yahweh, and for
Him when they came forth to the people. They
were, as we have said, the oldest and most im-
portant of the ruling classes, and must have been
from early times a special order set apart for
the service of Israel's God.
The main passages in Deuteronomy which
bear upon the position and character of the
priesthood and of the tribe of Levi are the fol-
lowing. In chaps, xviii. i-8, x. 6-9, and xxvii.
9-14 the strictly priestly functions of the tribe
of Levi are dealt with; in xvii. 9 flf., xix. 17, the
judicial functions; in xxi. 1-5 their function in
connection with sanitary matters is referred to.
Besides these there are the various injunctions
to invite the Levites to the sacrificial feasts, be-
Deuteronomy xviii. I 8.] SPEAKERS FOR GOD— il. THE PRIEST.
577
cause they have no inheritance, and a number of
references to the priesthood as a well-known
body, the constitution and duties of which did
not need special treatment. These last are of
themselves sufficient to prove beyond question
that in dealing with the priests and Levites the
author of this book writes from out of the midst
of a long established system. He does not
legislate for the introduction of priests, neither
does he refer to a priestly system recently elabo-
rated by himself, and only now coming into
operation. He does not tell us how priests are
to be appointed, nor from whom, nor with what
ceremonies of consecration they are to be in-
ducted into their office. In fact the writer speaks
of what concerns the priests and Levites in a
manner which makes it certain that in his day
there were, and had long been, Levites who were
priests, and Levites of whom it may at least be
said that they were probably nothing more than
subordinates in regard to religious duty. In a
word, while presupposing an established system
of priestly and Levitical service, he nowhere at-
tempts to give any clear or complete view of
that system. His whole mind is turned towards
the people. It is about their duties and their
rights he is anxious, about their duties perhaps
more than their rights; and he touches upon
matters connected with others than the people
only in a cursory way. In this matter, espe-
cially, he clearly needs to be supplemented iiy
information drawn from other sources, and his
every word about it shows that he is not intro-
ducing or referring to anything new. Any
modifications he makes are plainly stated and are
limited to a few special points.
The chief passage for our purpose is, however,
xviii. 1-8, where we have the agents of the cultus
defined, and directions for the dues to be given
them. In ver. i these agents are clearly said to
be the whole tribe of Levi; for the phrase " The
priests, the Levites, the whole tribe of Levi,"
cannot mean the priests and the Levites who
together make up the whole tribe of Levi. Not-
withstanding the arguments of Keil and Curtiss
and other ingenious scholars, the unprejudiced
mind must, I think, accept Dillmann's rendering,
" The Levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi,"
the latter clause standing in apposition to the
former. In that case Deuteronomy must be
held to regard every Levite as in some sense
priestly. This view is confirmed by x. 8 f.,
where distinctly priestly duties are assigned to
the " tribe of Levi." Some indeed assert that
this verse was written by a later editor, but valid
reasons for the assertion are somewhat difficult
to find.* Neither Kuenen nor Oettli nor Dill-
mann find any. We may, then, accept it as Deu-
teronomic since critics of such various leanings
do so. To quote Dillmann, " Beyond question,
therefore, the tribe as a whole appears here as
called to sacred, especially priestly service; only
it does not follow from that that every individual
member of the tribe could exercise these func-
tions at his pleasure, without there being any
organisation and gradation among these servants
of God." No, that does not follow; and this
very passage (Deut. xviii. i-8) shows that it does
not, for it makes a very clear distinction. In
vv. 3 S. the dues of the priest are dealt with,
while in vv. 6 fif. those of the Levite in one
special case are provided for. As if to empha-
sise the distinction between them, the priest in
♦Kuenen, "H. K. O.," Eerste Deel, p. 113.
ver. 3 is not called " Levitical," as he is in other
passages.
Further, the verses concerning the Levite also
emphasise the distinction; for few will te able
to adopt the view that here in vv. 6 fif. every Le-
vite who chooses is authorised to become a
priest, by the mere process of presenting himself
at the central sanctuary. The author of Deuter-
onomy must have known, better probably than
any one now considering this matter, that the
priests in the central sanctuary would never
consent to divide their privileges and their in-
come with every member of their tribe who
might choose to come up to Jerusalem. In-
deed, if they had received each, and every one,
the crowd would have been an embarrassment
instead of a help. As a matter of fact, when the
Deuteronomic reform came to be put" in practice,
this free admission of every Levite to the. service
of the Jerusalem Temple was not adopted, and-
it is prima facie improbable that the author of it
can have meant his provision in that sense. The
meaning seems to be that, as only those Levites
who were employed in the central sanctuary
could be de facto priests, those living in the
country were not priests in the safne sense; and_
the regulation made is that if any Levite came
up to Jerusalem and was received into tlie ranks ■
of the Temple Levites, i. e., the sacrificial priests,
he should receive the same dues as the others
performing the same work did. But though no
conditions of admission to the Temple service
are mentioned, obviously there must have been
some conditions, some division of labour, some
organisation involving gradations in rank, and
perhaps also some limitation as to time in the
case of such voluntary service as is here dealt
with. For, as Dillmann points out, it is not
said that the service of every Temple Levite is
the same; numbers of them may have had no
higher work than the Levites under the laws of
the Priest Codex.
Moreover the other functions assigned to the
priests confirm the argument, and prove that in
the time of Deuteronomy distinctions of rank
among the Levites must have been firmly estab-.
lished. They had a place in the public justiciary,
even in the supreme court, " in the place which
Yahweh their God " had chosen (Deut. xyii. 9,
xix. 17). Not only so, the law concerning a
man found slain in chap, xxi., vv. 1-5, implies
that there were in the cities throughout the land
priests, the sons of Levi, whom " Yahweh thy.
God hath chosen to minister unto Him and to.
bless in the name of Yahweh, and according to
their word shall every controversy and every
stroke be." Now it cannot possibly have been
the intention of the author of Deuteronomy that
every member of the tribe of Levi should have
equal power to decide such matters. If in his,
view every Levite was a priest, then we should
have this impossible state of aflfairs. that the
highest coufts for judicial process should be in
the hands of a class which was more largely in- .
debted to the generosity of the rich for its main-
tenance than any other in the country. It seems
plain therefore that every Levite could not exer-
cise full priestly functions because of his birth.
Clearly, if any Levite might become a priest it
was only in the same sense in which every Na-
poleonic soldier was said to carry a marshal's
baton in his knapsack.*
* The same conclusion must be come to in connection'
with the sanitary duties of the priesthood as laid down, or
578
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
Finally, in this passage (ver. 5), by the words
" him and his sons for ever," which refer back
to " the priest," a hereditary character of the
priesthood is asserted. This phrase is remark-
ably parallel to that so frequently used by P,
" Aaron and his sons"; and though we are not
told in what family or families the priesthood
was hereditary, it must have been so in some.
But in X. 6, 7, the family of Aaron is mentioned
by the Deuteronomist as having hereditary right
to the priesthood at the central shrine. There
can therefore be no doubt that in the time of the
author of Deuteronomy priesthood was heredi-
tary, perhaps in several families, but certainly in
the family of Aaron.
The remaining point in these verses of chap,
xviii. is the dues. As the whole tribe had no
land, so the whole tribe had a share in the dues
paid by the people to their Divine King. In vv.
3 fF. we have a statement of what these were.
The whole tribe of Levi are to eat " the offer-
ings of Yahweh made by fire, and His inherit-
ance. And they shall have no inheritance among
their brethren: Yahweh is their inheritance, as
He hath spoken unto them." The only place in
Scripture in which such a promise is given is
Numb, xviii. 20, 24. so that these passages, if not
referred to by the author of Deuteronomy, must
be founded upon a tradition already old in his
time. As the servants of Yahweh, the Levites
were to be wholly Yahweh's care; as His repre-
sentatives, they were to use for the supply of
their needs all such portions of the offerings
made to Him by fire as were not to be consumed
on the altar. Their remaining provision was to
be " His," i. e., Yahweh's " inheritance," or
rather " portion," or that which belongs to Him.
Now Yahweh's " portion " consisted of all the
other sacred dues (besides the sacrifices) which
should be paid to Yahweh, such as the tithes,
the firstlings, and the firstfruits. On these the
whole tribe of Levi 'was to live, and so be free
to give their time to the special business of the
sanctuary, and to related duties, in so far as they
were called upon.
But there were to be distinctions. In vv. 3-5
we have a special statement of what was to be
paid by the people to the priests, i. c, the sacri-
ficing priests. Of every animal offered in sacri-
fice, except those offered as whole burnt-offer-
ings, they were to receive " the shoulder, the
two chee-ks, and the maw," all choice pieces.
Further, they were to receive the " firstfruits of
corn, wine, oil, and the first of the fleece of the
sheep." For the priests of one sanctuary these
would be quite provision enough, though the
word translated " firstfruits," resliitli. is very in-
definite, and probably meant much or little, ac-
cording as the donor was liberal or churlish.
But how does this agree with that which is be-
stowed upon the priests according to the Priest
Codex? In the passage corresponding to this
(Lev. vii. 31-34) the wave breast and the heave
thigh are the portions which are to be bestowed
upon " Aaron the priest and his sons, as a due
rather as alluded to, in l")eiit. xxiv. 8, g. This implies that
the Levitical priests had special duties in connection with
such matters, duties whicli, if not precisely the same as
those laid down in the Law of Leprosy (Lev. xiii., xiv.),
must have nearly resembled them. Semi-medical skill
must have been necessary for the satisfactory discharge
of these duties, and we must suppose that the priests wlio
ilischarged them were selected from the tribe of Levi on
s(»me principle either of special proved knowledge and fit-
ness, or on the ground of hereditary devotion to such
work .
for ever from the children of Israel "; and where
the firstfruits are dealt with (Numb, xviii. 12 ff.)
" the first of the fleece of the sheep " is not men-
tioned. That is an addition made by the author
of Deuteronomy; but what of " the shoulder, the
two cheeks, and the maw " ? Are they a sub-
stitute for the " wave breast and the heave
thigh," or are they an addition? If we hold
that the laws in the Pentateuch were all given by
Moses in the wilderness, and in the order in
which they stand, it will be most natural to think
that what we have here is meant to be an addi-
tion to what Numbers prescribes. But if it is
established that Deuteronomy is a distinct work,
written at a different period from the other
books of the Pentateuch, then, though there is
not sufficient evidence to justify a dogmatic de-
cision on either side, the weight of probability
is in favour of the supposition that the Deuter-
onomic provision is a substitute, or at least an
alternative, for what we have in Numbers. The
fact that the prescription in Numbers is not re-
peated makes for that view, as well as the fact
that Deuteronomy does not as a rule tend to
increase the burdens on the people. Keil's
view, that Deuteronomy and Numbers are deal-
ing with quite different sacrifices, will hardly
stand examination. He thinks that the feasts
at which the firstlings, turned into money, and
the third-year tithes were eaten, are referred to
here, while in Numbers it is the ordinary peace-
offerings which are dealt with. But the post-
poned firstlings were eaten at the sanctuary, and
would consequently come under the head of
ordinary sacrifices; and the third-year tithes were
eaten in the local centres, so that the bringing
of the priestly portions would be as difficult in
this case as in the case of the slaughterings for
ordinary meals, which Keil, partly for that rea-
son, thinks cannot be referred to here. On the
whole, the best opinion seems to be that Deu-
teronomy has here different prescriptions from
those in Numbers, and that probably there is a
considerable interval of time between the two.
In vv. 6-8 the Levite as distinguished from the
priest is dealt with, though by no means fully.
Only in one respect are special regulations given.
When such an one came to do duty at the central
sanctuary, he was to receive his share of the sac-
rifices with the rest.
In Chapter I. the main outlines of the Deu-
teronomic system of priestly arrangements have
been placed alongside those of the Book of the
Covenant and JE, and those of P, with a view
to decide whether they could all have been the
work of one lawgiver's life. Here they must
be compared in order that we may ascertain
whether a view of the development of the
priestly tribe which will do justice to these vari-
ous documents and their provisions can be
suggested.
Some schools of critics offer the hypothesis
that there was no special priesthood till late in
the time of the kings. From the beginning,
they say. the head of each household was tht-
family priest, and secular men, such as the kings,
and men of other tribes than the Levites, could
be and were priests, and offered sacrifice even at
Jerusalem. With Deuteronomy the tribe of
Levi was established as the priestly tribe, anil
only after the Exile was priesthood restricted to
the sons of Aaron. But this scheme does jus-
tice to one set of passages only at the expense
of another. It accounts for all that is anoma-
Deuteronomy xviii. 1-8.] SPEAKERS FOR GOD— II. THE PRIEST
579
Ions in the history, and pushes aside the main and
consistent affirmation of all our authorities, that
from the earliest days the tribe of Levi had a
special connection with sacred things and a
special position in Israel. To what straits its
advocates are reduced may be seen in the fact
that Wellhausen has to declare that there were
two tribes of Levi, one purely secular that was
all but destroyed in an attack upon Shechem,
and which afterwards disappeared, and a later
ecclesiastical and somewhat factitious tribe, or
caste, which " towards the end of the monarchy
arose out of the separate priestly families of
Judah." * A more improbable suggestion than
that can hardly be conceived.
But historical analogy, the favourite weapon
of these very critics, also condemns it. Let us
look at the growth of the priesthood in other
ancient nations. In small and isolated com-
munities the head of the household was gen-
erally the family priest, and in all probability
this was the case in the various separate tribes
of which Israel was composed; at least it was so
in the households of the patriarchs. But, in
communities formed by amalgamation of differ-
ent tribes — and according to modern ideas Israel
was so formed — there was almost always super-
induced upon that more primitive state of things
another and different arrangement. In antiquity
no bond could hold together tribes or families
conscious of different descent, save the bond of
religion. Consequently, whenever such an
amalgamation took place, the very first thing
which had to be done was to establish religious
rites common to the whole new community,
which of course were not the care of the heads
of households as such. Each separate section of
the composite body kept up, no doubt, the family
rites; but there had to be a common worship,
and of course a special priesthood, for the new
community. This is sufficiently attested for the
Greeks and Romans by De Coulanges, who in
his " La Cite Antique " gathers together such a
mass of authorities in regard to this matter that
few will be inclined to dispute his conclusion.
On page 146 he says: "Several tribes might
unite, on condition that the worship of each was
respected. When such an alliance was entered
into, the city or state came into existence. It is
of little importance to inquire into the causes
which induced several tribes to unite; what is
certain is that the bond of the new association
was again a religion. The tribes which grouped
themselves to form a state never failed to light
a sacred fire, and to set up a common religion."
But the family and tribal rites continued to exist
as sacra privata, just as the central government
dominated but did not destroy the family and
tribal governments.!
It may be objected that these customs are
proved only for the Aryan races, and that,
though proved for them, they form no valid
analogy for Semitic peoples. But besides the
fact that part of the statements we have quoted
are obviously true of Israel, we have a g:uarantee
that the principle enunciated is also valid for it.
The whole process traced in the religious prog-
ress of the Aryan nations is based upon the wor-
ship of ancestors. Now one of the critical
discoveries is that ancestor-worship was a part
* " History of Israel," p. 145-
i Cf. also Muirhead, article " Roman Law," in " Encv.
Brit.," vol. XX. p. 66q, 2d col., and Ramsay, "Church in
Roman Empire," p. igo.
of the religion of the tribes which afterwards
united to form the Israelite nation. Some, like
Stade, tell us that that was the early religion of
Israel itself. In that form the theory is, I think,
to be rejected; but there would seem to be little
doubt that, before the birth of the nation, ances-
tor-worship was much practised by the Hebrew
tribes. If so, we may quite safely take over the
analogy we have established, and believe that
when Moses united the tribes into a nation, the
religion of Yahweh was the absolutely necessary,
connecting link which bound them together.
For though the tribes were related, and are
represented as the descendants of Abraham, they
must have varied considerably from each other
in religious beliefs and usages. By Moses these
variations were extinguished, as far as that was
possible, by the establishment of an exclusive
Yahweh-worship as the national cult; and to
carry on this, not the heads of households, but a
priesthood that represented the nation, must
have been selected. But if so, who would most
naturally be selected for this duty? A sentence
from De Coulanges will show that in this case
the tribe of Levi would almost necessarily be
chosen. Speaking of cases in which a composite
state relieved itself of the trouble of inventing
a new worship by adopting the special god of
one of the component tribes, he says: " But
when a family consented to share its god in this
fashion it reserved for itself at least the priest-
hood." Now if that was the case in Israel, the
priesthood of the tribe of Levi would at once
become a necessity. Whether Yahweh had been
ever known to the other tribes or not. there can
be little doubt that the knowledge of Him which
made them a nation and started them on their
unique career of spiritual discovery came from
the Mosaic tribe and family.
The God whom the family worshipped became
the God of the confederacy, and they would be
the natural guardians of His sanctuary. This
would not in the least involve special sanctity
and meekness on the part of the tribe, as some
insist. They would remain a tribe like the
others; but their leading men would discharge
the functions of priests for the confederated
nation. It is difficult, indeed, to see why any
one else should have been thought of: most
likely the arrangement was made as a thing of
course.
But if there *was such a common worship, there
must have been a sanctuary for it, and at it the
Levitic priests must have discharged their func-
tions. Now though the Tabernacle, as P knows
it, is not spoken of either in JE or in Deuter-
onomy, a " tent of meeting " at which Jehovah
revealed Himself to Moses and to which the
people went to seek Yahweh (Exod. xxxiii. 7
ff.) is known to all our authorities. Further.
Wellhausen himself says, " If Moses did any-
thing at all he certainly founded the sanctuary at
Qadesh and the Torah there, which the priests
of the ark carried on after him." so that even he
recognises the necessity we have pointed out.
From the days of Moses onwards, therefore,
there must have been special priests of Yahweh,
a special Yahwistic sanctuary, ritual with a
special sacrifice presented to Yahweh, and lastly
a central oracle, which is precisely what the
passages explained away by Wellhausen assert.
But of course at that early time, even if the
ultimate purpose was to have an exclusively Le-
vitical priesthood, concessions to the old state of
58o
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
things would have to be made. The Passover
was left in the hands of the household priest,
and in other ways probably he would be con-
sidered. The old order would insist on surviv-
ing, and the rigour of the later arrangements
cannot then have been attained. In other re-
spects we know that it was so; and we may well
believe that the priesthood of the individual
householder and of the rulers was tolerated, and
as far as possible regulated, so as to ofifer no
public scandal to the religion of Yahweh. So,
among the Homeric Greeks special hereditary
priesthoods coexisted with a political priesthood
of the head of the State, and with the household
priesthood.*
The laxity on these points ascribed to Moses
is, however, less than has been supposed. At
Mount Sinai he certainly did appoint the " young
men of the children of Israel " f to slaughter the
beasts for sacrifice; but he reserved for himself,
a Levite, the sprinkling of the blood on the
altar.J He also made Joshua his servant, an
Ephraimite, the keeper of the sanctuary; but
even under the Levitical law, a priest's slave was
reckoned to be of his household and could eat
of the holy things. These were not very great
laxities, and there is nothing in them to make
us suppose that a regular priesthood did not
exist from Sinai. Moreover, that a special place
should be assigned to Aaron and his sons was
natural. He was the brother of Moses, and
would be the natural representative of the tribe,
since Moses was removed from it as being leader
of all. Everything therefore concurs to confirm
the Biblical view that the Levitic priesthood had
its origin at Sinai, and that at the chief sanctuary
and oracle the chief place in the priesthood fell
to Aaron and his sons. Worship at other sanc-
tuaries was permitted, and there the heads of
households may have performed priestly func-
tions, or in later times in Canaan some other
Levitic families; but that there was a central sanc-
tuary in the hands of Levitic priests, among
whom the family of Aaron had a chief place, is
what the circumstances, the historical data we
have, and all historical analogy alike demand.
For the discharge of their sacred functions cer-
tain dues were doubtless assigned to the priests,
and the Levites sharing in the subordinate duties
of the sanctuary would share also in the emolu-
ments. In other respects Levi in the wilderness
would differ in nothing from oth'er tribes. But
in preparation for the arrival in Canaan, it was
decreed that Levi should " have no part or in-
heritance in Israel." Yahweh was to be their
inheritance.
The point to notice here is that this tribe was
to retain the nomadic life when the other tribes
became agricultural. The reason for it is plain.
That ancient manner of life was looked upon as
superior in a religious aspect to the agricultural
life. In the first place, the ancestral life of
Israel had been of that kind. Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob had been heads of nomadic families
or tribes; and the pure and peaceful religious
life, the intimate communion with God which
they enjoyed, always dominated the imagination
of the pious Israelite. Moreover the funda-
mental revelation had come to Moses when he
was a shepherd in the waste. Further, the life
of the shepherd is necessarily less continuously
•Ra^elsbach, " Homerische Theologie," p. 198.
+ Exod. xxiv. 5.
t Exod. xxxiii. 11.
busy than that of the agriculturist; it has, there-
fore, more scope in it for contemplation; and in
many countries and at various times shepherds
have been a specially thoughtful, as well as a
specially pious class. But, perhaps the chief
reason was that the shepherd life was not only
simple and frugal in itself, but it was also by its
very conditions free from some of the greater
dangers to which the religious life of the Israel-
ite in Canaan was exposed. When the bulk of
the people adopted the settled life, they were not
only thrown among the Canaanites.but they went
to school to them in all that concerned elaborate
agriculture. This necessarily made the inter-
course and connection between the two peoples
extremely intimate, and was fruitful in evil re-
sults. From this the semi-nomadic portions of
the people were to a great extent free, and they
would seem to have been regarded as the
guardians of a higher life and a purer tradition
than others. They represented to the popular
mind the Israel of ancient days, which had
known nothing of the vices of cities, and , in
which the pure, uncorrupted religion of Yahweh
-had held exclusive sway.
A remarkable narrative of the Old Testament
establishes this. When Jehu was engaged in his
sanguinary suppression of the house of Ahab,
and the Baal-worship which they had introduced,
we read in 2 Kings x. 15 fif. that he lighted on
Jonadab the son of Rechab coming to meet him.
This Jonadab was the chief of the Rechabites, a
nomadic clan, who were bound by oath to drink
no wine, nor to build houses, nor sow seed, nor
plant vineyards, and to dwell in tents all their
days (Jer. xxxv. 6, 7). This was clearly in-
tended as a protest against the prevailing cor-
ruption of manners, and was founded on a special
zeal for the uncorrupted religion of Yahweh.
Recognising Jonadab's position as a champion
of true religion, Jehu anxiously seeks his ap-
proval and co-operation. He says, " Is thine
heart right, as my heart is with thy heart? "
And Jonadab answered, " It is." " If it be," said
Jehu, " give me thine hand." And he gave him
his hand, and he took him up to him into the
chariot. And he said, " Come with me, and see
my zeal for Yahweh." At a much later time,
Jeremiah, at the Divine command, used the faith-
fulness of these nomads to the ordinances of
their chiefs to put to shame the unfaithfulness
of Israel to Yahweh's ordinances; and promises
(Jer. xxxv. 19) that because of it " Jonadab the
son of Rechab shall never want a man to stand
before Yahweh," i. e., as His servant. The
Nazarites, again, were in some measure an indi-
cation of the same thing. Their rigorous ab-
stinence from the fruit of the vine (the special
sign and gift of a settled life in a country like
Palestine) was their great distinguishing mark,
as persons peculiarly set apart to the service of
God. Something analogous is seen in that other
desert faith, Mohammedanism. When the great
reformer, Abd-el-Wahab, attempted to bring
back Islam to its primitive power, he fell back
largely upon the simplicity of the desert life,
though he did not insist upon the abandonment
of agriculture and fixed habitations.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the priestly
tribe was kept to the nomadic life by the ordi-
nance that they should not have a portion in the
distribution of the Canaanite territory. But ac-
cording to the narrative of the attack upon
Shechem by Levi and Simeon, and the verses
Deuteronomy xviii. 1-S] SPEAKERS FOR GOD— II. THE PRIEST.
58x
in the blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix.) dealing with
these tribes, the course of history reinforced this
command. Whether the treachery at Shechem
occurred, as the Genesis narrative places it, be-
fore the Exodus, when Israel was only a family,
or was an incident in the history of the two tribes
after Canaan had been invaded, as , many critics
think,* the significance of it is that because of
an historical exhibition of fierce and intolerant
zeal on the part of Levi and Simeon, which the
other tribes would not defend, their settlement
in that part of the land was rendered difficult, if
not impossible. Hence Simeon had to seek
other settlements, while Levi fell back to the
position assigned to it by its priestly character.
It is not a valid exception to this view — which
reconciles the two statements that Levi had no
inheritance with the other tribes because of its
specially near relation to Yahweh, and also be-
cause of its cruel treachery at Shechem — that a
priestly tribe is likely to have been not more,
but rather less, fierce than the others. That
would entirely depend upon the cause or occa-
sion which called out the fierceness. In all that
concerned religion Levi would naturally be more
inclined to extreme measures than the other
tribes, and in this case the higher morality, se-
cured by the separateness of Israel, might easily
appear to be at stake. f It is, therefore, quite
credible that the excessive vengeance taken
should have been planned mainly by Levi, and
that the resulting hatred should have broken up
Simeon, and driven back Levi with emphasis to
its higher call.
In any case there never was again any doubt
that the Levites were to be excluded from the
number of land-owning tribes. Even in the
legislation regarding the forty-eight priestly
cities this principle asserts itself. The keeping
of sheep and cattle on the pastures, which were
the only lands attached to these cities, was to be
the Levites' only secular occupation, and they
were neither to own nor work agricultural land.
But to compensate for any hardship this ar-
rangement might bring with it, the Levites, as
the special servants of Yahweh, were to have
Him for their inheritance, i. e., as we have seen,
the dues coming to Yahweh were to become the
property of the Levites in great part. I say in
great part, because the gift to the Levites ex-
clusively of a tithe of the income of the people
is thought by many to be only a late provision.
After Canaan had been conquered, the state
of things in connection with the priesthood
would be something like this. The tent with
the ark would be the principal sanctuary, served
by a hereditary Levitic priesthood, at the head
of which would be a descendant of Aaron. The
tribe of Levi, being nomadic, would probably
encamp in the neighbourhood of the central
sanctuary in part, and recruits for the priestly
work would be taken occasionally from them,
while other sections would gravitate to the
neighbourhood of other sanctuaries. As we see
from the story of Micah in Judges, it was con-
sidered desirable to have a Levite for priest
everywhere, and consequently there would arise
at all the High Places Levitic priesthoods, most
probably in part hereditary. But notwithstand-
ing their dues, the bulk of the tribe, being nom-
ads, would be looked upon by the agricultural
population as poor, just as the Bedouin, in
♦ C/'. Kittel's "Geschichte der Hebraer," II., p. 63.
+ Cf. Exod. xxxii. 15-20.
Palestine now are, comparatively speaking, very
poor. This state of things would correspond
entirely with what Deuteronomy tells us; and
after that legislation the position of the Levites
as a priestly body would be more assured than
ever. In the post-exilic period all that had been
regulated by practice in earlier days found writ-
ten expression. Differentiation of function was
minutely carried out. The priesthood was con-
fined rigorously to the Aaronic house, and the
other Levites were given to them as attendants.
In this way the whole Levitic system was intro-
duced, and with the exclusive altar came the ex-
clusive priesthood. So far as I can see, it is only
by some such hypothesis that justice can be done
to all the statements of Scripture; and consider-
ing the elastic , nature of Old Testament law,
there is nothing improbable in it. In any case
there is an amount of evidence of various kinds
for the Mosaic origin of the Levitic, and even
the Aaronic priesthood, which no proof of
irregularities can overturn.
In the Divinely sanctioned arrangements of
the Old Testament Church, therefore, the exist-
ence of a body of ecclesiastical persons, having
little share in the ordinary pursuits of their
neighbours, and dependent upon their clerical
duties for a large part of their maintenance, was
deemed necessary to secure the continuity of
worship and religious belief. As has been al-
ready pointed out, the priesthood was necessarily
more conservative than progressive. As an insti-
tution, it was suited rather to gather up and per-
petuate the results of- religious movements other-
wise originated, than to originate them itself.
But in that sphere it was an absolutely necessary
element in the life of Israel. Difificult as it was
to permeate the people with the truths of re-
vealed religion, it would have been impossible
without the services of the priestly tribe. Wher-
ever they went they were a visible embodiment
of the demand for faithfulness to Yahweh, and,
with all their aberrations, they probably lived at
a higher spiritual level than the average layman.
As has been well said, though Malachi had much
reason to complain of the priests in his own day,
his estimate of what Levi had been in the past is
no exaggeration (ii. 6) : " The law of truth was
in his mouth, and unrighteousness was not found
in his lips: he walked with Me in peace and up-
rightness, and did turn many away from
iniquity." But such a body as the Levites could
not have been kept thus spiritually alive, unless
the members of it had lived somewhat aloof from
the strifes and envies of the market-place, and
this they could not have done had they not lived
by their sacred function. The prophets, under
the power and impulse of new truth adapted to
their own time, did not need this protection;
consequently some of them were called from
ordinary secular work — from the plough, like
Elisha, or from the midst of the rich and high-
born inhabitants of Jerusalem, like Isaiah. If
one may so say, they were men of religious
genius; while the bulk of the priests and Levites
must always have been commonplace men in
comparison. Yet even of the prophets a num-
ber were trained in the nomadic life; others were
priests who were shut off also from agriculture.
Clearly, therefore, some measure of separation
from the full pulsing life of the world was, even
in the most favourable circumstances, helpful in
developing religious character. For the ordi-
nary average ecclesiastic it was indispensable;
582
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
and that he should exist, and should live at as
high a level as possible, was as much a condi-
tion of Israel's discharge of her great mission,
^■5 that the voice of the prophet should be heard
at all the great turning-points of her career.
The modern tendency in Old Testament study
is to depreciate the priest and to exalt the
prophet, just as in ecclesiastical life we tend to
make much of those who are or give themselves
out to be religious reformers and thinkers, and
to make little of the ordinary parish or congre-
gational ministry. But the good done by the
latter is, and must be, for each individual genera-
tion more than that done by the former. No
one can estimate too highly the conserving and
elevating effect of a faithful high-minded spiritual
Tninister. Often without genius either intel-
lectual or religious, without much speculative
power, with so firm a hold of the old truth, which
has been their own guiding star, that they can-
not readily see the good in anything new, such
men, when faithful to the light they have, are
the stable, restful, immediately effective element
in all Church life. And such a body can be best
.spiritualised by being separated somewhat from
the stress and strain of competition in the race
of life. Being what they are, the necessity of
taking their full part in the business of the
world would inevitably secularise them, to the
great and lasting damage of all spiritual
interests. For though to modern students of
Old Testament religion, who are interested most
in its growth and progress towards its consum-
mation in Christianity, the prophet is by far the
most interesting figure, to the ancient people
itself it must have seemed that the priests and
Levites, if they in any degree deserved Malachi's
eulogy, were the entirely indispensable element
in their religious life. They gave the daily bread
of religion to the people. They embodied the
principles which came to them from prophetic
inspiration in ceremonies and institutions; they
treasured up whatever had been gained, and kept
the people nurtured in it and admonished by it.
In short, they prepared the soil and cultivated
the roots from which alone the consummate
Mower of prophecy could spring; and when the
voice of prophecy was dying away they brought
the piety of the average Israelite to the highest
point it ever reached.
In modern times the necessity for such a body
of special churchmen is challenged from two
opposite sides. There is, on the one hand, the
body of over-spiritualised believers who abhor
organisation, and the machinery of organisation,
as if it were an intolerable evil. Conscious very
often of quick spiritual impulse and vivid life in
themselves, they fret against the slow movements
of large bodies of men; they separate themselves
from all the organised Churches and reject a
regular ministry. All the Lord's people are
now under the Christian dispensation, priests
and prophets, they say, and a separate paid
ministry in sacred things they refuse to hear of.
For spiritual nourishment they rely solely upon
the prophetic gifts of their members, and are
satisfied that thus they are preparing the way
for the universal prevalence of a higher form of
Church life. But, so far as can be judged, their
experiment has not prospered, nor is it likely to
do so. For these separatist Christians have
found that spiritual life, like other kinds of life,
cannot express itself without an organism. That
implies organisation; and though they do with
less of it than other Christians, still they are
often driven into arrangements which really
bring back the regular ministry with its separate
position; and in other respects they are saved
from the inconveniences they have fled from,
only by their want of success. If their system
ever became general, it would necessarily drift
into organisation, for only at that price can any
coherent, continuous, and lasting efifect be pro-
duced. Unfettered by the dull, the critical, and
the judicious, the impulsive and enthusiastic
would always be outrunning the possibilities of
the present time. In the interests of the best,
they would be continually ignoring or destroying
the good. To prevent that, a special body of re-
ligious men set apart for sacred services, and
freed from the rough struggle for existence so
far as a maintenance from funds devoted to re-
ligious purposes can free them, is one of the
best provisions known. Where in the mass they
are really religious men, they secure that the
pressure upward, which the Church exerts upon
the lives of its own members and upon the com-
munity in general, shall be effective to the
highest degree then possible, and shall be exerted
in the directions in which such pressure will
most fully answer to the needs and aspirations of
the time. Where, on the contrary, the mass of
them are secularised, they no doubt are a power
for evil; but the contrast between their profes-
sion and their practice in that case is so shock-
ing, that unless they be supported by the " dead
hand " of endowments with no living spiritual
demand behind them, they soon sink by their
own weight, to give place to a better type. And
even when they are thus supported, though un-
faithful, their calling in name at least remains
spiritual, and sooner than the other elements in
the nation they are apt to be stirred by breath-
ings of a new life.
The other objectors to the regular ministry
are those, in the press and elsewhere, who de-
mand of all ministers that they should be
prophets, or inspired religious geniuses, and, be-
cause they are not, deny their right to exist.
According to this view every sermon that is not
a new revelation is a failure, every minister of
the sanctuary who is not a discoverer in religion
is a pretender, every one who only exemplifies
and lives by the power of the Gospel, as it was
last formulated so as to lay hold upon the popu-
lar mind, is an obscurantist. But no reasonable
man really believes this. Such reproaches are
merely the penalty which must be paid for
claiming so high a calling as that of an ambassa-
dor for Christ. No man can quite adequately
fill such a position; and the bulk of ministers of
Christ know better than others how much below
their ideal their real service is. But this also is
true, that, take them all in all, no class of men
are doing anything like so much as Christian
ministers throughout the world are doing to
keep up the standard of morals and to keep
alive faith in that which is spiritual. We
have no right to complain that in their sphere
they are conservative of that which has been
handed on to them. They have tried and proved
that teaching; they know that wherever it secures
a foothold it lifts men up to God, and they are
naturally doubtful whether new and untried
teaching will do as much. They have pressing
upon them, too. as others have not, the interest of
individual men and women whom they see and
know, men and women who for the most part,
Deuteronomy xviii. 9-22.] SPEAKERS FOR GOD— III. THE PROPHET.
58^
and so far as they can see, are accessible to
spiritual impulse only on lines with which they
are familiar; and they dread the diversion of
their thoughts from their real spiritual interests,
to matters which, for them at least, must remain
largely intellectual and speculative. No doubt
it would be well if all pastors could, as the most
highly endowed do, look beyond that narrower
field; could take account of the movements which
are drifting men into new positions, from which
the old landmarks cannot be seen and conse-
quently exert no influence; and could endeavour
to rethink their Christianity from new points of
view, which may be about to become the ortho-
doxy of the next generation. But no ministry
will ever be a ministry of prophets. It may even
be doubted whether such a ministry could be
borne if it ever should arise. Under it one
might fear that spiritual repose and spiritual
growth would alike be impossible for the average
man, in his breathless race after teachers each of
whom was always catching sight of new lights.
The mass of men need, first of all, teachers who
have firmly seized the common truth by which
the Church of their day lives, who live conspicu-
ously nearer the Christian ideal, as generally
conceived, than others do, who devote them-
selves in sincerity and self-sacrifice to the work
of making the things that are most surely be-
lieved among Christians a common and abiding
possession. Such men need never be ashamed
of themselves or of their calling. Theirs is the
foundation work, so far as any attempt to realise
the Kingdom of God on earth is concerned; for
without the general acceptance of the truth at-
tained which they bring about, no further at-
tainment would be possible. The very environ-
ment out of which alone the prophet could be de-
veloped would be wanting, and stagnation and
death would certainly and necessarily follow.
One other thing remains to be said. Though
we have taken these significant words of ver.
2 — " And they shall have no inheritance among
their brethren: Yahweh is their inheritance, as
He hath spoken unto them " — in their first and
most obvious reference, it is not to be supposed
that that meaning has exhausted all that the
words conveyed to ancient Israel. The perpetu-
ation of the nomadic form of life among the
Levites, and the bestowal of tithes and sacrificial
meats upon them, was undoubtedly the first pur-
pose of this command. But it had, even for an-
cient Israel, a more spiritual meaning. Just
as in the promise of Canaan as a dwelling-place
the spiritual Israelite never regarded merely the
gift of wealth and the prospect of comfort, — Ca-
naan was always for them Yahweh's land, the
land where they would specially live near Him
and find the joy of His presence, — so in this
case the spiritual gift, of which the material was
only an expression, is the main thing. To have
Yahweh for their heritage can never have meant
only so much money and provisions, so much
leisure and opportunity for contemplation, to
any true son of Levi. Otherwise it is inexplica-
ble how the words used to indicate this very
i»arthly thing should have become so acceptable
a formula for the deepest spiritual experience of
Christian men. It meant also a spiritual bond
between Yahweh and His servants — a special
■nearness on their part, and a special condescen-
sion on His. To the other tribes Yahweh had
given His land, to them He had given Himself
as a hcritrige; and though doubtless any un-
spiritual son of Levi must have thought the tan-
gible advantages of a fertile farm more attractive
than visionary nearness to God, the spiritual
among the Levites must have felt that they had
received the really good part, which no hostile
invasion, no oppression of the rich, could ever
take away. Their ordinary life-work brought
them more into contact with sacred things than
others. The goodness, the mercy, the love of
God were, or at least ought to have been,
clearer to them than to their brethren; and the
joy of doing good to men for God's sake, the
rapture of contemplation which possessed them
when they were privileged to see the face of
God, must have made all the coarser benefits of
the earthly heritage seem worse than nothing,
and vanity. Of course there was the danger that
familiarity with religious things should dull in-
stead of quickening the insight; and many pas-
sages in the Old Testament show that this danger
was not always escaped. But often, and for long
periods, it must have been warded off; and then
the superiority of God's gift of Himself must
have been manifest, not only to the chosen tribe,
but to all Israel. For the nature of man is too
intrinsically noble ever to be quite satisfied with
the world, and the riches and comforts of the
world, for its inheritance. At no time has man
ever failed to do homage to spiritual gifts. Even
to-day, in spheres outside of religion, there are
multitudes of men and women who would put
aside without a sigh any wealth the world could
give, if it were offered as a substitute for their
delight in poetry, or for their power to rethink
and re-enjoy the ideas of those whose " thoughts
have wandered through eternity." And the
power to follow and to yield oneself up to
the thoughts of the Eternal God Himself is a
reward far above these. To the faithful servant
of God at all times and in all lands that joy has
been open, for God Himself has been their
heritage; and though in ancient Israel the beauty
of " Yahweh their God " was not quite unveiled,
yet we know from the Psalms that many pene-
trated even then to the inner glory where God
meets His chosen, and there, though having
nothing, yet found that in Him they had all.
CHAPTER XIX.
SPEAKERS FOR GOD— III. THE
PROPHET.
Deuteronomy xviii. 9-22.
The third of the Divine voices to this nation
was the prophet. Just as in the other Semitic
nations round about Israel there were kings and
priests and soothsayers, there were to be in Israel
kings and priests and prophets; and the first two
orders having been discussed, there remains for
consideration the prophet, in so far at least as
he was to be the substitute for the soothsayer.
That this parallel was in the mind of the writer,
and that he probably intended only to deal with
certain aspects of the prophetic office, is witnessed
by the fact that he introduces what he has to say
regarding the prophet by a stern and detailed
denunciation of any dealings with soothsayers
and wizards. In the earlier codes the same de-
nunciation is found, but the catalogue of names
for those who practised such arts is nowhere so
extensive as it is here. In the Book of the Cove-
584
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
nant the meklmshsheph, or magician, alone is
mentioned (Exod. xxii. 17): while the peculiar
code which is contained in the last chapters of
Leviticus,* mentions only five varieties of sor-
cerers. The Deuteronomic list of eight is thus
the most complete; and Dillmann may be right
in regarding it as also the latest. But the special
indignation of the writer of Deuteronomy
against these forms of superstition would be
quite sufficient to account for his elaborate de-
tail. If he lived in the days of Manasseh, he
would have before his eyes the passing of chil-
dren through the fire to Moloch. That was
connected with soothsaying and was the crown-
ing horror of Israel's idolatry. The author of
Deuteronomy might, therefore, well be more
passionate and detailed in his denunciations than
others, whether earlier or later.
Nor let any one imagine that in this he was
wrong and unenlightened. Whether we believe
in the occasional appearance of abnormal powers
of the soothsaying kind or not, it is evident thai
in every nation's life there has been a time in
which faith in the existence of such powers was
universal, and in which the moral and spiritual
life of men has been threatened in the gravest
way by the proceedings of those who claimed to
possess them. At this hour the witch-doctor,
with his cruelties and frauds, is the incubus that
rests upon all the semi-civilised or wholly uncivil-
ised peoples of Africa. Even British justice has
to lay hands upon him in New Guinea, as the
following extract from a Melbourne newspaper
will show: " Divination by means of evil spirits
is practised to such an extent and with such evil
effects by the natives of New Guinea that the
Native Regulation Board of British New Guinea
has found it necessary to make an ordinance for-
bidding it. The regulation opens with the state-
ment, ' White men know that sorcery is only
deceit, but the lies of the sorcerer frighten many
people; the deceit of the sorcerer should be
stopped.' It then proceeds to point out that it
is forbidden for any person to practise or to pre-
tend to practise sorcery, or for any person to
threaten any other person with sorcery, whether
practised by himself or any one else. Any one
found guilty of sorcery may be sentenced by a
European magistrate to three months' imprison-
ment, or by a native magistrate to three days'
imprisonment, and he will be compelled to work
in prison without payment." Through the sor-
cerer attempts at advance to a higher life are in
our own day being rendered futile; at his in-
stigation the darkest crimes are committed; and
because of him and the beliefs he inculcates men
are kept all their lives subject to bondage. So
also of old. The ancient soothsayer might be
an impostor in everything, but he was none the
less dangerous for that. To what depths of
wickedness his practices can bring men is seen
in the horrors of the secret cult of the negroes
of Hayti. Even when soothsaying and magic
were connected with higher religions than the
fetichism of the Haytian negro, they were still
detrimental in no ordinary degree. No worthy
conception of God could grow up where these
were dominant, and toleration of them was
utterly impossible for the religion of Yahweh.
The justice of the punishment of death decreed
against wizards and witches in Scripture was,
therefore, quite independent of the reality of
♦ Only two in any one law ; Lev. xviii. 21, xix. 26, 31, xx.
6, 27.
the powers such persons claimed. They pro-
fessed and were believed to have them, and thus
they acquired an influence which was fatal to any
real belief in a moral and spiritual government
of the world. They must therefore be an
"abomination" to Yahweh; and as, in any case,
by the very fact that they were soothsayers and
diviners they practised low forms of idolatry,
those who sought them must share the condem-
nation of the idolater in Israel. In the earlier
days of the sacred history there was no enemy
so subtle, so insidious, so difficult to meet as
magic and soothsaying. Only by actual prohi-
bition, on pain of death, could the case be ade-
quately met; and under these circumstances there
is no need for us to apologise for the Old Testa-
ment law, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live " (Exod. xxii. 17). What is aimed at here
is the profession on the part of any woman that
she had and used these supernatural powers.
This was a crime against Israel's higher life.
The punishment of it had no resemblance to the
judicial cruelties perpetrated in comparatively
modern times, when the charge of being a witch
became a weapon against people, who for the
most part were guilty only of being helpless and
lonely.
But it is characteristic of the large outlook of
Deuteronomy that not only is the evil protested
against; the universal human need which under-
lay it is acknowledged and supplied. Behind all
the terrible aberrations of heathen soothsaying
and divination the author saw hunger for a reve-
lation of the will and purpose of God. That was
worthy of sympathy, however inadequate and
evil the substitutes elaborated for the really Di-
vine means of enlightenment were. So he
promises that the real need will be supplied by
God's holy prophets. Nothing that savoured
of ignorance or misapprehension of God's
spirituality, or of unfaithfulness to Yahweh,
could be tolerated; for Israel's God would supply
all their need by a prophet from the midst of
them, of their brethren, like unto Moses, in
whose mouth Yahweh would put His words, and
who should speak unto them all that He should
command him. This is the broadest and most
general legitimation of the prophet, as a special
organ of revelation in Israel, that the Scripture
contains. By it he is made one of the regularly
constituted channels of Divine influence for his
people. For it is evidently not one single indi-
vidual, such as the Messiah, who is here fore-
told. That has been the interpretation received
from the earlier Jews, and cherished in the
Church up till quite modern times. But as Keil
rightly says, the fact that this promise is set
against any supposed need to have recourse to
diviners and wizards, is in itself sufficient proof
that the prophetic order is meant. It was not
only in the far-off Messianic time that Israel was
to find in this Divinely sent prophet that knowl-
edge of God's will and purposes which it needed.
Israel of all times, tempted by the customs of its
heathen neighbours to go to the diviners, was to
have in Yahweh's prophet a continual deliver-
ance from the temptation. That implies that this
Nabhi, or prophet like unto Moses, was to be
continually recurring, at every turn and crisis of
this nation's career.
Further, the direction in the end of the pas-
sage for testing the prophets, whether they were
really sent of God or not, confirms this view.
It would be singularly out of place in a promise
Deuteronomy xviii. 9-22.J SPEAKERS FOR GOD— III. THE PROPHET.
585
which referred to the Messiah in an exclusive
and primary fashion. He would never need test-
ing of this sort, for He was to be the realisation
and embodiment of Israel's highest aspirations.
But if the passage means to give the prophets a
place among the national organs of intercourse
with Yahweh alongside of the priests, the neces-
sity of distinguishing these true and Divinely
given prophets from pretenders was urgent.
The context, both before and after the promise,
seems, therefore, to be decisively in favour of the
general reference; and the phrases "like unto
me," "like unto thee," i. e., Moses, when carefully
examined, instead of weakening that inference,
strengthen it. They are not used here as the
similar phrase is used in Deut. xxxiv. 10: " And
there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel
like unto Moses, whom Yahweh knew face to
face." There the closeness of Moses' approach
to Yahweh is the point in hand, and it is clearly
stated that in that regard Moses was more fa-
voured than any who had succeeded him. But
here the comparison is between Moses and the
prophets, in so far as mediation between Yah-
weh and His people was concerned. At Israel's
own wish Moses had been appointed to hear the
Divine voice. Israel had said " Let me not hear
again the voice of Yahweh my God, neither let
me see this great fire any more, that I die not."
The prophet here promised was to be like Moses
in that respect, but there is nothing to assert that
he would be equal to Moses in power and dig-
nity. On all grounds, therefore, the reference
to the line of prophets is to be maintained.
Still, the interpretation thus reached does not
exclude — it distinctly includes — the Messianic
reference. If the passage promises that at all
moments of difficulty and crisis in Israel's his-
tory, the will of God would be made known by
a Divinely sent prophet, that would be specially
true of the last and greatest crisis, the birth of
the new time which the Messiah was to inaugu-
rate. Whatever fulfilment the promise might
receive previously to that, it could not be per-
fectly fulfilled without the advent of Him whose
office it was to close up the history of the present
world, and bring all things by a safe transition
into the new Messianic world. That was the
greatest crisis; and necessarily the prophet who
spoke for Yahweh in it must be the crown of the
long line of prophets. There is still a higher
sense in which this promise has reference to the
Messiah. He was to sum up and realise in Him-"
self all the possibilities of Israel. Now they
were the prophetic nation, the people who were
to reveal God to mankind; and when they proved
prevailingly false to their higher calling, the
hopes of all who remained faithful turned to
that " true " Israel which alone would inherit the
promises. At one period, just before and in the
Exile, the prophetic order would appear to have
been looked upon as the Israel within Israel, to
whom it would fall to accomplish the great
things to which the seed of Abraham had been
called. But the author of Second Isaiah, de-
spairing even of them, saw that the destiny of
Israel would be accomplished by one great
Servant of Yahweh, who should outshine all
other prophets, as He would surpass all other
Israelite priests and Davidic kings. As the
crown and embodiment of all that the prophets
had aspired to be, the Messiah alone completely
fulfilled this promise, and consequently the Mes-
sianic reference is organically one with the pri-
mary reference. They are so intimately inter-
woven that nothing but violence can separate
them; and thus we gain a deeper insight into the
wide reach of the Divine purposes, and the
organic unity of the Divine action in the world.
These form a far better guarantee for the recog-
nition of Messianic prophecy here than the sup-
posed direct and exclusive reference did. By not
grasping too desperately at the view which more
strikingly involves the supernatural, we have re-
ceived back with " full measure pressed down
and running over " the assurance that God was
really speaking here, and that this, like all the
promises of the Old Testament, when rightly
understood, is yea and amen in Christ.
But for our present purpose the primary refer-
ence of this passage to the prophetic line is even
more important than the secondary but most
vital reference to the Messiah. For it sets forth
prophecy as the most potent instrument for the
growth and furtherance of the religion of Israel.
The prophet is here declared to be the successor
of Moses, to be the inspired declarer of the Di-
vine will to His people in cases which did not
come within the sphere or the competency of
the priest. The latter was, as we have seen,
bound to work within the limits and on the basis
of the revelation given by Moses. He was to
carry out into execution what had been com-
manded, to keep alive in the hearts of the people
the knowledge of their God as Moses had given
it, to give " Torah " from the sanctuary in ac-
cordance with its principles. But here a nobler
ofiice is assigned to the prophet. He is to en-
large and develop the work of Moses. The Mo-
saic revelation is here viewed as fundamental and
normative, but, in contrast to the views of later
Judaism, as by no means complete. For the
completion of it the prophet is here declared to
be the Divinely chosen instrument, and he is con-
sequently assigned a higher position in the pur-
pose of God than either king or priest. He is
raised far above the diviners by having his call-
ing lifted into the moral sphere; and he excels
both the other organs of national life in that,
while they are largely bound by the past, he is
called of God to initiate new and higher stages
in the life of the chosen people. The ascending
steps of the revelation begun by Moses were to
be in his hands, and through him God was to
reveal Himself in ever fuller measure.
Viewed thus, the prophetic order in Israel has
a quite unique character. It is a provision for
religious progress such as had no parallel else-
where in the world; and this public acknowledg-
ment of its Divine right is almost more remark-
able. Wherever elsewhere in the world religion
has been supposed to be Divinely given through
one man, though modifications have indeed been
made in later times, yet they have never been
anticipated and provided for beforehand. Save
in the case of Mohammedanism, which borrowed
its idea of the office of the prophet from Judaism,
there has never been a deliberate admission that
God had yet higher things to reveal concerning
Himself, still less has provision been made for
the coming of that which was new to fulfil the
old. And in modern times the revealer of new
aspects of truth finds nowhere a welcome. In-
stead of being received as a messenger of God,
even in the Christian Church he has always to
face neglect, often persecution, and only if he be
unusually fortunate does he live to see his mes-
sage received. But in Israel, even in such
586
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
ancient days as those we are dealing with, the
progressive nature of God's Revelation of Him-
self was acknowledged, the reception of new
truth was legitimised and looked for, and the
highest place in the earthly kingdom of God
was reserved for those whom God had enlight-
ened by it. It is true of course that the nation
as a whole never acted in accordance with this
teaching. They did not obey the command
given here, " Unto him shall ye hearken," and
reiterated still more solemnly in the words,
" And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will
not hearken unto My words, which he shall
speak in My name, I will require of him." The
prophets for the most part spoke to their con-
temporaries in vain. Where they were not neg-
lected they were persecuted, and many sealed
their testimony with their blood. But the
thought that Yahweh was educating His people
step by step, and that at all times in their history
He would have further revelations of Himself
to make, is familiar to this writer. Therefore he
welcomes the thought of advance in this region
of things, and here solemnly enrols those who
are to be the instruments of it among the ruling
powers of the nation.
Now in religious thought this is quite unparal-
leled. Tenacious conservatism, based on the
conviction that full truth has already been at-
tained, has always been the mark of religious
thinking. That a religious teacher should be
able to see that the light of revelation, like the
natural light, must come gradually, broadening
by degrees into perfect day, and that he himself
was standing only in the morning twilight, is a
thing so remarkable that one is at a loss to ac-
count for it, save on the ground of the special
nature of prophetic enlightenment. It was part
of the office of the prophets to foresee and fore-
tell the future. Smend is certainly in the right,
as against those who have been teaching that the
prophet was merely a preacher of genius, when
he says that " in Amos and his successors
prophecy is the starting-point of their whole dis-
course and action," and that " all new knowledge
which they preach comes to them from the
action of Yahweh which they foretell. . . Conse-
quently the greatness of a prophet is to be gath-
ered from the measure in which he foresees the
future." * This statement gives us the truth that
lies between the two other extremes; for accord-
ing to it the prophet proclaims and preaches re-
ligious truth, but he does so on the basis of
what he perceives that God is about to do in the
future. In other words, he proclaims new truth
on the ground of the revelation God is about to
make of Himself, which he is inspired to fore-
see and to interpret. His business is neither all
foreseeing nor all teaching; it is teaching
grounded upon foresight. Consequently it was
impossible for the prophet to believe that change
in religion was in itself evil. He knew to the
contrary. Only change which should remove
men from the Divinely given basis of the faith
was evil; and such change, whatever credentials
might accompany it, even though they might be
miraculous, every faithful Israelite had been al-
ready warned most sternly to reject (Deut. xiii.
5). But when the impulse to advance came from
Yahweh's manifestation of Himself, change was
not only good, it was the indispensable test of
faithfulness. They were not the true followers
*"Lehrbuch der Alt-Testamentlichen Religion's Ge-
schichte," pp. 169 ff.
of Isaiah who, on the ground of his prophecy
that Zion, as Yahweh's dwelling-place, should be
delivered from destruction, rejected the prophecy
of Jeremiah that Zion would fall before the
Chaldeans. The really faithful men were those
who had taken to heart the lessons Yahweh had
set for His people in the century that lay be-
tween these two prophets; who saw that the time
when the deliverance of Zion was necessary to
the safety of the true religion was past, and that
now the capture of Zion was necessary to its
true development. And that is not a solitary
case; it is an example of what was normal in the
religious history of this people.
This did not escape the quick eye of John
Stuart Mill. He says the religion of Israel
" gave existence to an inestimably precious un-
organised institution — the order (if it may be so
termed) of prophets. . . Religion, consequently,
was not there, what it has been in so many other
places, a consecration of all that was once estab-
lished, and a barrier against further improve-
ment." There always was the movement of
pulsing life within it, and under the Divine guid-
ance that movement was always upward. At
some times it was comparatively shallow and
slow, at others it was a deep and rushing tide.
But it was always moving in directions which
led straight to the great consummation of itself
in the coming of Christ, who gathered up into
His own life all the varied streams of revelation,
and crowned and fulfilled them all. At no point
in the progress from Moses to the Messiah do we
touch rounded and completed truth; nor, accord-
ing to the teaching of Scripture in this passage,
were we meant to do so. The faithful among
Israel had as their watchword the disio and pace
of Dante. They saw before them a world of Di-
vine " peace," which they knew lay still in the
future, and the " desire " and yearning of their
souls were always directed towards it. With
inextinguishable hope they marched onward with
uplifted faces, to which light reflected from that
future gave at times a radiant gladness; and al-
ways they kept an open ear for those who saw
what God was about to do at each turning of the
way.
But granting that religion was thus pro-
gressive before men were spoken unto " by the
Son," can we say or believe that, now that He
has spoken, progress in this way is still possible?
At first sight it would seem necessary to answer
that question in the negative. The progressive
revelation of God has come to its perfection in
Jesus Christ: what then remains to us but to
cling to that? Are we not bound to make re-
sistance to progress, to any new view in religion,
our first duty? Many act and speak as if that
were the only possible course consistent with
faithfulness. But we must distinguish. The
revelation of God has, according to our Chris-
tian faith, reached not only its highest actual
point, but also its highest possible point in
Christ. God can do nothing more for His vine-
yard than He has done. As a manifestation of
God, revelation is completed and closed in Chri.st.
For it is impossible to manifest God to men
more fully than in a man who reveals God in
every thought and word and act.
But it is quite otherwise with the interpreta-
tion of the manifestation. In the earlier days
this was provided for by a special inspiration of
God, which made the holy men of old infallible
in their interpretation of the revelation received
Deuteronomy xviii. 9-22.] SPEAKERS FOR GOD— III. THE PROPHET
587
up to their day, and that continued till the estab-
lishment of the Church. Since then the Holy
Spirit is to be the guide of faithful men into all
truth. Now in the way of interpreting Christ
and His message progress is as much open to us
as it was to Israel. . A complete revelation of
God must necessarily, at any given time up till
the consummation of all things, contain in it a
residuum of significance which, at that point of
their experience, mankind has not felt the need
of, nor has had the capacity to understand. As
the world grows older, however, new outlooks,
new environments, new circumstances continu-
ally appear, and they all insist upon being dealt
with by the Church. In order to deal with them
adequately and worthily, a faithful Church must
turn to Christ to see what God would have it do;
and if Christ be what we take Him to be, there
will issue from Him a light, unseen or unnoticed
before, to meet the hitherto unfelt need. More-
over, while our Lord Jesus Chiist reveals God
completely as the God of Redemption, and
throws light upon all God's relations to man, a
light which needs and admits of no supple-
mentary addition, there are other aspects of the
Divine character which He does not so entirely
reveal. For example, God's relations to the
world of nature, which are now being unveiled
in a most striking manner, are dealt with com-
paratively rarely in the Gospels. Are we to
shut our eyes to these as of no importance, and
to allow them no influence upon our thoughts?
Surely that cannot be demanded of us; for, to
speak plainly, it is impossible. No one can re-
main unmoved when God and man are revealing
themselves in the wondrous panorama of the
world's life.
Even those who most profess to do so in no
case take their stand simply and solely upon the
truths believed and held by the first Christians.
All of them have adopted later developments as
part of their indefeasible treasure. Some go
back to the theology of the great Evangelical
Revival only; some to the Reformation; some to
the pre-Reformation Scholastics; others to the
first five centuries. But whatever the point may
be at which they take up Christian theology,
they take up, along with the original creed of the
first believers, some truths or doctrines which
emerged and were accepted at a later date.
Themselves being judges, therefore, additions to
the primitive deposit of faith have to be ad-
mitted; and it is a purely arbitrary proceeding on
their part to say that now we have attained to all
truth, and stolid conservatism is henceforth the
only faithful attitude. No, we have still a living
God and a living Church, and a multifarious and
wonderful world to deal with. Interaction of
these cannot be avoide'J, nor can it occur with-
out new truth being evolved. To have ears and
not to hear, to have eyes and not to see, must be
as offensive to God now a.s it was in Old Testa-
ment times. Though we have now no inspired
prophets to foresee and interpret, we have in all
our Churches men whose ears are better attuned
to the celestial harmony than others, whose eyes
have a keener and surer insight into what God
the Lord would speak; and we ought to hear
them, to see at least whether they can make their
position good. To reject their teaching, only
because some element or aspect of it is new, is
to deny the guiding providence of God, to turn
our back upon the rich stores of instruction
which the facts of history, both secular and re-
ligious, are fitted to impart. That can never be a
Christian duty. Even if it were possible it would
be futile. The light will be received by the
younger, the fresher and less stereotyped nature.^
in all the Churches; and those who refuse it, in
holding obstinately and with exclusive devotion
to what they have, will find it shrink and shrivel
in their hand. Only in the rush and conflict,
only amid the impulses and the powers which
are moving in the world, can a healthy religion
breathe. Doubtless new teaching will come to
us in ways congruous to the completed Revela-
tion of our Redeeming God; but it will come;
and it should be welcomed as gladly as the teach-
ing of the prophets was welcomed by faithful
men in Israel. If it be not. then the Divine
threat will apply in this case as fully as in the
other: "Whosoever will not hearken unto My
words which he shall speak in My name, I will
require it of him."
Many say now, and at all times many have
said, to those who had caught glimpses of some
new lesson God was desiring to teach: " You
admit that souls have been renewed and char-
acter built up and spiritual life preserved without
this new teaching. Why then can you not let
us alone? In your pursuit of the best you may
destroy the good; and no harm can happen if
you keep the improved faith to yourself." But
they have forgotten Yahweh's solemn " whoso-
ever will not hearken. I will require it of him."
If we refuse to hear when the Lord hath spoken,
evil must come of it. Indeed, though the evils
of heresy may be more dramatically and strik-
ingly manifest, those of stagnation and a refusal
to learn may be much more destructive of the
common faith. For refusal to acknowledge truth
has far wider issues than the loss of any particu-
lar truth. It indicates and reinforces an attitude
of soul which, if persisted in, will allow the
Church that adopts it to drift slowly away from
living contact with the minds of men. So drift-
ing, it shrinks into a coterie, and its every activity
becomes infected with the curse of futility.
On both sides, therefore, there is danger for
us, as there was for the Old Testament Church;
and we turn with quickened interest to the test,
the criterion, by which Deuteronomy would have
the prophets tried. It puts the very question
which the line of thought we have been pursuing
could not fail to suggest: " How shall we know
the word which Yahweh hath not spoken?" If
a prophet spoke in the name of other gods he
was to die; that had already been determined in
the thirteenth chapter, and it is repeated here.
But the prophet who should speak a word pre-
sumptuously in the name of Yahweh, which He
had not commanded, was to be in the same con-
demnation. It was, therefore, of the last impor
tance that there should be means of detecting
when this last evil occurred. The test is this:
" When a prophet speaketh in the name of Yah-
weh, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass,
that is the thing which Yahweh hath not
spoken." The strange notions of Duhm and
others in regard to this have been already dealt
with (vide pp. 560 f.). There, too, it has been
shown that the prophecy here spoken of must
have been prophecy in its narrower sense,
prophecy dealing with promises of irnmediate
judgment and deliverance. Furthermore, this is
set forth here as a test applicable to prophets in
all ages of the history of Israel. It lies, too, in
the nature of the case that it must always have
588
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
been the popular test. The announcement of
things to come before they came was made, at
least partially, with the view of impressing the
populace, and of gaining their confidence and at-
tention. They must consequently have been
continually on the alert to apply this test, and all
that is here done is to acknowledge it in the
fullest manner as a right and Divinely approved
criterion.
But the way in which it ought to be applied is
best exemplified by Jeremiah's own method of
applying it, which, as Dr. Edersheim * has
pointed out, is to be found in the twenty-eighth
chapter of that prophet's book. There we read
of Jeremiah's conflict with " Hananiah the son
of Azzur the prophet," in the beginning of the
reign of Zedekiah. Just previously Nebuchad-
nezzar had carried away Jeconiah the king of
Judah, with all the treasures of the house of Yah-
weh and the strength of the people. Jeremiah
had prophesied that they would not return; nay,
he had foretold a further calamity, viz. that
Nebuchadnezzar would come again and would
take away the people and the vessels of the house
which still remained. In opposition to that,
Hananiah declared, as a word of Yahweh,
" Within two full years will I bring again into
this place all the vessels of Yahweh's house that
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away
from this place, and carried them to Babylon;
and I will bring again to this place Jeconiah the
son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, with all the
captives of Judah that went to Babylon, saith
Yahweh." Jeremiah's conduct under these cir-
cumstances is noteworthy. He did not imme-
diatelj"^ denounce his rival as prophesying falsely.
He seems to have thought that possibly he might
have a true word from Yahweh, since, as we see
in the Book of Jonah, the most positive prophe-
cies were conditional, and Jeremiah would seem
to have thought it possible that personal repent-
ance was about to bring upon the captive king
and people a blessing, instead of the evil he had
foreseen. He consequently expressed a fervent
wish that Hananiah's prophecy might come true,
but reminded his rival that the causes of the evil
prophecies of himself and previous prophets were
far wider than the ground which the personal
repentance of the captives could cover. Because
of that he evidently felt the gravest doubt about
Hananiah; but he disposes of the matter by say-
ing, " The prophet which prophesieth of peace,
when the word of the prophet shall come to pass,
then shall the prophet be known, that Yahweh
hath truly sent him." Only afterwards, when he
had himself received a special revelation con-
cerning Hananiah, did he denounce him as an
impostor and a false prophet.
The whole narrative is of extreme importance,
for it shows us how the prophets themselves re-
garded their own supernatural powers, and how
they used the tests supplied in Deuteronomy.
In the first place, they asked how the new word
of Yahweh stood in regard to the older words
which He had certainly spoken. If there was
any possible way in which the new and the old
could be reconciled, they gave the new the
benefit of the doubt, and left the decision to the
event. Obviously had there been no way of
reconciling Hananiah's prophecy with the mass
of contrary prophecy which had gone before,
Jeremiah would have denounced him under the
* " Proi:)hec}' and History in Relation to the Messiah,"
p. 150.
law of Deut. xiii. 5 as leading away from Yah-
weh. As it was, he fell back upon the test in
this twenty-eighth chapter, and would have
maintained an attitude of watchful neutrality
until the event had justified or condemned his
rival, had not Yahweh himself settled the
question.
For our own day and in our different circum-
stances the tests are radically the same, though,
as prophecy is extinct in the Church, they must
to some extent act differently. The New Testa-
ment parallel to the criterion in Deut. xiii. 5 is
to be found in i John iv. i, 2, and 3: " Prove the
spirits, whether they are of God: because many
false prophets are gone out into the world.
Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit
which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is of God: and every spirit which confesseth
not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of
the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it
Cometh." Under the Christian dispensation to
deny " that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh " is
the same as it was to say under the earlier dis-
pensation " Let us go after other gods," so com-
pletely do God and Christ coincide in our most
holy faith. In each case the ultimate test of
prophecy is to be the fundamental principle of
the faith. Whatever credentials teachers who
deny that may bring, they are to be unhesitat-
ingly rejected. They belong to the world, that
scheme and fabric of things which rejects allegi-
ance to the Spirit of God. Least of all is popu-
larity with the world as distinguished from the
Church, or with the worldly portion of the
Church, to stand in the way of its rejection.
That is only the natural consequence of its being
" of the world." Within the Church no quar-
ter is to be shown to such teaching, for it really
carries with it the absolute negation of the faith.
But what of erroneous teaching which ac-
knowledges that " Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh " ? To it the Old Testament parallel is the
utterance of the prophet who " speaketh in the
name of Yahweh, and the thing followeth not
nor comes to pass." According to Old Testa-
ment precept and example, that was to be left to
the judgment of time. In our day a correspond-
ing course must be found. The case supposed
is that of teaching believed to be erroneous, but
neither fundamentally subversive of Christianity
nor destructive of the special principles of a
Church. If so, earnest opposition by those who
hold the opposite view, and adequate discussion,
are the true way of meeting the case. For the
rest, the final decision should be left to experi-
ence. In time, even subsidiary error of this
kind, if important, will manifest itself by weaken-
ing spiritual life in those who hold it; they will
gradually dwindle in numbers and their influence
in the Church will die away. They begin by
promising renewed strength and insight in
spiritual things, renewed energy in the spiritual
life. If that " follow not nor come to pass,"
when due time has been given for any such de-
velopment, then that is the thing which the Lord
hath not spoken, and it should be dealt with as
the fundamental heresy is to be dealt with. But
probably by that time it will have judged itself,
and will need no judgment of men at all.
These then were the connecting links between
Yahweh and His people, and the organs by
whicli the life of the Israelite nation was guided:
the Kingship, the Priesthood, and the Prophetic
Order. The first gave visibility to the Divine
THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF ISRAELITE LIFE.
589
rule, and stability to national and social life; the
second secured the stability of religion, and built
up the moral life of the nation on the basis of
Mosaic law; the third secured progress and
averted stagnation, both in religion and in social
and individual morals. In fact, order and prog-
ress, the two things Positivist thinkers have set
forth as those which can alone secure health to
a community, are provided for here with a direct-
ness and success which it would be difificult to
parallel elsewhere. When we remember how
small, how obscure, and how uncivilised the
people was to whom this scheme of things was
given, and how little their surroundings or cir-
cumstances were calculated to suggest such far-
reaching provisions, we see that the source of it
all was the Revelation of the Divine character
given by Moses. Yahweh as revealed through
him did not permit His worshippers to believe
that they could, at one moment, receive all that
was to be known about Him. They were taught
to found their conduct and their polity upon
what they did know, and to be eagerly on the
watch for that which might be revealed at new
crises of their history. Now that teaching finds
its most complete expression in the laws con-
cerning the three institutions we have been re-
viewing. Behind all healthy national life and
all stable institutions there was, so had this
people learned, the power and the righteousness
of Almighty God. In His eagerness to draw
near to men, He had changed the priest, the
king, the prophet from being, as they were
among the heathen, merely political and re-
ligious officials appointed for purely earthly
ends, into channels of communication with Him.
Through them there were poured into the life of
this nation wholesome and varied streams of
Divine grace and enlightenment, and a just
balance between conservatism and reform in re-
ligion was admirably secured. Consequently,
amid all drawbacks, the Israelites became an in-
strument of the finest power for good in the
hands of their Almighty King; and even when
their outward glory faded, they were inwardly re-
newed and pressed onward age after age.
" Without hasting and without resting," the pur-
pose of God was realised in their history, guided
by these three organs of their national life.
Each contributed its share in preparing for the
fulness of the time when He came who was the
Salvation of God, and each supplied elements of
the most essential kind to the mingled expecta-
tion which was so marvellously satisfied by the
life and work of Christ. They wrought together
in the fullest harmony, moreover, though they
were not always conscious of doing so. For
they all moved at the bidding of the still small
voice wherewith God speaks most effectively to
the souls of men. Because of this their purposes
took a wider sweep than they knew, their hopes
received wings which carried them far away be-
yond the horizon of Old Testament time; and,
starting from the remotest points, all the streams
of the national life converged, till, at the close
of the Old Testament time, they were running
in such directions that they could not fail in little
space to meet. It was therefore no surprise to
the faithful in Israel when, at the beginning of
the New Testament, they were found to have
met in Jesus the Christ. Once that point was
reached, the whole former history, which was
now lying completed before the eyes of all, could
be fully appreciated. Everything in the past
:»— Vol. I.
seemed to speak of Him. If, in that first burst
of joyous surprise. Messianic references of the
most definite kind were found where we now
can see only faint hints and adumbrations, we
need not wonder. So much more had been
spoken of Him than they had thought, it would
have been strange had they not swung a little
to the opposite extreme. But that need not
hinder us from acknowledging that the history
of Israel, viewed from their standpoint, was and
is the most conspicuous, the most convincing,
the most inspiring proof of the Divine action in
the world. The finger of God was so mani-
festly here, harmonising, directing, impelling,
that the evidence for Divine guidance in much
more obscure regions becomes irresistible.
With this history before us we can believe that
it was not only in those far-ofif days, and in that
little corner of Asia that God was active for the
production of good. Now and here, as well as
then and there, there are Divine and guiding
forces at work in the world; and the only safe
politics, the only truly prosperous peoples, are
those in which rulers and priests and prophets
are secured, to whom the secret of God is open.
CHAPTER XX.
THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF ISRAELITE'
LIFE.
It has often and justly been said that the life
of Israel is so entirely founded on the grace and
favour of God that no distinction is made be-
tween the secular and the religious laws. What-
ever their origin may have been, whether they
had been part of the tribal constitution before
Moses' day or not, they were all regarded as Di-
vinely given. They had been accepted as fit
building stones for the great edifice of that
national life in which God was to reveal Himself
to all mankind, and behind them all was the same
Divine authority. That being so, it is not won-
derful, in times like these, when the air is full of
plans and theories for the reconstruction of so-
ciety in the interest of the toiling masses of men,
that believers in the Scriptures should turn with
hope to the legislation of the Old Testament. In
the present state of things the material condi-
tions of life are far more deadening and demoral-
ising for the multitude in civilised countn'es than
they are in many uncivilised lands. That this
should be so is intolerable to all who think and
feel; and men turn with hope to a scene where
God is teaching and training men, not merely
in regard to their individual life, as in the New
Testament, but also in regard to national life.
It is seen, too, that the tone and feeling of these
laws are sympathetic for the poor as no other
code has ever been; and many maintain that, if
we would only return to the provisions of these
laws, the social crisis which- is as yet only in its
beginning, and which threatens to darken and
overshadow all lands, would be at once and
wholly averted. Men consequently are diligently
inquiring what the land tenure of ancient Israel
was, what its trade laws were, how the poor were
dealt with, and how and to what extent pauper-
ism was averted or provided for. Many say. If
God has spoken in and by this people, so that
their first steps in religion and morals have been
the starting-point for the highest life of hu-
manity, may we not expect that their first steps
59°
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
in political and social life will have the same
abiding value, if rightly understood? Now the
main thing in regard to which the economical
arrangements of a nation are important is land.
In modern times there may be some exception-
ally situated communities, such as the British
people, among whom commerce and manu-
factures are more important than agriculture;
but in ancient times no such case could arise.
In every community the land and the land tenure
were the fundamentally important things.
Now the fundamental thing concerning it was
that Yahweh, being the King of Israel, who had
formed and was guiding this people as His in-
strument for saving the world, and who had be-
stowed their country upon them, was regarded
as the sole owner of the soil. It is not necessary
to quote texts to prove this, since it is the fun-
damental assumption throughout the Old Testa-
ment Scriptures that the Israelite title to their
land was the gift of Yahweh. He had promised
it to the fathers. He had driven out the Ca-
naanite nations before Israel. He had by His
mighty hand and His stretched-out arm estab-
lished His chosen people in the place which He
had chosen, and He had granted them the use
and enjoyment of it so long as they proved faith-
ful to Him. Consequently, in a quite real and
palpable sense, there was no owner of land in
Israel save Yahweh. And this thought was not
without practical consequences of great moment.
It was not a mere religious sentiment, it was a
hard and palpable fact, that Yahweh ruled. Ab-
solute proprietorship could never be built up on
that basis, and never, as a matter of fact, was ac-
knowledged in Israel. All were tenants, who
held their places only so long as they obeyed the
statutes of Yahweh. The sale in perpetuity of
that which had been portioned out to tribes and
families was consequently entirely prohibited.
As against other nations, indeed, Israel was to
possess this land, so that no heathen could be
permitted to buy and possess even a scrap of it;
but as against Yahweh and the purposes for
which He had chosen Israel, all were equally
strangers and sojourners, practically tenants at
will, who could neither give nor take their hold-
ings as if they were absolutely theirs. Yet, rela-
tively, the land was given to the community as
a whole, and according to Joshua xiii. 7 sqq. (a
passage generally assigned to the Deuteronomic
editor) it was parcelled out by lot to the various
tribes just before Joshua's death, according to
their respective numbers.* Then within the
tribal domain the families in the wider sense had
their portion, and within these family domains
again the individual households. In this way
the Israelite tenure of land occupies a middle
point between the theories of Socialism and the
high doctrine of private property in land which
declares that the individual owner can do what
he will with his own. The nation as a whole
claimed rights over all the land, but it did not
attempt to manage the public estate for the com-
mon good. It delegated its powers to the tribes.
But not even they undertook the burdens of pro-
prietorship. Under them the families under-
took a general superintendence; but the true
proprietary rights, the cultivation of the soil,
and the drawing of profit from it, subject only
to deductions made by the larger bodies, the
families, the tribes, and the nation, were exer-
* Cf. Numb. xxvi. 53-55 fromP and Josh. xvii. 14 ff. from
JE.
cised only by individuals. The nation took care
that none of its territory should be sold to for-
eigners, lest the national inheritance should be
diminished, and the tribes did the same for the
tribal heritage, as we see from the narrative con-
cerning the daughters of Zelophehad. It was
only within limits, therefore, and the individual
proprietor was free; and though the rights of
property were respected, the corresponding
duties of property were set forth with irresistible
clearness. The community, in fact, never aban-
doned its claims upon the common heritage, any
more than Israel's Divine King did, and conse-
quently the field within which proprietary rights
were exercised was more restricted here than in
any modern state.
Further, besides the prohibition of absolute
sale which flowed from the recognition of Yah-
weh's ownership, and the limitations which
tribal and family claims involved, there were dis-
tinct provisions in which the national owner-
ship under Yahweh was plainly asserted. For
example, it is enacted in Deut. xxiii. 24 — " When
thou comest into thy neighbour's vineyard, then
thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own
pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy ves-
sel. When thou comest into thy neighbour's
standing corn, then thou mayest pluck the ears
with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a
sickle unto thy neighbour's standing corn."
Allied to these were the provisions (Lev. xix.
9 fif., xxiii. 10) concerning gleaning, and not
reaping the corners of the field. It will be ob-
served that, though these latter may be dis-
counted as intended for the relief of the poor
alone, the former provision was for all, and that
consequently it may be regarded as an undoubted
assertion of tlie common ownership, or common
usufruct, which, though latent, was always held
to be a fact. In other ways also the same hint-
is given. The provisions for letting the land
lie fallow in the seventh year and in the jubilee
year, and for securing the use of what grew in
the field for all who chose to take it, were inter-
ferences with the free-will of the individual
owners or occupiers, which find their justifica-
tion only in the fact that the general ownership
was never sufifered entirely to fall into the
background.
To sum up then: this system aimed at securing
the advantages both of the socialist view and
of the individualistic view while avoiding the evils
of both. Private enterprise was encouraged, by
the individual being guaranteed possession of his
land against any other individual; while public
spirit and a regard for general interests were
promoted by the restrictions which limited the
private ownership. Further, and more impor-
tant still, the whole relation of the nation and of
the individual to the land was raised out of the
merely sordid region of material gain into the
spiritual and moral region, by the principle that
Yahweh their God alone had full proprietary
rights over the soil. All were " sojourners " with
Him. He had promised this land to their fathers
as the place wherein He should specially reveal
Himself to them. Here, communion with Him
was to be established, and to each household
there had been assigned by Yahweh a special
portion of it. which it would be equally a sin and
an unspeakable loss to part with. Compulsion
alone could justify such a surrender; and the
completed legislation, whatever its date, and
even if it remained always an unrealised ideal.
THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF ISRAELITE LIFE.
591
shows how determined the effort was to secure
the perpetuity of the tenure in the original hands.
The ideal of Israelite life was consequently that
the land should remain in the hands of the
hereditary owners, and that the main support of
all the people should be agricultural labour.*
The hypothesis that this was the case is
strengthened to a certainty by the manner in
which commerce, one of the other main sources
of wealth, is dealt with in the Israelite law. There
is but little sympathy expressed with it, and some
of the regulations issued are such as to render
trade on any very large scale within Palestine
itself impossible. From the use of the word
" Canaanite " in the Old Testament {cf. Job xli.
6; Prov. xxxi. 24; Zeph. i. 11; Ezek. xvii. 4, and
Isa. xxiii. 8) it is clear that, even in the later
periods of Israelite history, the merchants were
so prevailingly Canaanites that the two words
are synonymous. Nay, more; there can be no
doubt that the commercial career was looked
down upon. Even as early as the prophet Hosea
the Canaanite name is connected with false
weights and vulgar commercial cheating (Hos.
xii. 7), and it is looked upon as a last degrada-
tion that Ephraim should take delight in similar
pursuits. In all that we read of merchants in the
Old Testament we seem to hear the expression
of a feeling that commerce, with its necessary
wanderings, its temptations to dishonesty, its
constant contact with heathen peoples, was an
occupation that was unworthy of a son of Israel.
Even Solomon's success as a royal merchant
would not seem to have overcome this feeling,
nor did the later commercial successes of kings
like Jehoshaphat. In fact the ordinary Israelite
had the home-staying farmer's contempt and
suspicion of these far-wandering commercial
people, so much more nimble-witted than him-
self, who were therefore to be regarded with
half-admiring wariness.
But the very sinews of extensive commerce
were cut by the law against the taking of interest
from a brother Israelite.! Without credit, or the
lending of money, or what is called sleeping
partnership (and all these are bound up with
receiving interest), it is impossible to have exten-
sive trade. Without them every merchant would
have to limit his operations to cash transactions
and to his own immediate capital, and the great
combinations which especially bring wealth
would be impossible. Now we do not need at
* The questions connected with the jubilee year are nu-
merous and intricate, and it may be for ever impossible,
from lack of data, to decide at what period in Israelite his-
tory it originated, or whether it was ever actually ob-
served ; but it undoubtedly expressed the spirit of the
Israelite legislation and customary law at all times. It is
the natural culmination of tendencies and ideas which
were always present. That it isnot mentioned in Deuter-
onomy at all is surprising', if it had been previously to
Manasseh's day embodied either in custom or in law ; yet,
on the other hand, there are references in Ezekiel and
other exilic books which are almost unintelligible except
on the supposition that the jubilee year was a perfectly
well-knowD institution (cf. Jer. xxxiv. 8 ff. ; Ezek. vii.
12 f. ; Ezek. xlvi. i6 ft". ; Isa. Ixi. i flf.1. It is referred to in a
merely allusive way, which implies tliat every hearer or
reader of the prophetic warnings would know at once the
full scope and meaning of the reference. Now, had the
jubilee year been unknown before the exile, had it been
introduced by the author of Lev. xxv. just before Ezekiel,
no such assumption could have been made. It would,
therefore, seem necessary to suppose that the ordinance
for a jubilee year must ha\-e existed in pre-exilic time ;
for, strange aJ? Deuteronomy's silence in regard to it is,
the arffiimrutiini e silcntio cannot weigh against indica-
tions of a ptirfitive kind, were they even fainterthan those
we have in regard to this matter.
t Cf. Kiibcl," Die sociale und wirthschaftliche Gesetz-
gebung- des Alten Testaments," p, 47.
present to discuss the wisdom of prohibiting the
taking of interest, nor the still more debated
question whether that ancient prohibition would
be wise or advantageous now. It is enough for
our purpose that usury in its literal sense was
actually forbidden among Israelites, and that
they were thus shut out from the developed com-
mercial life of the surrounding nations. As a
result trade remained in a merely embryonic
condition.
But in still other ways the Sinaitic legislation
interfered with its development. The inculca-
tion of ceremonial purity, especially in food, and
the efTort to make Israel a peculiar people unto
Yahweh, which distinguishes even the earlier
forms of the law, made intercourse with for-
eigners and living abroad always difficult and
under some circumstances impossible. Conse-
quently all the legislation that can possibly be
considered commercial was of a very rudi-
mentary character. From every point of view it
is clear that ancient Israel was not a com-
mercial people, and that the Divine law was in-
tended to restrain them from commercial pur-
suits. They could not have been the holy and
peculiar people they were meant to be, had they
become a nation of traffickers.
With regard to manufacturing industries the
case was not essentially different. Such pur-
suits were, it is true, more honoured than com-
merce was, for skill in all arts, whether agri-
cultural or industrial, was regarded as a special
gift of the Almighty. But so far as the records
go, there is no evidence that a manufacturing
industry existed, beyond what the very limited
needs of the nation itself demanded. From the
fact that, according to Prov. xxxi. 24, which
was probably written late in the history of Israel,
the manufacturing of linen garments for sale and
of girdles for the Canaanites was the business of
the thrifty and virtuous housewife, we may
gather that systematic wholesale manufacture of
such things was unknown. Probably the case
was not otherwise in regard to all branches of
industry. There are no traces of trade castes,
nor of manufacturing towns; so that the manu-
facturing industries, so far as they existed, had
no other place than that of handmaids to agri-
culture, by which the nation really lived.
According to the Old Testament, then, the
ideal state of things for a people like Israel was
that every household should be settled upon the
land, that permanent eviction from or even
alienation of the holdings should be impossible,
and that the whole population should have a
common interest in agriculture, that most hon-
ourable and fundamental of all human pursuits.
There were, of course, some men in Israel more
prominent than others, and sdme richer, but
there was to be no impassable barrier between
classes such as we find in Eastern countries
where caste prevails, or in Western countries
where the aristocratic principle has drawn a
deep dividing line between those of " good "
blood and all others. So far as is known, there
were no class barriers to intermarriage. From
the highest to the lowest, all were servants of
Yahweh. and were consequently equal. The
conditions of the land tenure were such that it
was impossible, if they were respected, that
large estates should accumulate in the hands
of individuals, and a landless proletariate
could not ari.se. The very rich and the very
poor were alike legislated out of existence,
592
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
and a sufficient provision for all was that
which was aimed at. By the cycle of Sabbatic
periods (the weekly Sabbath, the Sabbatic year,
and the year of jubilee) ample rest for the land
and its inhabitants was secured; and in the limits
set upon the period for which a Hebrew slave
might be retained, in the release, whatever that
was, which the seventh year brought to the
debtor, and in the restoration of land to the im-
poverished owner in the year of jubilee, such a
series of breakwaters were erected against the
inrushing flood of pauperism, that, had they been
maintained, the world would have seen for the
first time a fairly civilised community in which
even moderate ill-desert in a man could not
bring irretrievable ruin upon his posterity. The
prodigal was hindered from selling his heritage;
he could only sell the use of it for a number of
years. He could not ruin himself by borrowing
at extravagant rates of interest, for no one was
t-empted to lend him, and usury was forbidden.
He might indeed run into debt and be sold into
slavery along with his family, but that could only
be for a few years, and then they all resumed
their former position. In this very land where
the fact, Divinely impressed upon human life,
that the sins of the fathers were visited on the
children was most imflinchingly taught, the
most elaborate precautions were taken to miti-
gate the severity of this necessary law. From
the first the ideal was that there should be no
son or daughter of Israel oppressed or impover-
ished permanently; and whatever the stages of
advance in Israelite law may have been, and
whatever the date of particular ordinances may
be, there is an admirable consistency of aim
throughout. Even should it be proved that the
Sabbatic ordinances remained mere generous
aspirations, which never entered into the prac-
tical life of the people at all, that fact would only
emphasise the earnestness and persistency with
which the inspired legislators pursued their gen-
erous aim. No change in circumstances turned
them aside. The glitter of the wealth acquired
by Solomon and other kings by commerce never
seduced them. No ideal but that early one of
every man sitting under his own vine and his own
fig-tree, with none to make him afraid, which is
witnessed to before the Exile (Micah i\. 4), in
the Exile (i Kings iv. 25), and after the Exile
(Zech. iii. 10), was ever cherished by them; and
the whole economic legislation is entirely con-
sistent with what we know of the earliest time.
And the deepest roots of it all were religious.
The Biblical writers have no doubt at all that
the ideal economic state can be reached only by
a people attuned by religion to self-sacrifice, to
pity, and to justice. In this they dififer radically
from the socialists or semi-socialists of to-day.
These imagine that man needs only a favourable
environment to become good; whereas the Scrip-
tural writers know that to use well the best en-
vironment is a task which, more than anything,
puts strain upon the moral and spiritual nature.
For to deal in a supremely wise fashion with
great opportunities is the part only of a nature
perfectly moralised. Consequently all the social
laws of Israel are made to have their root in the
relation of the people to their God.
There was only one power that could secure
that this admirable machinery would move, and
keep it moving. That was the love and fear of
God. The conduct prescribed was the conduct
befitting the true Israelite, the man who was
faithful in all his ways. The laws marked out
the paths wherein he should walk if he willed to
do God's will. They were, therefore, ideal in all
their highest prescriptions, and could never be-
come real except whe're the true religion had
had its perfect work. In that respect the Ser-
mon on the Mount resembles the Israelite law.
It presupposes a completely Christian society,
just as the old law presupposes a completely
Yahwistic society, i. e., a society made up of
men who made devotion to their God the chief
motive of their lives. In such a community
there would have been no difficulty in entirely
realising the state of things aimed at here, just
as in a community penetrated by the love of
Christ the Sermon on the Mount would be not
only practicable but natural. But without that
supreme motive much that the enactments of
both the Old Testament and the New demand
must remain mere aspiration. Just in proportion
as Israel was true to Yahweh was the law real-
ised, and the demands of the law always acted as
a spur to the better part of the people to enter
into fuller sympathy and communion with Him
in order that they might respond to them. The
law and the religion of the people acted and re-
acted upon one another, but the greater of these
two elements was religion.
It was not wonderful, therefore, that to a large
extent this legislation failed, as men measure
failure. The religious state of the nation never
was what it should have been; and the law,
though it was held to be Divine, was never
wholly observed. In the Northern Kingdom,
by the time of the Syrian wars, the old constitu-
tion of Israel had broken up. The hardy yeo-
manry had been ruined and dispersed. Their
lands had been seized or bought by the rich, and
every law that had been made to ensure restora-
tion was habitually disregarded. As Robertson
Smith states it * : " The unhappy Syrian wars
sapped the strength of the country, and gradu-
ally destroyed the old peasant proprietors who
were the best hope of the nation. The gap be-
tween the many poor and the few rich became
wider and wider. The landless classes were
ground down by usury and oppression, for in
that state of society the landless man had no
career in trade, and was at the mercy of the land-
holding capitalist." And in Judah the state of
things, though not so bad, was similar. In the
days of Zedekiah we know that Hebrew slaves
were held for life, instead of being released in
the seventh year.f The properties of those com-
pelled to sell were never returned to the owners,
and all the laws that were meant to secure the
welfare and prosperity of the masses of Israel
were contemptuously disregarded. In short,
the worst features of a purely competitive civili-
sation, with materialism eating into its soul, be-
came glaringly manifest. All the canonical
prophets without exception denounce the vices
and tyrannies of the rich. J As far as can be
learned, moreover, the year of release and the
Sabbatic year were not regularly or generally
observed, while the jubilee year would seem
never to have been kept after the Exile. The
laws regarding taking interest were also evaded.§
Nevertheless it would be a great error to sup-
pose that these Divinely given social laws should
be branded as a failure. They were not lived up
to, and it is not improbable that the corruption
* " Prophets of Israel," p. 88. t Cf. Amos ii. 6 ff.
t Cf. Jer. xxxiv. 8 ft. § Neh. v. i seq.
THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF ISRAELITE LIFE.
593
of the people's life was in a degree intensified
by the reaction from so high an ideal. But the
axiom which is current now in all the news-
papers, that laws too far above the general level
of the national conscience cannot be enforced,
and becoming a dead letter tend to produce
lawlessness, does not apply to such codes as
those of Israel. These, as has more than once
been pointed out, were not of the same character
as our legal codes are. Among us, laws are
meant to be observed with minute and careful
diligence, and any breach of them is punished
by the courts, which, on the whole, can be easily
set in motion. Ancient religious codes are
never of that kind. They do contain laws of that
character, but the bulk of the provisions are not
laws which the executive is to enforce, but ideals
of conduct which the true worshipper of God
ought to strive to attain to. It is, therefore, of
their very essence that they should be far above
the average national conscience. Nations whose
ideals soar no higher than the possible attain-
ment of the average man as he is, have virtually
no ideals at all, and are cut ofif from all endur-
ing upward impulses. Those, on the contrary,
who have a vision of the perfect life, are certain
to be both humbler, and at the same time more
sure to persist in the painful path of moral dis-
cipline. As " a man's reach should exceed his
grasp," so also should a nation's; and though it
is almost always forgotten, it is precisely Israel's
glory that she set up for herself and exhibited
to the world an ideal of brotherhood, of love to
God and man, to which she could not attain.
Great as the practical failure in Israel was, there-
fore, no fault can be found in the legislation. It
moulded the characters of men who were sensi-
tive to the influences coming from God, so that
they became fit instruments of inspiration; and
it made their lives examples of the highest virtue
that the ancient world knew. Further, it gave
shape to the hopes and aspirations of the people,
especially where it was not realised. The year
of jubilee, for example, is the groundwork of
that great and afifecting promise contained in
Isa. Ixi. : "The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is
upon me, because Yahweh hath anointed me to
preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath
sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to pro-
claim liberty (deror) to the captives, and the
opening of the prison to them that are bound;
to proclaim the acceptable year of Yahweh and
the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all
that mourn." That which was unattainable
here, amid the greeds and lusts of an unspiritual
generation, gave colour to the Messianic future;
and men were taught to look and wait for a
kingdom of God in which a peace and truth that
could not as yet be reached would be the certain
possession of all.
When we turn to modern times and modern
circumstances, it is not easy to see how this an-
cient law can be applicable to them. In the
first place, much of it was made binding upon
Israel only because of its peculiar character as
the people to whom the true religion was re-
vealed. As custodians of that, they were justi-
fied in keeping up walls of partition between
themselves and the world, which if universally
accepted would only be hurtful to the highest
interests of mankind. On the contrary, the de-
velopment of the true religion having been com-
pleted by the coming of Christ, it is the duty of
those nations which enjoy the light to spread
abroad the " good news " of God which they
have received, and to exhibit its power among all
the nations of the earth. The highest and most
Divine call which can now come to any people
must, therefore, be radically dififerent in some
chief aspects from that of Israel. In the second
place, the civilisation and culture of the great
nations of to-day are far more complicated than
any ancient civilisation ever was, and the general
level is fixed by an action and reaction extend-
ing over the whole civilised world. No suc-
cesses can be achieved, no blunders can be
committed, in any part of the world which do
not af¥ect almost immediately the farthest ends
of the earth. Moreover the intimate and uni-
versal correlation of interest makes interference
with any part of the complicated whole an ex-
ceedingly perilous matter. Any proposal that
this law, as being Divinely given, ought in its
economic aspect to be made universally binding,
should therefore be met by a demand for a care-
ful inquiry into possible differences between
ancient life and modern, which might make
guidance Divinely given to the one inapplicable
to the other. It is not necessarily true that be-
cause Israel by Divine command established
every household upon the soil, forbade interest,
and did nothing to encourage trade and manu-
factures, we should do these things. Take, for
instance, the case of interest. In our day, and
in civilisations of a high type, lending money to
a person not in distress at -all, but who sees an
opportunity of making enough by the use of
borrowed money to pay the interest and make a
profit, is often a most praiseworthy and charit-
able act.
But if the Israelite legislation in regard to
interest cannot justly be taken as a law for all
time, still less can any great modern state neg-
lect or discourage commerce and manufactures.
The merely embryonic character of commer-
cial legislation, and the contempt for the
merchant which did in ancient days exist, would
be exceedingly out of place now. There is no
career more honourable than that of the mer-
chant of our day when he carries on his business
in a high-minded fashion, nor is there any mem-
ber of the community whose calling is more
beneficent than his. So long as he looks for
gain to himself in ways which, taken on the
great scale, bring benefit both to producer and
consumer, his activity is purely beneficial.
There is absolutely no reason why commercial
life should not be as honest, as sound, as much
in accord with the mind of God, in itself, as any
other manner of life. For in many ways it has
been a civilising agent of the highest power.
Of course, if the charges brought against mer-
chants by Ruskin. for example, who seizes upon
and believes every story which involves charges
of fraud against modern commerce, were true;
if it were impossible, as he says it is, for an
honest man to prosper in trade, then we might
have some ground for condemning this branch
of human activity. But happily only a confirmed
and incorrigible pessimist can believe that. In
our time some of the noblest men of whom we
have any knowledge have been merchants, and
among no class has so much princely generosity
been exhibited. If mercantile help had been
withdrawn from the poor, if the time, the money,
the organising skill which merchants have freely
expended upon charities were suddenly to fail
them, the case against our modern civilisation
594
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
would be indefinitely stronger than it is. More-
over the immense expansion of credit which is
at once the glory and the danger of modern
commerce, is itself a proof that such wholesale
condemnation as we have spoken of is unwar-
rantable. The bulk of commerce must, after all,
be fairly sound, otherwise it could not continue
and spread as it does. And. as against the evils
which aflfect it in common with all human activi-
ties, we must put the fact that it brings the
produce of all lands to the door even of the
poor, and by the constant contact between
nations which it causes it is influencing the
thought as well as the lives of men. Human
brotherhood is being furthered by it, slowly, it
is true, but surely, and the barriers which sepa-
rate the nations are being sapped by its influence.
These are indispensable services for the future
progress of mankind, and make commerce now
as much the necessary handmaid of the highest
life as it would have been a hindrance to it in the
case of the chosen people, before they had
assimilated the truths of which they were to be
the bearers to the world. That commerce, and
trade in general, need to be purified goes with-
out saying. That it may, of late years, have
deteriorated, as the general decay of faith and
the pursuit of luxury have weakened the sanc-
tions of morality, is not improbable. But in
itself it is not only a legitimate human activity;
it is also an admirable instrument for bringing
home to the consciences of men the truth that
they are all their brothers' keepers. It presses
home as nothing else could do the great truth
proclaimed by St. Paul in regard to the Church,
as true also of the world, that if one member
suffers all the body suffers with it. Every day
through this channel men are receiving lessons,
which they cannot choose but hear, to the effect
that no permanent benefit can come from the
loss and suffering of men in any part of the
world; that peace and righteousness and good
faith are things which have supreme value even
in the mercantile sense; and that, conversely,
the merchant's pursuit of wealth, if carried on in
accord with the fundamental truths of morality,
inevitably becomes a potent factor in that ad-
vance to a world-wide knowledge of the Lord,
which gleamed before the eyes of prophets and
seers as the
" Far-oflf Divine event,
To \'hich the whole creation moves."
But if we cannot make the Old Testament our
law in regard to commerce, we must ask whether
the legislation in regard to land has for us any
binding force? Viewing it with this question in
our minds, I think we must be struck by one
fact, this namely, that the universal possession of
land which was provided for in Israel and so
anxiously maintained is the only provision
known against the growth of a wage-earning
class largely, if not entirely, at the mercy of the
employer. In Greece and Rome the population
at first were all settled on their own lands, and
it was only when by money-lending the small
properties were bought up and turned into huge
farms, worked by farm-bailiffs and slaves, that
misery began to invade all parts of the social
fabric. In mediaeval and feudal England, on
the other hand, and indeed wherever the feudal
.system existed, the cultivators, even when they
were serfs, had an inalienable right to the land.
They could not be evicted if they rendered cer-
tain not very burdensome services to the lord.
" As long as these dues were satisfied, it is plain
the tenant was secure from dispossession," says
Professor Thorold Rogers (" Six Centuries,"
etc., p. 44). But in time that system was broken
down; and ever since, until within the last half-
century, the course of things with the labouring
classes in England has been one long descent.
So long as the people were attached to the soil,
and so long as all alike practised agriculture, as
in Palestine under the Mosaic law. Englishmen
lived in rough plenty, and were for the most part
content. The fifteenth century was the golden
age of mediaeval agriculture; but a change for
the worse came in with the seventeenth, and it
continued.*
Two measures — the introduction of competi-
tive rents with its corollary, eviction, and the
enclosure of the common lands — worked gradu-
ally on until they have entirely divorced the
workman from the soil, and Professor Cairnes f
has told us clearly what that means. " In a con-
test between vast bodies of people so circum-
stanced and the owners of the soil the negotia-
tion could have but one issue, that of transfer-
ring to the owners of the soil the whole produce,
minus what was sufficient to maintain in the
lowest state of existence the race of cultivators.
This is what has happened wherever the owners
of the soil, discarding all considerations but
those dictated by self-interest, have really availed
themselves of the full strength of their position.
It is what has happened under rapacious govern-
ments in Asia; it is what has happened under
rapacious landlords in Ireland; it is what now
happens under the bourgeois proprietors of
Flanders; it is, in short, the inevitable result
which cannot but happen in the great majority of
all societies now existing on earth where land is
given up to be dealt with on commercial prin-
ciples unqualified bv public opinion, custom, or
law." The result is that the labourers have only
their daily wages to depend upon. " They have
no means of productive home industry; they
have not even a home from which they cannot
be ejected at any moment on failure to pay the
weekly rent; they have no land, garden, or do-
mestic animals, the produce of which might sup-
port them til! fresh work could be obtained." t
We need not wonder that this question of the
occupancy of land as the only visible remedy for
the hideous social state of the most highly civil-
ised nations of the world is gradually becoming
the question of our time. A great reaction
against the purely commercial theory of land
tenure has taken place. The land legislation in
Ireland has been based on the doctrines that the
nation cannot permit absolute property in land,
and that there is no hope for any permanent im-
provement in the condition of the poor until
labourers have land of their own. Now these
are precisely the principles of the Scriptural land
legislation. Under it landlords with absolute
rights over land were impossible, and the rise
of a proletariate at the mercy of the capitalist
was also impossible. It is not so strange, there-
fore, as it might at first sight appear, that the
demands of advanced land reformers, as they are
voiced in Mr. Wallace's book (p. 192) are mu-
tatis mutandis, identical with the provisions of the
Israelite law. He demands (i) that landlordism
♦ Contemp. Rev., 1880, April, p. 68i.
t " Essays on Political Economy," p. 201.
$ Wallace, " Land Nationalisation," p. 16.
JUSTICE IN ISRAEL.
595
shall be superseded by occupying ownership;
(2) that the tenure of the holders of land must
be made secure and permanent; (3) that arrange-
ments must be made by which every British sub-
ject may secure a portion of land for personal
occupation at its fair agricultural value; and (4)
that in order that these conditions be rendered
permanent sub-letting must be absolutely pro-
hibited, and mortgages strictly limited. This
essential oneness of view in the modern land
reformer and in the ancient law is all the more
remarkable that, so far as can be gathered from
his book, Mr. Wallace has never regarded the
Old Testament from this point of view. He
never quotes it, and is apparently quite uncon-
scious that the plan which experience of present
evils, and acute and disinterested reflection on
them, has suggested to him, was set forth thou-
sands of years ago as the only righteous one.
But this is not by any means the end of the
matter. Even if the social reformers of our
day could restore society to the conditions set
forth so emphatically and so long ago in Israel,
history proves that nothing more than a tempo-
rary improvement might be accomplished. In
Israel, as we have seen, with the decay of religion
came the decay of this righteous social state.
Human selfishness then shook off the curb of
religion, and gave itself without restraint to the
oppression of the poor. Have we any reason to
believe that now human selfishness would do
less? There appears little ground to think so;
and though we may believe that without the ac-
ceptance of Deuteronomic principles in modern
life we cannot restrain the growth of poverty,
even with Deuteronomic principles embodied
in our laws nothing will be done if the people
turn their backs upon religion, make selfish en-
joyment their highest good, and the comforts
and pleasures of a merely material life their only
heart-warming aspiration. In that fact we have
an indication of the true functions of the Church
and of religious teachers in the social and po-
litical life of our time and of times to come. As
individuals, religious men should certainly be
found always among the advocates of all laws
and plans which tend to justice and mercy, and
to the raising of the toilers everywhere to a
higher standard of living. Further, at no time
should the Church be found committed to a
.purely conservative policy, of retaining things as
they are. The undeniable facts as to the con-
dition of the poor are so utterly unjustifiable,
that to leave things as they are is to fall into the
treason of despair in regard to the future of our
race, and into scarcely veiled disbelief of the
essential truth of Christianity. No Church
whose heart has not been corrupted by worldli-
ness can think for a moment that the present
state of things in all highly civilised communi-
ties is even tolerable. It cannot last, and it
ought not to last; the Church that timidly sup-
ports it, lest worst things should come, is named
and known thereby for recreant to Christ and
to the highest hopes of His Gospel. But, on
the other hand, it is only in very exceptional
circumstances, and for short intervals, that the
Churches and their ministers can ever be called
upon to make the external, material condition of
the people their first and chief care. They have
a place of their own to fill, a function of their
own to discharge; and upon their efficiency and
diligence in these the stability and permanence
of all that politicians and publicists can accom-
plish ultimately depends. They must keep alive
and nourish the religious life, as that life has
been shaped and constituted by our Lord Jesus
Christ. Their province is to witness, in season
and out of season, for a life of purity and love,
for the Divine and ideal sides of things, for the
necessity, for man's highest well-being, of a life
hid with Christ in God. If they do not keep up
this testimony, no others will; and if it be
dropped out of sight, then the social agony and
struggle, the patriotic and humanitarian striv-
ings of all the reformers, will lack their final
sanction. Men will inevitably come to think
that man's life does consist in the abundance of
the things that he possesses, the leisure, the
amusement, the culture which by combining
material resources he may attain to. But it is
to deny and denounce' that view that the Church
exists in the world. It was to lift men out of it,
to set them above it for ever, that Christ died.
It is finally only by abandoning it that the
highest social condition can be reached and made
permanent for the multitudes of men. In no
way therefore can the Church so dangerously
betray the cause of the poor and the oppressed
as by plunging into the heat of the social and
political struggle. She has to witness to higher
things than that involves, and her silence in the
ideal region which would certainly follow her
devotion to material interests, however unselfish,
would be but ill compensated for by any
imaginable success she might attain.
CHAPTER XXI.
JUSTICE IN ISRAEL.
Among the nations of the modern world one
of the most vital distinctions is the degree in
which just judgment is estimated and provided
for. Indeed, according to modern ideas, life is
tolerable only where all men are equal before the
law; where all are judged by statutes which are
known, or at least may be known, by all; where
corruption or anifnus in a judge is as rare as it is
held to be dishonourable. But we cannot forget
that in the majority of even the more advanced
countries of the world these three conditions are
not yet found, and that where they do exist they
are only recent acquirements. In the latest born,
and in many respects the most advanced of the
great commonwealths, in the United States of
America, the corruption of a number of the in-
ferior courts is undeniable, and is tolerated with
a most disappointing patience by the people. In
England Judge Jeffries is no very remote
memory, and Lord Bacon's acceptance of pres-
ents from litigants in his court has only been
made more certain by recent investigations. An
absolutely honest intention to give even-handed
justice to all is, therefore, even in England,
only a recent attainment, and in no country is the
honest intention always successful in realising
itself. But if this L»e so among the civilised na-
tions of the West, we may say that in Oriental
countries there has been little of systematic and
continuous effort to give even-handed justice at
all. Yet nowhere has the sinfulness and the de-
structiveness of corruption' in judgment been
more impassionedly and more frequently set forth
by the highest authorities in religion and morals,
than in the East. Tupper, our most recent au-
thority, in writing of " Our Indian Protectorate,"
596
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
p. 289, describes the Indian attitude to law thus:
" There was not that reverence for law which in
Europe is in all probability very largely due to
the influence of the Roman law, and to the teach-
ing of the Roman Catholic and other Christian
Churches. So far as there was a germ out of
which the respect for law ought to have grown,
it was to be found in dislike to actions plainly
opposed to custom and tradition. There was a
deeply rooted and widespread conviction that
there could be no rule to which exceptions could
not be made, if agreeable to the discretion of the
chief or any of his delegates. The chief was set
above the law; it did not limit his authority by
any constitution. There was no legislation for
the improvement of law. The administration of
justice was extremely iijnperfect." The same
writer describes the result of such a state of mind
in his picture of Mahratta rule (p. 247). " There
was," he says, " no prescribed form of trial.
Men were seized on slight suspicions. Presump-
tions of guilt were freely made. Torture was
employed to compel confession. Prisoners for
theft were often whipped at intervals to make
them discover where the stolen property was
hidden. Ordinarily no law was referred to except
in cases affecting religion." That there were both
Hindu codes and Mohammedan codes in exist-
ence which claimed and were believed to have
Divine authority made no difiference in India.
Nor does it make any in Persia to-day.*
Now, in coming to the consideration of the
views of justice embodied in Old Testament law,
and the quality of the judiciary in ancient Israel,
we must take not Western but Eastern ideas as
our standard. Judging from that point of view,
it should create no prejudice in our minds if we
find on the first glance that all men were not
equal before the ancient law of Israel; that for
a considerable period, if not during the whole
political existence of Israel, there was no very
extensive written law; and that arbitrary and
corrupt judgment was only too common at all
times. For none of these defects would indicate
in ancient Israel the same evils, as similar defects
in nations of our time would indicate. They are
rather defects in the process of being overcome,
than defects arising from feeble or vitiated life.
If there was a constant movement towards the
highest state of things, that is all we can demand
or expect to find.
Now there does seem to have been that. As
has been well pointed out by Dr. Oort,t in the
tribes which became Israel justice must have
been administered by the heads of the various
bodies which went to make these up. The
household was ruled even in matters of life and
death solely by the father; the family, in the
wider sense, was judged by its own heads; the
tribes by the elders of the tribes, and there
probably was no appeal from one tribunal to an-
other. Each tribunal was final in its own do-
main. It may be. also, that the judicial function
was in all these bodies exercised in tlie lax and
timid fashion, common among Bedouin tribes
to-day.,t In all cases, too, it is probable that
in the pre-Mosaic time the standard of judgment
was customary law. Only with this very great
modification can Oort's epigrammatic descrip-
tion of the situation — " There was no law, but
there were givers of legal decisions " — be ac-
* See ante, p. 575;.
+ Cf. " Oud-Israel Rechtswezen," pp. 10 ff
t Cf. Doughty, "Arabia Deserta,''^ vol. i.,
p. 349.
cepted. So far as can be ascertained, the customs
according to which men were expected to live
were perfectly well known, and within certain
narrow limits of variation were extraordinarily
stable. How stable customary law may be
made, even in the midst of a society governed in
the main according to written law in its strictest
sense, may be seen in the execration which any
breach of the Ulster custom of tenant right met
with, before that custom was embodied in any
statutes. And in antiquity the stringency of
custom can hardly be exaggerated. Under it,
when thoroughly established, there was, in all
the cases covered by it, only this one way of act-
ing for all, both men and women, who were
fit for society at all. Any alternative course was
probably inconceivable in the tribal stage of the
Israelites' existence.
But a change would doubtless be wrought
whenever the appointment of a king took place.
Then national law would appear, in embryo at
least; and at first, until custom had grown up
in this region also, it would largely be an ex-
pression of the will of the king, and of the royal
officers instructed and trained by the king. But
it would have free and unchallenged course only
when it claimed authority in matters lying outside
of the family and tribal jurisdictions. Wherever
it attempted to interfere with tribal or family
rights, danger to the kingship of the most acute
kind would be sure to arise. In all probability,
it was disregard of this axiomatic truth which
made Solomon's reign so burdensome to the
people and tore the kingdom asunder under Re-
hoboam. Ahab too fell a victim to his disre-
gard of it. Lastly, the introduction of elaborate
written codes of law would, if it came as the
crown of such a development, depose custom
from its supremacy, though it would not abolish
it; and would substitute for it as the main ele-
ment in all judicial matters the written prescrip-
tion, which is the necessary presupposition of a
fully organised judiciary of the modern type,
with a regulated and definite power of appeal.
But in the case of ancient Israel there is a
distinguishing element which has to be fitted into
this ordinary scheme of progression, and thai
is the Divine revelation to Moses. Taken up at
the tribal stage by the Mosaic revelation, the
Israelite tribes were touched and welded into
coherence, if not quite as a nation, at least as the*
people of Yahweh, so that during all the dis-
tracting days of the Judges they kept up in es-
sentials their social and religious unity.* And
with the religious union there must have come
administrative uniformity to some considerable
extent. The jurisdiction of the heads of house-
holds, of heads of families, and of the tribal elders
would be as little interfered with as possible; but,
as we have seen, all customs and rights had to be
reviewed from the point of view of the new re-
ligion, and appeai to Moses as the prophet of it
must have often been unavoidable. Just as his
first followers were continually coming to Mo-
hammed, to ask whether this or that ancient cus-
tom could be followed by professors of Islam,
so there must have been constant appeals to
Moses. So long as he lived, therefore, he, and
after him Joshua and Moses' fellow-tribesmen
the sons of Levi, as being specially zealous for
the religion of Yahweh, must have been con-
stantly called in to assist the customary judges;
and so the habit of appeal must have
* Cf. Nowack, "Die sozialen Probleme in Israel," p. 5.
JUSTICE IN ISRAEL.
597
grown in Israel long before there was any
king. Thus also a common standard of judg-
ment would be established. That standard
must necessarily have been the law of Yah-
weh, i. e., the new Yahwistic principles and
all that might prima facie be deduced from them,
together with so much of custom and tradition
as had been accepted as compatible with these
principles. We have stated the reasons for hold-
ing that the Decalogue was Mosaic, and the
Book of the Covenant may be taken also to rep-
resent what the current law in Mosaic or sub-
Mosaic time was held to be. As Oort well says
(loc. cit.), when we know that the Hittites about
the middle of the fourteenth century b. c. con-
cluded a treaty with Rameses II. of Egypt the
terms of which were written upon a silver plate,
" why may there not also have been written
statements regarding the mutual rights and
duties of the people of a town, engraved upon
stone or metal, and set forth openly for in-
spection?" What he confines to mere town
business and refers to the time of the Judges, we
may without risk extend to a general funda-
mental law like the Decalogue, or even to the
Book of the Covenant, and date it in the time
of Moses. Writing was so common an ac-
complishment in Canaan before the Exodus, that
such a supposition is not in the least improbable.
These written laws formed the crown of the law
of Yahweh, and by them all the rest was raised
to a higher level and transformed.
As new men, new times, and new difficulties
arose, the priest became the special organ of
Divine direction. It may be that the priestly
Torah was largely the result of the sacred lot;
but the questions that were put, and the manner
in which they were put, would be decided ulti-
mately by the conception the priest had of the
truth about God. The teaching of the Deca-
logue would therefore be the dominant and form-
ative power in all that was spoken by the priest
and for Yahweh. In the disorganised state into
which Israel fell during the time of the Judges,
when, as Deuteronomy takes for granted, and
as I Kings iii. 2 and 3 asserts, the legitimate
worship of Yahweh was carried on at many cen-
tres, the substantial sameness of the tradition
as to the history of Israel, in all the varied forms
in which we encounter it, is proof sufficient that
at each of the great sanctuaries (which were
certainly in the hands of Levitical priests) the
treasure of ancient knowledge, both in law and
history, was carefully and accurately preserved.*
New decisions would be given, but they came
through men penetrated with the high thoughts
of God, and of His people's destiny, which
Moses had so fruitfully set forth. This was the
element in the life of the people which all the
higher minds strove to perpetuate, and, being
spiritual, it spiritualised and raised all accessory
things. Consequently there was, long before the
kingship, what was equivalent to a national
feeling of the highest kind, and the conception
of justice and its administration corresponded to
that.
In the Book of the Covenant, which in this
matter represents so early a period that there is
no mention of " judges," only of Pelilim,t /. e.,
arbitrators (Exod. xxi. 22), so that the tribal
* Oort, "Oud-Israel Rechtswezen," p. 14.
t A probable parallel to these may be found in the
non-official arbiters mentioned by Doughty. "Arabia
Deserta," vol. i., pp. 145 and 502-3.
and family heads can alone have exercised judi-
cial functions, we find the most solemn warnings
against any legal perversion of right to gain
popularity, against yielding to the vulgar temp-
tation to oppress the poor, or to the subtler and,
for generous minds, more insidious temptation,
to give an unjust judgment out of pity for the
poor. Israel was, moreover, to keep far from
bribery, " which blindeth them that have sight,
and perverteth righteous causes." In no way
was the law to be used for criminal or oppressive
purposes. From the very first, therefore, in
Israel the higher principles of faith and life set
themselves to combat a outrance the tendency
to unjust judgment, which seems now, at least,
quite ineradicable in the East, save among the
Bedouin.*
A still higher note is struck in the repetition of
the law in the Book of Deuteronomy. In chap,
i., originally part of a historic introduction to
the book proper, we read: " Hear the causes
between your brethren, and judge righteously
between a man and his brother, and the stranger
that is with him. Ye shall not respect persons
in judgment; ye shall hear the small and the
great alike; ye shall not be afraid of the face of
man; for the judgment (i. e., the whole judicial
process and function) is God's; and the cause
that is too hard for you ye shall bring unto me
(Moses), and I will hear it." Yes, the judg-
ment is God's. Juat as the whole of moral duty
towards man was raised by the Decalogue to a
new and more intimate relation with God, so here
justice, the fundamental necessity of a sound and
stable political state, is lifted out of the conflict
of mean and selfish motives, in which it must
eventually go down, and is set on high as a
matter in which the righteous God is supremely
concerned. In this, as in all things, Israel v/as
called to a lonely eminence of ideal perfection
by the character of the God whom they were
bound to serve. Therefore it strikes us with no
surprise that justice is insisted upon almost with
passion in Deut. xvii. 20: "Justice, justice shalt
thou pursue after, that thou mayest live and
possess the land which Yahweh thy God giveth
thee"; or that it is made one of the conditions
of Israel's permanence as a nation. In chap,
xxiv. 17 we read, " Thou shalt not wrest the
judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless;
nor take the widow's raiment to pledge"; in
XXV. I and 2, " If there be a plea between men,
. . . then they (i. e., the judges) shall justify the
righteous and condemn the wicked." For any
other course of conduct would bring guilt upon
the nation in the sight of Yahweh; and how
jealously that was guarded against is seen in
the sacrifice and ritual imposed for the purifica-
tion of the people from the guilt of a murder
the perpetrator of which was unknown (Deut.
xxi. 1-9). Unatoned for and disregarded, such a
crime brought disturbance into those relations
between Israel and their God upon which their
very existence as a nation depended; and the dis-
regard of justice, where wrongs were committed
by known persons and were left unpunished,
was of course more deadly. So the author of
Deuteronomy looked upon it; and the prophets,
from the first of tliem to the last, brand unjust
judgment, the perverting the course of legal
justice, as the most alarming sign of national
decay. The righteous God. with whom there was
no respect of persons, could not permanently
* Doughty, vol. i., p. 249.
598
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
favour a people whose judges and rulers dis-
regarded righteousness; and when destruction
actually came upon this people, it was proclaimed
to be God's doing, " because there was no truth
nor justice nor knowledge of God in the land."
Nowhere in the world, therefore, has the de-
mand for justice been made more central than
here, and nowhere has injustice been more pas-
sionately fought against. Nor have the sanctions
binding to a pursuit of justice been at any period
more nobly or more vividly conceived. In this
main point, therefore, Israel's law stands irre-
proachable— marvellously so, considering its
great antiquity. But we have still to inquire
whether any really adequate provision was made
for the general and inexpensive administration of
justice. To take the latter first, law was in old
Israel probably as cheap as it would be in the
primitive East to-day, if bribery were to be
stopped. To advise as to the sacred law, to
plead for justice according to it, did not then,
and does not now in similar circumstances, be-
long to any special professional class who live
by it. The priest could be appealed to freely by
all; and the heads of fathers' houses, as well as
the tribal heads, were, by the very fact that they
were such, bound to give judgment among their
people, and to appear for and take responsibility
for them when they had a cause with persons be-
yond the limits of the particular families and
tribes. Justice, consequently, was in ordinary
circumstances perfectly free to all.
And from a very early time earnest efiforts were
made to make it equally accessible. At first, when
the people were in one army or train, before they
came to Sinai, an overwhelming burden was laid
upon Moses. As the prophet of the new dispen-
sation all difficulties were brought to him. But
at Jethro's suggestion, as JE tells us in I^xod.
xviii. 13 fif., and as Deuteronomy repeats
in chap. i. 16, he chose men of each
tribe, or took the heads of each tribe, and
set them as captains of thousands and hun-
dreds and fifties and tens. Not improbably
this was primarily a military organisation, but
to these captains was committed also jurisdiction
over those under them. In all ordinary cases
they judged them and their families in the spirit
of Yahwism, as well as commanded them; and
in this way, as has already been pointed out. the
customary law was revised in accordance with
Yahwistic principles. Justice too was brought
to every man's door. The only question that
suggests itself is whether these captain-judges
were the ordinary family and tribal heads, organ-
ised for this purpose by Moses. On the whole
this would seem to have been so, and it may
well be that Jethro's suggestion had in view the
danger of ignoring them, as well as the burden
which Moses' sole judgeship laid upon him.
But with the advance to the conquest of Canaan
a new situation emerged, and the probability is
that more and more, as the tribes fell into entire
or semi-isolation, the tribal organisation in its
natural shape would come to the front again.
Deuteronomy, however, tells us little if anything
of this. In the main passage regarding this mat-
ter (xvii. 8-13), where provision is made for an
appeal to a central court, the legislation is en-
tirely for a period much later than Moses. Like
the law regarding sacrifice at one altar, the judi-
cial provisions of Deuteronomy seem all to be
bound up with the place which Yahweh shall
choose, viz. the Solomonic Temple in Jerusalem.
We may consequently conclude that the judicial
arrangements to which Deuteronomy alludes
existed only after the Israelite kingship had been
for some time established at Jerusalem. We
have no distinct evidence for the existence of a
central high court in David's days; and from
the story of Absalom's rebellion we should gather
that the old, simple Oriental method still pre-
vailed, according to which the king, like the
heads of tribes, families, etc., judged every one
who came to him, personally, at the gate of the
royal city. But Samuel is said in i Sam. vii. 16
to have annually gone on circuit to Bethel,
Gilgal, and IMizpah. According to the school
of Wellhausen. nearly the wdiole of this chapter
is the work of a Deuteronomic writer about the
year 600. In that case, of course, it would be
difficult to prove that the arrangement attributed
to Samuel was not a mere echo of what was dore
in Josiah's day; though, if the Deuteronomic
prescriptions were carried out then, there would
be no need for such a system. On the other
hand, if Budde and Cornill be right in tracing
the chapter back to JE, this habit of going on
circuit must have been an ancient one, possibly
dating from Samuel's time. That this latter view
is the correct one is in a degree confirmed by the
statement in viii. 2 that Samuel's sons were in-
stalled by him as judges in Israel, at Beersheba.
This belongs to E, and it would seem to indicate
the beginnings of such a system as Deuteronomy
presupposes.
But it is only in the days of Jehoshaphat (873-
849 E. c.) that an arrangement like that in Deuter-
onomy is mentioned. From 2 Chron. xix. 5 ff
we learn that " he set judges in the land through-
out all the fenced cities of Judah, city by city.
Moreover in Jerusalem did Jehoshaphat set ot
the Levites and of the priests, and of the heads
of the fathers' houses, for the judgment of Yah-
weh and for controversies." Further, it is stated
that Amariah the chief priest was set over the
judges in Jerusalem in all Yahweh's matters, ;'. c.,
in all religious questions, and Zebadiah the son
of Ishmael the prince of the house of Judah in all
the king's matters, i. e., in all secular affairs. Of
course few advanced critics will admit that the
Books of Chronicles are reliable in such matters.
But that judgment is altogether too sweeping,
and here we would seem to have a well-authenti-
cated record of what Jehoshaphat actually did.
For it will be observed, that when we take up
the various notices in regard to the administra-
tion of justice, we have a well-defined progress
from IMoses to Jehoshaphat. Moses was chief
judge and committed ordinary cases to the tribal
and family heads who were chosen as military
leaders, each judging his own detachment. After
passing the Jordan, the whole matter would seem
to have fallen back into the hands of the tribal
heads, with the occasional help of the heroes
who delivered and judged Israel. At the end of
this period Samuel, as head of the State, went
on circuit, and appointed his sons judges in
Beersheba, thus initiating a new system, which,
had it been successful, might have superseded
the tribal and family heads altogether. But it
was a failure, and was not repeated. With the
rise of the kingship the courts received further
organisation. If the Chronicler can be trusted,
Levites to the number of six thousand were ap-
pointed to be judges and Shoterim. The number
seems excessive; but the appointment of Levites
to act as assessors with the tribal and other heads
JUSTICE IN ISRAEL.
599
would be a natural expedient for a king like
David to have recourse to, if he desired to secure
uniformity of judgment, and to bring the courts
under his personal influence. The next step
would naturally be that which is attributed to
Jehoshaphat, and it is precisely that which Deu-
teronomy points to as being already at work in
his time. We have, consequently, more than the
late authority of the Chronicler for Jehoshaphat's
high court. The probabilities of the case point
so strongly to the rise of some such judicial sys-
tem about that period, that it would require some
positive proof, not mere negative suspicion, to
lead us to reject the narrative. In any case this
must have been the system in Josiah's day, and
afterwards. For when Jeremiah was arraigned
for prophesying destruction to the Temple and
to Jerusalem, the process against him was con-
ducted on similar lines to those laid down in
Deuteronomy. The princes judged, the priests
(curiously enough along with the false prophets)
made the charge, i. c, stated that the prophet's
conduct was worthy of death, and the princes ac-
quitted. During the Exile it is probable that
the '■ elders " of the people were permitted to
judge them in all ordinary cases, but we have
no certain proof that this was so. After the re-
turn from Babylon, however, the local courts
were re-established, probably in the very form in
which they appear in the New Testament (Matt.
V. 22, x. 17; Mark xiii. 9; Luke xii. 14-58).
Throughout the whole history of Israel, there-
fore, courts of justice were easily accessible to
every man, whether he were rich or poor. No
doubt the free, open-air. Eastern manner of ad-
ministering justice was favourable to that; but
from the days of Moses onward we have fairly
conclusive proof that the leaders of the people
made it their continual care that wherever a
wrong was suffered there should be some court
to which an appeal for redress could be made.
The justice aimed at in Israel was, therefore,
impartial and accessible. We have still to inquire
whether it was merciful or cruel in its infliction
of punishment. Dr. Oort says it was a hard
law in this respect, but one is at a loss to see how
that view can be sustained. There is no mention
of torture in connection with legal proceedings,
either in the history or in the legislation. Nor
is there any instance mentioned in which an ac-
cused person was imprisoned until he confessed.
Indeed imprisonment would not appear to have
been a legal punishment in Israel, nor in any
antique state. The idea of providing mainte-
nance for those who had offended against the law
v.as one which could never have occurred to any
one in antiquity. Prisons are, of course, fre-
quently mentioned in Scripture; but they were
used, up to the time of Ezra, only for the safe-
keeping of persons charged with crime till they
could be brought before the judges. Sometimes,
as in the case of the prophets, men were im-
prisoned to prevent them from stirring up the
people; but this procedure was nowhere sanc-
tioned by law. Further, the crimes for which
the punishment prescribed in the ancient law
was death were few. Idolatry, adultery, un-
natural lust, sorcery, and murder or man-
slaughter, together with striking or cursing
parents and kidnapping — these were all. Con-
sidering that idolatry and sorcery were high
treason in its worst form, so far as this people
was concerned, and that impurity threatened the
family in a much more direct and immediate fash-
ion then than it does now, while the people were
naturally inclined to it, one must wonder that
the list of capital crimes is so short. Contrast
this with Blackstone's statement in regard to
England (quoted " Ency. Brit.," iv., p. 589):
" Among the variety of actions which men are
daily liable to commit, no less than one hundred
and sixty have been declared by Act of
Parliament to be felonies without benefit of
clergy, or, in other words, to be worthy
of instant death." It is only in compara-
tively recent years that the punishment of
death has been practically restricted to murder
in England. Yet that is almost the case in the
ancient Jewish law; for the exceptions are such
as would reappear in England if it were more
sparsely populated and manners were rougher.
In Australia, for example, highway robbery
under arms and violence to women are capital
crimes, just because the country is sparsely in-
habited and the households unprotected. Nor
were the modes of death inflicted cruel. Only
three — viz. impalement, and burning, and stoning
— appear to be so. But it may be believed that
in the cases contemplated by the law death in
some less painful manner had preceded the two
former, as is certainly the case in Josh. vii. 15
and 25, and in Deut. xxi. 22. As for the latter,
it must have been horrible to look upon, but in
all probability the criminal's agony was rarely
a prolonged one. The other method of execu-
tion, by the sword namely, was humane enough.
Dr. Oort tells us that mutilations were common;
but his proof is only this, that in the treaty be-
tween the Hittite king and Rameses II. we read,
concerning inhabitants of Egypt who have fled
to the land of the Hittites and have been re-
turned, " His mother shall not be put tr>
death; he shall not be punished in his eyes,
nor on his mouth, nor on the soles 01
his feet." The same provision is made for Hit-
tite fugitives. From this evidence of the custom
of surrounding peoples, and from the fact that
the jus talionis is announced in the Scriptures by
the familiar formula, " Eye for eye, tooth for
tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." Dr. Oort
draws this conclusion. But he appears bo for-
get that the jus talionis was common to almost
all the peoples of the ancient world, and is re-
ferred to in the Pentateuch, not as a nev/ princi-
ple, but as a custom coming down from imme-
morial time. Consequently, though there must
once have been a time in which it was carried out
in its literal form, that time probably was past
when the laws referring to it were written. In
Rome, and probably in other lands where this
custom existed, it early gave place to the custom
of giving and receiving money payments. Most
probably this was the case in Israel, at least from
the time of the Exodus. For the new religion
introduced by Moses was merciful. But these
references to the principle of retaliation tell us
nothing as to the frequency or otherwise of
mutilation as a punishment. No instance of
mutilation being inflicted either as a retaliation
or as a punishment occurs in the Old Testament,
and the probability is that cases were never
numerous. Apart from retaliation they are never
mentioned; and we may, I think, set it down as
one of the distinctive merits of the Israelite law
that it never was betrayed into sanctioning the
cutting of? of hands or feet or ears or noses as
general punishment for crime. But so far as the
principle of the lex talionis was retained, its effect
6oo
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
was wholesome. It was a continual reminder
that all free Israelites were equals in the sight of
Yahweh. And not only so, it enforced as well as
asserted equality. Any poor man mutilated by
a rich man could demand the infliction of the
same wound upon his oppressor. He could re-
ject his excuses, and refuse his money, and bring
home to him the truth that they had equal rights
and duties.
In this way this seeming'y h^s/sli law helped to
lay the foundation for our mticlsra conceptiori
of humanity, which regards all men as brethren.
For the teaching of our Lord, which fulfilled all
that the polity and religion of ancient Israel had
foreshadowed of good broke down the walls
of partition between Jew and Gentile, and
made all men brethren by revealing to them
a common Father. It surely is strange and sad
that those who specially make liberty, equality,
and fraternity their v\'atch\vords, have re-
ceived so false an impression of the religion of
both the Old and New Testaments, that they
pride themselves on rejecting both. When all is
said, the levelling of barriers which the crushing
weight of Roman power brought about, and the
, common methods and elements of thought which
the Greek conquest had spread all over the civil-
ised world, would never have made the brother-
hood of man the universally accepted doctrine it
is. The truths which made it credible came
from the revelation given by God to His chosen
people, and its final and conclusive impulse was
given to it by the lips of Christ.
In face of that cardinal fact it is vain to point
out as one of the defects of this law that all men
were not equal before it. Women were not equal
with men, nor were foreigners nor slaves equal
with freeborn Israelites; but the seed of all that
later times were to bring was already there. The
principles which at the long end of the day have
abolished slavery, raised women to the equal
position they now occupy, and made peace with
foreigners increasingly the desire of all nations,
had their first hold upon men given them here.
In all these directions the Mosaic law was epoch-
making. In the fifth commandment, as well as
in the legislation regarding the punishment of
a rebellious son, the mother is put upon the same
level as the father. However subordinate wo-
man's position in the larger public life might be,
within the home she was to be respected. There,
in her true domain, she was man's equal, and
was acknowledged to have an equal claim to
reverence from her children.
In precisely the same way the " stranger " was
freed from disability and protected. In the ear-
liest days, when the Israelite community was still
being formed, whole groups of strangers were
received into it and obtained full rights, as for
example the Kenites and Kenizzites. But though
this was a promise of what Israel was ultimately
to be to the world, the necessities of the situa-
tion, the need to keep intact the treasure of
higher religion which was committed to this
people, compelled the adoption of a more sepa-
ratist policy. Yet " in no other nation of antiq-
uity were strangers received and treated with
such liberality and humanity as in Israel." They
were freely afforded the protection of the law;
they were, in short, received as " a kind of half-
citizens, with definite rights and duties."*
•Riehm, " Handworterbuch," Baethgen, vol. i., p. 463.
Further, though the ger was not bound to all the
religious practices and rites of the Israelite, yet
he was permitted, and in some cases commanded,
to take part in their religious worship. If he
consented to circumcise all his house he might
even share in the Passover feast. All oppression
of such an one was also rigorously forbidden,
and to a large extent the stranger shared in the
benefits conferred by the provision for the poor
of the land which the law made compulsory.
Nor was the case otherwise with slaves.
Equality there was not, and could not be; but in
the provisions for the emancipation of the Is-
raelite slave and the introduction of penalties
for undue harshness, it began to be recognised
that the slave stood, in some degree at least, on
the same level as his master — he too was a man.
Taking it as a whole, therefore, the ancient
world will be searched in vain for any legisla-
tion equal to this in the " promise and the po-
tency " of its fundamental ideas as to justice.
Here, as nowhere else, we can see the radical
principles which should dominate in the adminis-
tration of justice laying hold upon mankind, and
that there was a living will and power behind
these principles is shown in the steady move-
ment toward something higher which character-
ised Israelite law. In the pursuit of impartiality,
accessibility, and humanity, the teachers of Is-
rael were untiring, and the sanctions by which
they surrounded and guarded all that tended to
make the administration of justice effective in the
high sense were unusually solemn and powerful.
The result has been most remarkable. All the
ages of civilised men since have been the heirs
of Israel in this matter. Roman influence and
the influence of the Christian Church have no
doubt been powerful, and the manifold exigen-
cies of life have drawn out and made explicit
much which was only implicit in the ancient days.
But the higher qualities of our modern adminis-
tration of justice can be traced back step by step
to Biblical principles, and the course of develop-
ment laid bare. When that is done, it is seen
that the almost ideal purity and impartiality of
the best modern tribunals is the completion of
what the Israelite law and methods began. In
this one instance at least the, great Mosaic princi-
ples have come to fruition; and from the security
and peace, the contentment and the confidence,
with which impartial justice has filled the minds
of men, we can estimate how potent to cure the
ills of our social and moral state the realisation
of the other great Mosaic ideals would be. It
should be a source of encouragement to all who
look foi- a time when " the kingdoms of this
world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord
and of His Christ," that something like the ideal
of justice has so far been realised. It has no
doubt been a weary time in coming, and it has
as yet but a narrow and perhaps precarious foot-
ing in the world. But it is here, with its healing
and beneficent activity; and in that fact we may
well see a pledge that all the rest of the Divinely
given ideals for the Kingdom of God will one
day be realised also. Such a consummation,
however remote it may seem to our human im-
patience, however devious and winding the paths
by which alone it can draw near, will come
most surely, and in our approach to the ideal in
our judicial system we may well see the firstfruits
of a richer and more plentiful harvest.
LAWS OF PURITY (CHASTITY AND MARRIAGE).
6oi
CHAPTER XXII.
LAWS OF PURITY (CHASTITY AND
MARRIAGE).
In dealing with the ten commandments it has
been already shown that, though these great
statements of religious and moral truth were to
some extent inadequate as expressions of the
highest life, they yet contained the living germs
of all that has followed. But we cannot suppose
that the reality of Israelite life from the first cor-
responded with them. They contained much
that only the experience and teaching of ages
could fully bring to light; therefore we cannot
expect that the actual laws in regard to the
relations of the sexes and the virtue of chastity
should stand upon the same high level as the
Decalogue. The former represent the reality,
this the ultimate ideal of Israelite law on these
subjects. But neither is unimportant in forming
an estimate of the value of the revelation given
to Israel, and of the moral condition of early
Israel itself, nor can either be justly viewed alto-
gether alone. The actual law at any moment in
the history of Israel must be regarded as in-
spired and upborne by the ideal set forth in the
ten commandments. But it must, at the same
time, be a very incomplete realisation of these,
and its various stages will be best regarded as
instalments of advance towards that comparative
perfection.
In regard to the relations of the sexes and the
virtue of purity this must be peculiarly the case.
For though chastity has been safeguarded by
almost all nations up to a certain low point, it
has never been really cherished by any naturalis-
tic system. Nor has it ever been favoured by
mere humanism.* Consequently there is no
point of morals in regard to which man has more
conspicuously failed to work out the merely
animal impulse from his nature than in this.
And yet, for all the higher ends of life, as well
as for the prosperity and vigour of mankind,
purity in the sexual relations is entirely vital.
One great cause of the decay of nations, nay,
even of civilisations, has been the abandonment
of this virtue. This was the main cause of the
destruction of the Canaanites. It may even be
said to have been the cause of the wreck of the
whole ancient world. We should consequently
measure what the Mosaic influence did for purity
of life, not by comparing early Israelite laws
with what has been accomplished by Christianity,
but with the condition of the Semitic peoples sur-
rounding Israel, in and after the Mosaic times.
What that was we know. Their religions, far
from discouraging sexual immorality, made it a
part of their holiest rites. Both men and women
gave themselves up to natural and unnatural
lusts, in honour of their gods. To the north,
and south, and east, and west of Israel these
practices prevailed, and as a natural result the
moral fabric of these nations' life fell into utter
ruin. In private life adultery, and the still more
degrading sin of Sodom were common. The
man had a right to indiscriminate divorce and
remarriage, and marriage connections now reck-
• Cf Renan, Philosophic Dialofrues, iii. p. 26 : " La nature
a interet k ce que la femme soit cliaste et k ce que I'liomme
ne 'e <^oit pas trop. De \k tin pn=emble d'opinions qui
couvre cTinfamie la femme non chastt\ et frappe presque
de n'd'cule I'hoinme chaste. Kt I'oDiiiion quand elle est
profonde. obstinee, c'est la nature meme."
oned incestuous, such as those between brother
and sister, were entirely approved. In all these
points Israel as a nation was without reproach.
The higher teaching this people had received in
respect to the character of God, and it may be
some reminiscence of Egyptian custom, which
was in some respects purer than that of the Sem-
itic peoples, raised them to a higher level. Yet
in the main the early Israelite view of women
was fundamentally the uncivilised one.
But at all periods of Israelite history, even the
earliest, women had asserted their personality.
In the eye of the law they might be the chattels
of their male relatives, but as a fact they were
dealt with as persons, with many personal rights.
They had no independent position in the com-
munity, it is true. They could take no part in a
festival so important as the Passover, nor were
they free to make vows without the consent of
their husbands. In other ways also social re-
straints were laid upon them. Nevertheless their
position in early Israel was much higher than it
i.<: in the East to-day, and their liberty was in no
wise unreasonably abridged. In David's day wo-
men could appear in public to converse with men
without scandal.* They also took part in relig-
ious festivals and processions, giving life to them
by beating their timbrels, by singing, and by
dancing.f They could be present also at all or-
dinary sacrifices and at sacrificial feasts; and, as
we see in the case of Deborah and others, they
could occupy a high, almost a supreme, position
as prophetesses. In the main, too, the relations
between husband and wife were loving and re-
spectful, and in Israel's best days, when the peo-
ple still remained landed yeomanry, the wife, by
her industry within the house, supplemented and
completed her husband's labour in the fields.
The Israelite woman was consequently a very
important person in the community, whatever
her status in law might be; and if she had
not the full rights which are now granted to
her sex in Western and Christian lands, her posi-
tion was for the times a noble and independ-
ent one. That all this was so was largely due to
the improvements which Mosaism wrought on
the basis of that ancient Semitic custom which
we sketched at the beginning of this chapter,
and with which it seems natural to suppose the
Israelite tribes had also begun.
Bearing these preliminary considerations in
mind, we now go on to consider the actual legis-
lation in regard to the relations of the sexes.
But here we must once more recall the fact that,
in regard to all matters vitally affecting the com-
munity, there had always been a custom, and
even before written law appears that custom had
been adopted and modified in Yahwism by Moses
himself. That this was actually the case here is
rendered highly probable by the history of legis-
lation in this matter. In the Book of the Cove-
nant there is no mention of sexual sin, save in
one passage (Exod.xxii. 16), where the penaltyfor
seduction of a virgin who is not betrothed is that
the seducer shall ofifer a " mohar " for her, and
marry her without possibility of divorce, if her
father consent. If he will not, then the " mohar "
is forfeited to the father nevertheless, as com-
pensation for the degradation of his daughter.
But it is obvious that there must have been laws
or customs regulating marriage other than this,
for without them there could have been no such
* Ct. I Sam. XXV. 18 ff.; 2 Sam. xiv. i ff.
t Cj. Exod. XV. and i Sam. xviii. 6 f.
DC
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
crime as is here punished. Obviously, also,
there must have been laws or customs of di-
vorce. But of what these laws of marriage and
divorce were Exodus gives us no hint. Deuter-
onomy, the next code, which on the critical hy-
pothesis arose at a much later time as a revision
of the Book of the Covenant, contains much
more, i. e., it draws out of the obscurity of un-
written custom a more extensive ':eries of provi-
sions in regard to purity. Tht- Law of Holiness
then adds largely to Deuteron ;Mny, and with it
the main points of the law of puruy have attained
to written expression. But the influence of the
higher standard set in the Decalogue also makes
itself felt, — not in the law so much as in the
historic books and the prophets — and our task
now is to trace out first the legal development,
then the prophetical, and to show how the whole
movement culminated and was crowned in the
teaching of Christ.
Beginning then with Deuteronomy, we find
that the chastity of women was surrounded by
ample safeguards. Religious prostitution was
absolutely prohibited (Deut. xxiii. i8). Further,
if any violence was done to a woman who had
been betrothed, the punishment of the wrong was
death; if done to a woman who was not be-
trothed, the wrong was atoned for by payment of
fifty shekels of silver to her father, and by offer-
ing marriage without possibility of divorce. If
marriage was refused, then the fifty shekels was
retained by the father in consideration of the
wrong done him. When the woman was a sharer
in the guilt the punishment in all cases was death;
while pre-nuptial unchastity, when discovered
after marriage, was punished, as adultery also
was, with the same severity.* In women who
were free, therefore, purity was demanded in
Israel as strenuously as it ever has been any-
where, though in man the only limit to sexual
indulgence was the demand, that in seeking it he
should not infringe upon the father's property in
his daughter, or the husband's in his wife or his
betrothed bride.
Admittedly the original underlying motive for
this moral severity was a low one, the mere
proprietary rights of the father or husband. But
it would be a mistake to suppose that purely
ethical and religious motives had no place in
establishing the customs or enactments which we
find in Deuteronomy. With the lapse of time
higher motives entwined themselves with the
coarse strand of personal proprietary interest,
which had originally, though perhaps never
alone, been the line of limitation. Gradually
there grew up a standard of higher purity; and
when Deuteronomy was written, though the
original line was still clearly visible, it was
justified by appeals to a moral sense which
reached far beyond the original motives of the
customary law. The continually recurring bur-
den of Deuteronomy in dealing witli these mat-
ters is that to work " folly in Israel " is a
crime for which only the severest punishment
can atone. To " extinguish the evil from Is-
rael," and to put away such things as were
" abominations to Yahweh their God." are the
great reasons on which the writer of Deuter-
onomy founds the claim for obedience in these
cases. Obviously, therefore, by his time, under
the teaching of the religion of Yahweh, Israel
had risen to a moral height which took account
of graver interests than the rights of property
* Chap. xxii. 13-1S.
in legislating for female purity. The cases in-
cluded in the law had been determined by con-
siderations of that kind; but the sanctions by
which the commands were buttressed had en-
tirely changed their character. The holiness of
God and the dignity of man, the consideration of
what alone was worthy of a " son of Israel,"
have taken the place of the coarser sanctions.
In this way a possibility of unlimited moral prog-
ress was secured, since the cause of purity was
indissolubly bound to the general and irresistible;
advance of religious and moral enlightenment in
the chosen people.
Moreover the personality of the woman was
acknowledged in the entire acquittal of the be-
trothed woman who had been exposed to out-
rage in the country, where her cries could bring
no help. In the earliest times most probably the
punishment of death would have been inflicted
equally in that case, since the husband's property
had been deteriorated to such a degree as to make
it unworthy of him. But in the Deuteronomic
provision quite other things are drawn into the
estimate. The moral guilt of the person con-
cerned is now the decisive consideration. The
woman has ceased to be a mere chattel, and the
full claims of her personality are in the way to
be recognised. These were great advances, and
for these it is vain to seek for other causes than
the persistent upward pressure of the Mosaic
religion. The moral superiority of Israel at the
time of the conquest over the much more cul-
tured Canaanites, as also over the nomadic tribes
to which they were more nearly related, is due.
as Stade says, ultimately to their religion; and
no reader of the Old Testament, in our time at
least, can fail to see that their moral progress
in the land they conquered depended entirely
upon the same cause. At the Deuteronomic
epoch purity had already been placed upon a
worthy basis, as a moral achievement of the
first importance, and impurity had taken its
proper place as a degrading sin. But much still
remained to be done before these principles
could be extended into all domains of life
equally.
How far they had penetrated in early times
may perhaps best be seen in the Deuteronomic
references to divorce. Before Deuteronomy
there is no law of divorce, nor indeed is there
any after it. We may perhaps even say that
there is in it not so much the statement of a
law of divor'^e, as a reference to custom which
the writer wishes to correct or reinforce in one
particular respect only. Notwithstanding the
Jewish view, therefore, which finds in Deut.
xxiv. 1-4 a divorce law, we must adduce the pas-
sage as a new and striking proof of what we have
all along asserted, that neither Deuteronomy
nor any other of the legal codes can be taken
as complete statements of what was legally per-
mitted or forbidden in Israel. Behind all of
them there is a vast mass of unwritten customary
law, and divorce was doubtless always deter-
mined by it. That this was the case will be seen
at once if the passage we are now concerned
with be rightly translated. It runs thus: " When
a man taketh a wife and marrieth her, and it
shall be (if she find no favour in his eyes, be-
cause he hath found in her some unseemly thing)
that he writeth her a bill of divorcement, and
givetli it into her hand, and sendeth her out o'
his house, and she go forth out of his house and
goeth and becometh the wife of another man,
LAWS OF PURITY (CHASTITY AND MARRIAGE).
603
and if the latter husband also hate her, and write
her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand
and send her out of his house, or if the latter
husband die who took her to him to wife, then
her former husband who sent her away may not
take her again to be his wife after that she has
permitted herself to be defiled." All the passage
provides for, therefore, is that a divorced wo-
man shall not be remarried to the divorcing man
after she has been married again, even though
she be separated from her second husband by
divorce or death. There is consequently no law
of divorce here stated. There is merely a refer-
ence to a general law or custom by which divorce
was permitted for " any unseemly thing," and
according to which a chief wife at any rate could
be divorced only by a " bill of divorcement,"
and not by mere word of mouth, as is common
in many Eastern lands to-day. Mosaic influence
may have procured this last slight increase in
rigour, and Deuteronomy certainly adds three
other restrictions, viz. that after remarriage a
woman cannot be again married to her first hus-
band, and that pre-nuptial wrong done to a
woman by her husband, or a false accusation by
him after marriage, takes away his right of
divorce altogether. But the woman has no right
of divorce at all, so firmly fixed throughout all
Old Testament time was the belief in the in-
feriority of women. On the whole, therefore,
divorce in Israel remained, after the law had
dealt with it, much on the level to which the
tribal customs had brought it. So far as the
legislation dealt with it, it tended to restriction;
but when all is said it remains true that the Is-
raelite la7v of divorce was in the main much
what it would have been had there been no rev-
elation. But the spirit of the religion of Yah-
weh was against laxity in this matter, and this
more rigorous feeling finds expression in the
evident distaste for the remarriage of a divorced
woman which is expressed in Deut. xxiv. 4. Re-
marriage is not forbidden; but the woman who
remarries is spoken of as one who has " let her-
self be defiled." No such expression could have
been used, had not remarriage after divorce been
looked upon as something which detracted from
perfect feminine purity. The legislator evidently
regarded it as the higher way for a divorced
woman to remain unmarried so long at least as
the divorcing husband lived. If she remained
so, the possibility of reunion was always kept
open, and the law evidently looked upon the
ultimate annulment of the divorce as the course
which was most consonant with the ideal of
marriage.
It is thus clearly seen how our Lord's state-
ment (Matt. xix. 8) — •" Moses because of the
hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away
your wives, but from the beginnmg it hath not
been so " — is true.
And when we leave the law and come to
history and prophecy, we find this view to have
been a prevalent one from early times. In one
of the earliest connected historical narratives.
that of J (Gen. ii. 24), the union of husband and
wife is said to be so peculiarly intimate that it
makes them one body, so that separation is
equivalent to mutilation. And the prophets re-
main true to this conception of marriage, as the
one which fitted best into their deeper and
loftier views of morality. From Hosca on-
wards* they represent the indissoluble bond be-
* Hosea ii. iq.
tween Yahweh and His people as :-. marriage re-
lation, founded on free choice and unchangeable
love. The possibility of divorce is no doubt
often admitted, and the conduct of Israel is rep-
resented as justifying that course. But the pro-
phetic message always is that the love of God
will never permit Him to put away His people;
and the people are often addressed as faithless and
faint-hearted, because they yield to the tempta-
tion of believing that He has cast them ofi
(Isa. 1. i). Evidently, therefore, the prophetic
ideal of marriage was that it should be indissolu-
ble, that it should be founded upon free mutual
love, and that such a love should make ^t impos-
sible for either husband or wife to give the other
up, however desperate the errors of the guilty
one might have been.
Perhaps the finest expression of this view
occurs in Isa. liv., in the exhortation addressed
to exiled Israel and beginning " Sing, O barren,
thou that didst not bear." There the ideal Is-
rael is urged to lay aside all her fears with this
assurance: " For thy Maker is thine husband;
Yahweh of Hosts is His name: and thy Re-
deemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of the
whole earth shall He be called. For Yahweh
hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved
in spirit; how can a wife of youth be rejected?
saith thy God." The full meaning of this last
touching question has been well brought out by
Prof. Cheyne (Isaiah, ii., p. 55): "Even many
an earthly husband (how much more then Yah-
weh!) cannot bear to see the misery of his
divorced wife, and therefore at length recalls
her; and when his wife is one who has been
wooed and won in youth, how impossible is it
for her to be absolutely dismissed." The rising
tide of prophetic feeling on this subject culmi-
nates in the pathetic scene depicted by Malachi,
who in chap. ii. 12 fif. reproves his people for
their cruel and frivolous use of divorce. Drawn
away by love of idolatrous women, they had di-
vorced their Hebrew wives; and these, in their
misery crowded the Temple, covering the altar
of Yahweh with " tears and weeping and sol)-
bing," till He could endure it no more. He had
been witness of the covenant made between each
of these men and the wife of his youth; yet they
had broken this Divinely sanctioned bond. He
therefore warns them to take heed, " for Yahweh
the God of Israel saith, I hate putting away, and
him who covers his garment with violence."
The Rabbinic interpreters, not being minded
to give up the privilege of divorce, have wrested
these words into "' for Yahweh the God of Is-
rael saith, If he hate her put her away." But,
so wrested, the words bring down the whole con-
text in one ruin. The}' are intelligible only if
they denounce divorce, and in this sense they
must undoubtedly be taken.
There remains for consideration, however, a
marriage which the Denteronomist permits,
which seems to run counter to all the finer feel-
ings and instincts of his later time. It is dealt
with in chap. xxv. 5-10, and is notable because it
is a clear breach of the definite rule that a man
should not marry his deceased brother's wife.
But it will be obvious at once that the permis-
sion of this marriage stand*; upon quite a differ-
ent footing from the prohibition. It is per-
mitted only in a special case for definite ends;
and while the sanction of the prohibition is the
infliction of childlessness (Lev. xx. 21), the man
who refuses to en.tcr upon marriage with his de-
6o4
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
ceased brother's wife is punished only by being
put to shame by her before the elders of his city.
We have not here, therefore, a law in the strict
sense. It is only a recognition of a very ancient
custom which is not yet abolished, though evi-
dently public feeling was beginning to make
light of the obligation. Its place in the twenty-
fifth chapter, away from the marriage laws
(which are given in xxi. lo fi., xxii. 13 fT., and
xxiv. 1-4), and among duties of kindness, seems
to hint this, and we may consequently take the
law as a concession. That the custom was an-
cient in the time of Deuteronomy may be
gathered from the fact that in Hebrew there is a
special technical term, yibbem, for entering on
such a marriage. The probability is, indeed,
that levirate marriage was a pre-Mosaic custom
connected with ancestor-worship. It certainly
is practised by many other races, e. g., the
Hindus and Persians, whose religions can be
traced to that source. Under that system, it
was necessary that the male line of descent
should be kept up in order that the ancestral
sacrifices might be continued, and to bear the
expense of this the property of the brother dying
childless was jealously preserved. In India, at
present, both purposes are served by adoption,
either by the childless man or by the widow.
In earlier times, when fatherhood was to a large
extent a merely juridical rehtionship,* when,
that is to say, it was a common thing for a man
to accept as his son any child born of women
under his control, whether he were the father or
not, the same end was also attained by this
marriage. t Originating in this way, the prac-
tice was carried over into the Israelite social life
when it changed its form, and the motives for
it were then brought into line with the new and
higher religion. The motive of keeping alive the
name and memory of the childless man was sub-
stituted for that of securing the continuance of
his worship; and the purpose of securing the per-
manence of property, landed property especially,
in each household, was substituted for that of sup-
plying means for the sacrifice. Later, the motive
connected with the transmission of property
possibly became the main one. For, since the
levirate marriage came in, according to the strict
wording of our passage, whenever a man died
without a son, whether he had daughters or not,
this marriage would seem to have been an alter-
native means of keeping the property in the
family to that of letting the daughters inherit. $
But the spirit of the higher religion, as well as a
more advanced civilisation, was unfavourable to
it. The custom evidently was withering when
Deuteronomy was written, though in Judaism
it was not disallowed till post-Talmudic times.
The impression, therefore, which the laws and
customs regulating the relations of men and
women in Israel give to the candid student must
be pronounced to be a strangely mixed one. It
would probably not be too much to say that it
* " The Primitive Family," Starcke, p. 141.
t Indeed in India it was not only the widow of the child-
less man who might bear him a son whose real father
was a near relation, but his childless wife also. — Maine,
" Early Law," p. 102.
t That the latter course may in some cases have been
unpopular with the sonless man's nearest kin is clear,
since under it the inheritance must be divided, and it
might pass to remoter connections, though not beyond the
tribe. The nearer relations would, therefore, probably
prefer that their brother's property should be kept intact
and be transmitted with his name, and this ancient cus-
tom, sanctioned and modified by Mosaism, would give
them that choice.
is at first a deeply disappointing one. We have
been accustomed to fill all the Old Testament
utterances on this subject with the sufYused
light of Gospel precept and example, till we
have lost sight of the lower elements un-
deniably present in the Old Testament laws
and ideas concerning purity. But that is
no longer possible. Whether of enmity or of
zeal for the truth, these less worthy elements
have been dragged forth into the broad light
of day, and in that light we are called upon to
readjust our thoughts so as to accept and account
for them. Evidently at the beginning the Is-
raelite tribes accepted the uncivilised idea of
woman. On that as a basis, however, customs
and laws regarding chastity, marriage, and di-
vorce were adopted, which transcended and
passed beyond that fundamental idea. The
moral complicity of woman, or her innocence,
in cases where her chastity had been attacked,
came to be taken into account. Polygamy,
though never forbidden, received grievous
wounds from prophets and others of the sacred
writers; and as marriage with one became more
and more the ideal, the higher teachers of the
people kept the indissolubleness of marriage be-
fore the public mind, till Malachi denounced di-
vorce in Yahweh's name. In regard to the bars
to marriage there was little change, probably,
from the days of Moses; but the old family rules
were reinforced by a deep and delicate regard
for even the less palpable affections and rela-
tions which grew up in the home.
The final attainment, therefore, was great and
worthy enough; but the cruder and less refined
ideas, which had been inherited from pre-Mosaic
custcwn, always make themselves felt, and have
even dominated some of the laws. They domi-
nated, even more, the practice of the people and
the theory of the scribes; so that on the very eve
of His coming who was to proclaim decisively
the indissolubility of marriage, the great Jewish
schools were wrangling whether mere caprice, or
some immodesty only could justify divorce.
Nevertheless the Decalogue, with its deep and
broad command, culminating in prohibition even
of inward evil desire, had always had its own
influence. The teachings of the prophets, which
breathe passionate hatred of impurity, had
taught all men of good-will in Israel that the
wrath of God surely burned against it. But the
stamp of imperfection was upon Old Testament
teaching here as elsewhere. Like the Messianic
hope, like the future of Israel, like all Israel's
greatest destinies, the promise of a higher life in
this respect was darkened by the inconsistencies
of general practice; and uncertainty prevailed as
to the direction in which men were to look for
the harmonious development of the higher po-
tencies which were making their presence felt.
It was in them rather than in the law, in the
ideals rather than in the practice of the people,
that the hidden power was silently doing its re-
generating work. The religion of Yahweh in its
central content surrounded all laws and institu-
tions with an atmosphere which challenged anG
furthered growth of every wholesome kind. The
axe and hammer of the legislative builder was
rarely heard at work; but in the silence which
seems to some so barren, there slowly grew a
fabric of moral and spiritual ideas and aspira-
tions, which needed only the coming of Christ
to make it the permanent home of all morally
earnest souls.
LAWS OF KINDNESS.
605
With Him all that the past generations " had
willed, or hoped, or dreamed of good " came
actually to exist. He made what had been aspi-
ration only the basis of an actual Kingdom of
God. As one of its primary moral foundations He
laid down the radical indissolubility of marriage,
and made visible to all men the breadth of the
law given in the Decalogue by forbidding even
■wandering desires. In doing this He completely
surpassed all Old Testament teaching, and set
up a standard which Christian communities as
such have held to hitherto, but which from lack
of elevation and earnestness they seem inclined
in these days to let slip. That such a standard
was ever set up was the work of a Divine revela-
tion of a perfectly unique kind, working through
long ages of upward movement. Humanity has
been dragged upwards to it most unwillingly.
Men have found difficulty in living at that height,
and nothing is easier than to throw away all the
gain of these many centuries. All that is needed
is a plunge or two downwards. But if ever these
plunges are taken, the long, slow effort upwards
will only have to be begun again, if family life
is to be firmly established, and purity is to be-
come a permanent possession of men.
CHAPTER XXIII.
LAPVS OF KINDNESS.
With the commands we now have to consider,
■we leave altogether the region of strict law, and
enter entirely upon that of aspiration and of
feeling. Kindness, by its very nature, eludes
the rude compulsion of law, properly so called.
It ceases to be kindness when it loses spontaneity
and freedom. Precept, therefore, not law, is the
utmost that any lawgiver can give in respect
to it; and this is precisely what we have in Deu-
teronomy, so far as it endeavours to incite men
to gentleness, goodness, and courtesy to one
another. The author gives his people an ideal
of what they ought to be in these respects, and
presses it home upon them with the heartfelt
earnestness which distinguishes him. That is
all; but yet, if we are to do justice to him as a
lawgiver, we must consider and estimate the
moral value of these precepts; for, properly
speaking, they are the flower of his legal princi-
ples, and they reveal in detail, and therefore, for
the average man, most impressively, the spirit
in which his whole legislation was conceived,
lii the abstract no doubt he had told us that love
— love to Yahweh — was to be the fundamental
thing, and we have seen how deep and wide-
reaching that announcement was. But a review
of the precepts which indicate how he conceived
that love to God should affect men's relations
v'ith men, will give that general principle a defi-
niteness and a concreteness more impressive than
i' thousand homilies. For the conception that a
pilation of love is the only fit relation between
Dian and God, could not, if it were sincerely
tiiken up, fail to throw light upon men's true
relations to each other. Consequently the great
declaration of the sixth chapter was bound to
r<;-echo in the precepts to guide conduct, giving
n ;w sanctity and breadth to all man's duty to his
fallows.
Of course the risk of great failure was nigh at
Viand", for m^n may be intellectually convinced
/;iat love is the element in which life ought to be
39-Vol. I.
lived, and may proclaim it, who are far from
being actually penetrated and filled with love,
tested and increased by communion with God.
As a result, much talk about love and kindly
human duty has fallen with but little impulsive
power upon the hearts of men. When, how-
ever, it is felt to be the expression of a present
experience, such exhortation has power to move
men as no other words can do. And the author
of Deuteronomy was one of those who had this
divinely given secret. In all parts of his book
you find his words becoming winged with power,
wherever love to God and man is even remotely
touched upon. If our hypothesis as to the age
in which he lived and wrote be correct, his must
have been one of those high and rare natures
which are not embittered by persecution or con-
temptuous neglect. Long before our Lord had
spoken His decisive words on our duty to our
neighbour, or St. Paul had written his great
hymn to love, this man of God had been chosen
to feel the truth, and had suffused his book with
it, so that the only principle which can be recog-
nised as binding together all his precepts is the
central principle of the New Testament. Of
course that made his ideal too high for present
realisation; but he gained more than he lost; for,
from Jeremiah and Josiah downwards through
the years, all the noblest of his people responded
to him. The splendour of his thought cast re-
flections upon their minds, and these glowed and
shone amid the meaner lights which Pharisaism
kindled and cherished, till He came whose right
it was to reign. Then Deuteronomy's true rank
was seen; for from it Christ took the answers
by which He repelled Satan in the temptation,
and from it, too. He took that commandment
which He called the first and greatest. Of
course the humanity of the book had not, in
expression at least, the imperial sweep of Chris-
tian brotherhood which makes all men equal, so
that for it there is neither Jew nor Gentile,
neither wise nor tmwise, neither male nor female,
neither bond nor free. But all the chosen people
are included in its sympathy; and in this field,
without undue interference with private life, the
author sets forth by specimen cases how the fra-
ternal feeling should manifest itself in loving,
neighbourly kindness.
As these laws or precepts of kindness are not
systematically arranged, it will be necessary to
group them, and we shall take first those in
which it is prescribed that injury to others should
be avoided. Of course criminal wrongs are not
dealt with here. They have already been for-
bidden in the strictly legal portions of the book,
and penalties have been attached to them. But
in the region beyond law, there are many acts in
which the difference between a good, and kindly,
and sympathetic man, and a morose, and sullen,
and unkindly one, can be even more clearly seen.
In that region Deuteronomy is unmistakably on
the side of sympathy. The poor, the slave, the
helpless should, it teaches, be objects of special
care to the true son of Israel. They should be
treated, it shows, with a generous perception of
the peculiar difficulties of their lot; and pressure
upon them at these special points where their lot
is hard should be abhorrent to every Israelite.
The first in order of the precepts which we
are considering (chap. xxii. 8) — " When thou
buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a
railing for thy roof, that thou bring not blood
upon thine house, if any man fall from thence "
6o6
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
—reveals the fatherly and loving temper which it
is the author's delight to attribute to Yahweh.
As earthly parents guard their children from ac-
cidents and dangers, so Yahweh thinks of possi-
ble danger to the lives of His people, and calls
for even minute precautions. The habit of sit-
ting and sleeping upon the flat roofs of the
houses has always been, and is now, prevalent
in the East. Many accidents take place through
this habit. In recent years Emin Pasha, who
ruled so long at VVadelai, nearly lost his life by
one; and here the house-owner is required in
Yahweh's name to minimise that danger, " that
he bring not blood upon his house." The life
of each one of Yahweh's people is precious to
Him; therefore it is that He will have them to
guard one another. This is the principle which
runs through all these precepts. In the sphere
of ritual and religion the Deuteronomist does
not transcend Old Testament conditions. For
him as for others it is the nation which is the
unit. But in the region now before us he vir-
tually goes beyond that limitation, and empha-
sises the care of Yahweh for the individual, just
as in the demand for love to God he had already
made Israel's relation to their God depend upon
each man's personal attitude. The thought that
the Divine care was exerted over even " such a
set of paltry ill-given animalcules as himself and
his nation were," according to Carlyle's phrase,
does not stagger him as it staggered Frederick
the Great.
In matters like these, the unsophisticated re-
ligion of the Old Testament is most helpful to
us to-day. We have analysed, and refined, and
dimmed all things into abstractions, God and
man among the rest. The fearless simplicity of
the Old Testament restores us to ourselves, and
pours fresh blood into the veins of our religion.
No faith in God as the living orderer of all
the circumstances of our lives can be too strong
or too detailed. The stronger and more definite
it becomes, the nearer will it approach the truth.
Only one danger can threaten us on that line,
the danger of taking all our own plans and de-
sires for the Divinely appointed path for us. But
most men will by natural humility be saved from
that presumption; and the glad assurance that
they are wrapped about with the love of God is
perhaps the greatest need of God's people in
their many sceptical and unspiritual hours.
We cannot, therefore, be surprised that, in
connection with debts and pledges for payment,
the same kindness in the Divine commands
should be observable. As usury was forbidden
in Israel, and precautions against excessive in-
debtedness were exceedingly elaborate, the possi-
bilities of oppression in connection with debt in
Israel were much more limited than in most
ancient communities. Nevertheless there was
here a region of life in which great wrongs could
still be done by a harsh and unscrupulous
creditor. In order that the creditor might have
some security for what he had lent, it was per-
mitted to receive and give pledges. The precepts
regarding these are contained in chap, xxiv., vv.
6, 10 fif. and 17, and express a considerate
brotherly spirit, for which it would be hard to
find a parallel either in ancient or modern times.
The creditor who has taken a poor man's upper
garment as a pledge is commanded, both in the
Book of the Covenant and in Deuteronomy, to
restore the garment to its owner in the evening,
that he may sleep in it. In Palestine for much
of the year the nights are cold enough, and the
poor man has no covering save his ordinary
clothes. To deprive him of these, therefore,
is to inflict punishment upon him, whereas all
that should be aimed at is the creditor's security.
This was peculiarly ofTtensive to Israelite feeling,
as we see from the mention in Amos ii. 8 of the
breach of this prescription as one of the sins for
which Yahweh would not turn away Israel's
punishment. Further, in no case was a widow's
garment to be taken in pledge, nor the handmill
used for preparing the daily flour, for that is
taking " life " in pledge, as the Deuteronomist
says with the feeling for the conditions of the
poor man's life which he always shows.
But the crown of all this kindness is found in
the beautiful tenth verse: " When thou dost lend
thy neighbour any manner of loan, thou shalt not
go into his house to fetch his pledge; thou shalt
stand without, and the man to whom thou dost
lend shall bring forth the pledge without unto
thee." Not only does Yahweh care for external
and physical pain, He sympathises with those
deeper wrongs and pains which may hurt a man's
feelings. If a pledge to satisfy the lender had to
be given, scruples of delicacy on the part of the
borrower would appear to the " practical " man.
as he would call himself, contemptibly misplaced.
If the man's feelings were so very superfine, why
did he borrow? But the author of Deuteronomy-
knew the heart of God better. With the fine
tact of a man of God, he knew how even the
well-meaning rich man's amused contempt for
the poor man's few household treasures would
cut like a whip, and he knew that Yahweh, who
was " very pitiful and of tender mercy," would
desire no son of Israel to be exposed to it. He
knew, too, how human greed might dispose the
lender to seize upon the thing of greatest value
in the poor house, whether its price was in excess
of the loan or not. Finally, he knew how it
deteriorates the poor to be dealt with in an un-
ceremonious, tactless way even by the benevo-
lent. And in the name and with the authority
of God he forbids it. The poor man's home, the
home of the man whom we desire to help espe-
cially, is to be sacred. In our dealing with him of
all men the finest courtesy is to be brought into-
play. Just because he needs our help, we are to-
stand on points of ceremony with him, which
we might dispense with in dealing with friends
and equals. " Thou shalt stand without," unless,
he asks thee to enter; and thou shalt show
thereby, in a deeper way than any gifts or loans
can show, that the fraternal tie is acknowledged
and reverenced.
In two other precepts the same delicate re-
gard for the finer feelings finds expression. In
the fifth verse it is commanded that " When a
man taketh a new wife, he shall not go out in
the host, neither shall he be charged with any-
business: he shall be free at home one year, and
shall cheer his wife that he hath taken." The
strangeness and loneliness which everywhere
make themselves felt as a formidable drawback
to a young wife's joy, and which in a polyga-
mous family, where jealousies are bitter, must
often have reached the point of being intolerable,
are provided for. In chap. xxv. 1-3 again, which
deals with the punishment of criminals by beat-
ing, it is provided that in no case shall the num-
ber of blows exceed forty, and that they shall be
given in the presence of the judge. This in itself
was a measure of humanity, but the reason given
LAWS OF KINDNESS.
607
for the direction is greatly more humane.
" Forty stripes he may give him." says ver. 3;
"he shall not exceed; lest, if he should exceed,
and beat him above these with many stripes, then
thy brother should seem vile unto thee." Even
in the case of the criminal care is to be taken
that he be not made an object of contempt.
Punishment has gone beyond its true aim when
it makes a man seem vile unto his neighbours
by attacking his dignity as a man; for that should
be inalienable even in a criminal. A man may
have all his material wants satisfied, and yet be
sorely vexed and injured. God sympathises with
these hurts of the soul, and defends His people
against them.
After the lovingkindness of these commands,
it seems almost needless to say that the smaller
social wrongs which men may inflict upon each
other are sternly forbidden. Often, the rich
from want of thought about the life of the poor
carelessly do them wrong. Such a case is that
dealt with in chap. xxiv. 14 f. : "Thou shalt not
oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy,
whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers
(gerim) that are in thy land within thy gates:
in his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither
shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor,
and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against
thee unto Yahweh, and it be sin unto thee." The
same command is given in Lev. xix. 13, and
Dillmann is probably right in regarding this as
a Deuteronomic repetition of that, since there
the precept forms part of a pentad of commands
dealing with similar things, while here it stands
alone. From early times, therefore, Yahweh had
revealed Himself as considering the poor and
the necessities of their position. Further, the
poor man or the wayfarer was permitted to
satisfy his hunger by taking fruit or grain in his
hands as he passed through the fields. No one
was to die of starvation if the fields were " yield-
ing meat." Last of all, estrangement between
brethren, i. e., all Israelites, was not to free them
from duties of neighbourly love. If a man find
a stray ox or sheep or ass, or a garment or any
other lost thing, he is not to leave it where he
finds it. He is to restore it to the owner: and
if the owner is unknown or too far ofT, the finder
is to keep that which he has found till it is in-
quired after. Then if he see his brother's, i. e.,
his neighbour's, ass or ox fallen by the way, he
must not pass by, but must help the owner to set
it on its feet again. That an estranged
" brother " was especially in view is shown by
the fact that in the parallel passage (Exod. xxiii.
4) " thine enemy's ox " and " the ass of him that
hateth thee " are mentioned.
Now, we have called these precepts and pro-
visions the flower and blossom of the Deuter-
onomic legislation, because they reveal in their
greatest perfection that sympathy with the com-
monest and the innermost cares of men which is
the moving impulse of it all. But they reveal
more than that. They show that already in
those far-off days the secret of God's love to man
had been made known. Its universality so far
as Israel was concerned, its penetrative sympathy,
its quality of regarding no human interest as
outside its scope, its superhuman impartiality
— all are here. They are not of course present in
their full sweep and power, as Christ made them
known. Outside of Israel there were the Gen-
tiles, who had a share only in the " uncovenanted
mercies" of God: and even among the chosen
people there were the slaves and the strangers,
who had a comparatively insecure relation to
Him. Further, the thought of the self-sacrifice
of God, though soon to have its dawning in the
later chapters of Isaiah, was not as yet an ap-
preciable element in the Israelite theology.
Nevertheless the passages we have been consider-
ing throw a light upon social duty, as seen by
this inspired servant of God, which puts to
shame the state of the Christian mind on these
subjects even now.
The great principles underlying right relations
between men of different social status are, ac-
cording to these precepts, courtesy and consider-
ation. Now it is precisely the want of these
which lies at the root of the bitterness which
is so alarming a symptom of our social state at
present. There is not, we are willing to believe,
much of intentional, deliberate oppression ex-
ercised by the strong upon the weak. The in-
justice that is done is probably inherent in the
present social system, for the character of >vhich
no one living is responsible. But one reason
why reform comes so slowly, and why patience
till it can come dies out among the masses of
men, is that the employing classes, and those
who have inherited privileges, often convey to
those they employ the impression that they are
beyond the pale of the courtesies which are rec-
ognised as binding between men of the same
class. Often without intending it, their manner
when they are approached by those they employ,
their short and half-aggrieved replies, reveal to
the latter that they are regarded much more as
parts of the machinery, than as men who might
naturally be expected to claim, and who have a
right to, the recognition of their rights as men.
Of course there are excuses. There is the long
tradition of subordination to arbitrary power,
from which none in earlier ages of the world
have been free. There is the impatience with
which a governing and organising mind listens
to grievances which it sees either to be inevi-
table under the circumstances, or to be com-
pensated by some corresponding privilege, which
stands or falls with the thing complained of.
And then there is the absence of outlook, which
is the foible of the directing mind. It is set to
rule and make successful a large and intricate
business under given circumstances. The more
effective such a mind is for practical purposes,
the more thoroughly will it limit itself to work-
ing out the problem committed to it. When
grievances have to be dealt with which have their
root in the present circumstances, and which im-
ply changes more or less radical in his fixed
point if they are to be redressed, it is hard for
the employer to persuade himself that his em-
ployees are not merely crying for the moon. If
he think so, he will probably say so; and work-
ing men go away from such interviews with the
feeling that it is vain to expect from employers
any sympathy for their aspirations towards a
better social state, which yet they cannot give up
without a slur upon their manhood.
But though these are excuses for the attitude
we have been describing, there can be no ques-
tion that the fine and delicate courtesy which
Deuteronomy prescribes is indispensable in order
to avert class hostility. Courtesy cannot, of
course, change our social state, and where it
works badly evils that produce friction will re-
main. But the first condition of a successful
solution of our difficulties is, that evil tempers
6o8
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
should as far as possible be banished, and for that
purpose courtesy even under provocation is the
one sovereign remedy. For it means that you
convey to your neighbour that you consider
him in all essentials your equal. It means, too,
that you are willing to recognise his rights and
to respect them. Though power may be on
your side, and weakness on his, that will only
make it more incumbent upon you to show that
mere external circumstances cannot impair your
reverence for him as man. If that be sincerely
felt, it opens a way, otherwise absolutely closed,
to mutual confidence and mutual understanding.
These once established, light on all parts of the
social problem (which, be it remembered, em-
ployers and employed must solve together if it
is to be solved at all) will break in upon the
minds of both classes. In spite of the diversity
of their immediate interests, the ultimate interest
of all is the same. If contempt and suspicion
were excluded, eyes which are now holden would
be opened, and a common effort to reach a so-
cial state in which all men shall have the oppor-
tunity of living lives worthy of men would be-
come possible. If all would learn to treat those
of other classes with the courtesy which they
constantly show to those of their own, a great
step in the right direction would be taken. Men
overlook much and forgive much to their fellows
when these recognise their equality, and show
that they attach importance to having good re-
lations with them.
But much more is to be aimed at than that.
The esteem for man as man has great conquests
yet to make before even the Deuteronomic
courtesy becomes common. But if these nobler
manners are to come in, then the motives sug-
gested by Deuteronomy will have to be made
effective for our day. What these were it is not
difficult to see. They all had their source in the
author's own relations and the relations of his
people to God. Each of his brethren of the
chosen people was a friend of Yahweh. There
was no difference between Israelite men before
Him. He had brought them all, the poor and
the weak, as well as the rich and the strong, out
of the house of bondage; He had guided them all
through the wilderness, and had appointed each
household a place in His land where full com-
munion with Him was to be had. He had
thought many thoughts about them, had given
them laws and statutes dictated by loving insight,
so as to fill their life with the consciousness that
Yahweh loved them, condescended to them, and
even allowed Himself to be made to serve by
their sins. Whatever else they might be, they
were friends of God, and had a right to respect
on that ground. And for us who are Christians
all these motives have been intensified and
raised to a higher power. It is not lawful for
us to call any man common or unclean. It is
not lawful to overwhelm and bear down the
minds of others by sheer energy and power.
Those " for whom Christ died " are not to be
dealt with save on the worthy plane of moral
and spiritual conviction. That is the law of
Christ; and so long as it is broken in our labour
troubles by contemptuous refusal of conference
when it can be granted without compromising
principle, or by slighting references to labour
leaders and a refusal to meet them, when leaders
of another class would be courteously met, so
long will the bitterness which inevitably springs
up trouble us.
It is not, however, to be supposed that only the
rich can sin in this respect. The labour organ-
isations are becoming in many places, the
stronger,* and so far they have learned the law
of courtesy no better than their opponents.
Opprobrious epithets and injurious suspicions
and accusations are the stock-in-trade of some
who lead the labour cause. That is as unworthy
in them as it would be in others; it is not only
a crime, but a blunder.
But the practice of courtesy does not end with
itself. It opens the way for that consideration
of the circumstances of the poor which we have
found so conspicuous in Deuteronomy. As we
have seen, Yahweh's precepts contemplate with
the nicest care the unavoidable necessities of
the poor man's life. So He stirs us to en-
deavour to realise the conditions of our poorer
brethren, and by doing so to avoid the blunders
which well-meaning people make by assuming
that the conditions of their own life are the
norm. There are vast varieties of circumstance
in the world; and from lack of consideration
those more favourably situated excite envies and
hatreds the bitterness of which they cannot con-
ceive, by simply taking it for granted that every
one has the same opportunities for recreation,
the same possibilities of rest. To realise clearly
what life and death mean to the toiling millions
of men; to see that matters which are small to
those who live the materially larger and freer
life of the class above them are of vital moment
to the poor; to consider and allow for all such
things in their dealings with them, — this is the
teaching of Deuteronomy. Hence the command
to pay the labourer his wages in the same day.
The heart of man responds when this note is
struck. In nothing is the story of Gautama the
Buddha more true to the best instincts of hu-
manity than in this, that it Represents him as
making his great renunciation through coming
into intimate contact with the pain and misery
of ordinary life.f That gave him insight, and
insight wrought sympathy, and sympathy trans-
formed him from being a petty prince of North-
ern India into the consoler and helper of mill-
ions in all Eastern lands. Even hopeless pessi-
mism, when born of sympathy, has an immense
consoling power. Much more should the inex-
tinguishable hope given by Christ, combined as
it is with the same sympathetic insight, console
men and uplift them.
But the sixteenth verse of chap, xxiii. reminds
us that in that ancient Deuteronomic world
there were sad limitations to these lofty sym-
pathies and hopes. If intensively Deuteronomy
almost reaches the Gospel, extensively it shows
the whole difference between Judaism at its best
and Christianity. Below the world of free-born
members of the Israelite community, to whom
the precepts we have hitherto been considering
alone apply, there was the class of slaves, who in
many respects lay beyond the region of the finer
charities. The origin of slavery we need not
discuss. It was a quite universal feature in all
ancient communities, and was doubtless a step
upwards from the custom of destroying all pris-
oners taken in war. Among the Hebrews it had
always been customary; but in historic times it
was not among them the all-important matter it
was in Greek and Roman polity. Had it been
* Especially in some of the Southern Colonies, in one of
which this exposition is written.
t " Buddhism," by T. W. Rhys Davids, p. 29.
LAWS OF KINDNESS.
609
so, it woUid have been impossible to discuss the
economic ideals of Israel without taking this
social feature into consideration first. But slaves
[ were comparatively few in Israel, and the slave
trade can never have been extensive, since no
slave markets are mentioned in the Old Testa-
ment. Moreover the social state of the country
made owners of slaves share in the slaves' work,
and that of itself prevented the growth of the
worst abuses. But the most powerful element in
making the lot of the slave tolerable was un-
doubtedly the just and pitiful character of the
Israelite religion.
The fundamental position with regard to him
was, however, the common one: he was the
property of his master. He could be sold,
pledged, given away as a present, and inherited,
and could even be sold to foreigners. But a
female slave, if taken as a subordinate wife,
could not be sold, but only freed if she ceased to
occupy that position. Exclusive of the Canaan-
ites, subject to forced labour, and the Nethinim,
the servants of the Sanctuary, who occupied
much the same place as the servi publici in Rome,
there were two classes of slaves, non-Israelites
and Israelites. The ways in which a non-Israel-
ite slave could come into Israelite hands were
just what they were elsewhere. They might be
prisoners of war, they might be purchased from
travelling merchants, they might voluntarily have
sold themselves from poverty in a strange land,
or might have been sold for debt, and finally
they might be children born of slaves. Their
lot was of course the hardest. Yet even they
were not so entirely unprotected by the law as
slaves were among Greeks and Romans. They
were recognised as men, having certain general
human rights. The master had no right to kill;
and if he maimed his slave he had to give him
his freedom, according to the oldest law (Exod.
xvi. 20 f.). The law regarding the killing of a
slave has often been quoted as singularly harsh,
especially that clause which says that if a slave
when fatally smitten lives for some days after the
blow, his death shall not be avenged, " for he is
his (the master's) money." But it ought, notwith-
standing the harshness of the expression, to be
judged quite otherwise. The fact that death was
not immediate was taken to indicate that death
was not intended, and consequently the loss of the
slave was thought a sufficient punishment. But
the prohibition of the deliberate murder of a
slave was a humane provision which could not
be paralleled in the Grasco-Roman world.
Moreover these laws would not seem to have
been widely called into action. The humane
spirit became so general in Israel that slaves were
generally well treated. In Prov. xxix. 21 over-
indulgence to a slave is deprecated, as if it were
a common ^rror; and during the whole history
there is no mention of evils resulting from cruel
treatment of slaves, much less any record of ser-
vile insurrection. Nor is there very frequent
mention even of runaway slaves. On the other
hand, we read of slaves who were stewards of
their masters' houses; others probably were en-
trusted with the charge of the education of
children.
In Deuteronomy we find, as we should expect,
that the movement towards humanity in dealing
with slaves is greatly furthered. In chap. xxi.
ID flf. the hardship of a woman's lot when she was
taken captive in war is mitigated with sympa-
thetic insight. To modern women of the West-
ern world the lot of such an one seems so dread-
ful that no mitigation of it can make any
difference. The current teaching among even
religious men is that rather than submit to it a
woman is justified in suicide. But in antiquity
the personality of woman was undeveloped, the
chances of life constantly passed her from one
master to another, and things intolerable now
were tolerable then. Making even these allow-
ances, however, if we look at the law of the Old
Testament as being in all its provisions and ab
initio Divine, it seems impossible to praise it. A
law which graciously permitted a captive wo-
man to mourn for her people for a month, and
only then allowed her captor to marry her, but
if he wished afterwards to get rid of her pro-
vided that he should not sell her, but should let
he go whither she would, cannot be said to be in
itself compassionate. But, if the customary law .
of the Israelite tribes, restrained and purified by
the higher spirit, be regarded as the basis of
Old Testament legislation, then the leaven of
religion and humanity can be seen working
nobly, and in a manner worthy of revelation,
even in such cases as these. Long after the
Christian era we see what the ordinary fate of a
captive woman was, in the conduct of Khalid the
" sword of the Lord," one of the first great
Mohammedan soldiers. When he had captured
Malik ibn Noweira, who had resisted Islam,
along with his wife, he gave orders which led
to Malik's death, and the same night he married
his widow.* Shortly afterwards, at the battle
of Yemama, he demanded the daughter of his
captive Mojda, and married her, as the Caliph
wrote in reproof, " whilst the ground beneath
the nuptial couch was yet moistened with the
blood of twelve hundred." Horrors like these
Deuteronomy forbids. The frenzied moments of
a captive's first grief are respected, and some
tenderness is shown to woman in a world where
her lot at its best had always in it possibilities,
which cannot now be even thought of with
equanimity. The same steady pressure to a
nobler form of life is likewise seen in the Deu-
teronomic law dealing with the case of a foreign
slave who had taken refuge in Israel (Deut. xxiii.
15 f.). In the words, " Thou shalt not deliver
unto his master the slave which is escaped from
his master unto thee; he shall dwell with thee,
in the midst of thee, in the place which he shall
choose within one of thy gates, where it liketh
him best; thou shalt not oppress him," we have,
thus early, the same legislation which it is the
peculiar boast of England to have introduced into
the modern world. " Slaves cannot breathe in
England," and the moment they touch British
soil in any part of the world they are free. This
was the case with the land of Israel according to
the Deuteronomic conception of what it ought
to be.
But the highest points of privilege come to
the non-Israelite slave in a way which disturbs,
the modern conscience, for they came by means
of compulsion in religion. In contrast to the
day labourer and the " Toshab " or sojourner,
the slave must be of his master's religion. For
a heathen, however, that was not a difficulty.
His gods were gods of his land; and when he left
his land and was carried into a foreign country,
he had no scruple about worshipping the god of
the new land. A typical case of this is found
in the narrative 2 Kings xvii., where the iiri-
• Sir W. Muir, " Caliphate," pp. 26 and 33.
6io
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
migrants whom the king of Assyria had settled
in Samaria after Israel had been carried captive
besought him to send some one to teach them
how to worship Yahweh. This adoption of the
master's religion secured equality of slave and
free to a degree which could not otherwise have
been attained, and brought the slaves fully within
the humanity of the Hebrew law. It gave them
the Sabbath (chap. v. 14). It gave a full share in
all the religious festivals and a part in the sacri-
ficial feasts (Deut. xii. 12 and xvi. 11, 14). Such
slaves were, in fact, fully adopted into the family
of God, and became brethren, poorer and more
unfortunate, but still brethren, of their masters.
They had indeed no claim to freedom, as Israel-
ite slaves had; they were slaves in perpetuity.
But their slavery was of a kind that did not de-
. grade them beneath the condition of man.
With regard to Israelite slaves the beneficence
of the law was naturally still greater. The full-
est statement in regard to them is found, not in
Deuteronomy, but in Lev. xxv. 39-46; but in the
main we may suppose that in its larger outlines
the distinction between Israelite and non-Israelite
slaves there insisted on was always acknowl-
edged. They were not to be thrust down into
the lowest depth of slavery, and they were not
to be set to the lowest kinds of labour, rather to
that which hired labourers were wont to do,
because they were of the children of Israel, of the
nation whom Yahweh had brought out of the
house of bondage. Further, they had a right to
emancipation every seventh year, that is to say,
whenever they had served six full years they
could claim freedom in the seventh. Their orig-
inal property was meant to be restored to them
in the Sabbatic year, and so their degradation
could last only for a very limited time. In Exod.
xxi. 2 fif. we find the original provisions con-
cerning the Israelite slave. Deuteronomy sim-
ply took these up. and modified them in cer-
tain respects. It extends all that Exodus says
of the slave to the female slave also, and, in its
care for and understanding of the difficulties of
the poor, enacts that a slave when set free shall
receive a fresh start in life from the cattle, the
barn, and the winepress of the former owner.
But this anticipation of discharged prisoners'
aid societies was too high a demand upon a
faithless generation. Even Jeremiah could not
get it carried out; and the probability is that
none but the most spiritually minded of the
Jews ever regarded it as binding law.
The love which love of Yahweh inspired spread
still more widely. It took in not only the poor
and the slave, but it took account also of the
lower animals. It has been often made a re-
proach to Christianity that it makes no such ap-
peal on behalf of the lower creation as Buddhism
does. But that reproach (like the kindred one
brought by J. S. Mill, that in comparison with
the Qur'an the New Testament is defective in
not pressing civil duty) is tenable only if the
New Testament be absolutely severed from the
Old. Taken as the completion of the moral and
religious development begun in Israel, Chris-
tianity takes up into itself all the experience, and
ail the teaching by example, which the Old
Testament contains. It does not repeat it, be-
cause to the first Christians the Old Testament
was the Divinely inspired guide. It was at first
their whole Bible, and to take the New Testa-
ment by itself as an independent product is to
mutilate both the Old and the New. When the
Old Testament, therefore, enjoins kindness to
animals we may set down all that it prescribes
to the credit of Christianity. So much, at least,
the latter must be held to teach; and if we con-
sider the spirit as well as the letter of this law,
there is no exaggeration in saying that it covers
all the ground. Here, as in the case of slaves
and the poor, the fundamental reason for kind-
ness is relation to God. In the Yahwist's nar-
rative in Gen. ii. all creatures are formed by
God, and God Himself shows kindness to them.
Indeed in passages like Psalm xxxvi. 7, as
Cheyne well remarks, there is an implication
" that morally speaking there is no complete
break of continuity in the scale of sentient life,"
and that, as is seen by passages like Jer. xxi. 6,
and Isa. iv. 11, the mild domesticated animals
" are in fact regarded as a part of the human
community." In the Decalogue the animals that
labour with and for man have their share in the
Sabbath rest, and the produce of the fields dur-
ing the Sabbatic year (Exod. xxiii. 11; Lev. xxv.
7) is to be for them as well as for the poor.
That they were mere machines of flesh and blood,
to be driven till they were worn out, and were
then to be cast aside, seems never to have oc-
curred to the Israelite mind. These helpful
creatures had made a covenant with man, and
had a share in the consideration which the sons
of Israel were taught to have for one another.
In reaching that attainment Israel had reached
the only effective ground for dealing with ani-
mals, as Cheyne says, " without inhumanity and
without sentimentalism." The individual pre-
scriptions of Deuteronomy emphasise and bring
down these principles into the practical life. It
is probable that the precept not to seethe a kid
in its mother's milk (Deut. xiv. 21) was, in part
at least, a law of kindness, founded upon a
reverential feeling for the parental relationship
even in this lower sphere. The command in
Deut. xxii. 6 is certainly so. We read there:
" If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the
way, in any tree or on the ground, with young
ones or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the
young, or upon the eggs, thou shalt not take the
dam with the young; thou shalt in any wise let
the dam go, but the young thou mayest take unto
thyself; that it may be well with thee, and that
thou mayest prolong thy days." Evidently the
ground of sympathy here is the existence and the
sacredness of the parental relationship. The
mother bird is sacred as a mother; and length of
days is promised to those who regard the sanc-
tity of motherhood in this sphere, as it is prom-
ised to those who observe the fifth command-
ment of the Decalogue. Thus intimately the
lower creation is drawn into the human sphere.
The only other precepts under this head are
that a fallen animal is always to be lifted (Deui.
xxii. 4), and the ox is not to be muzzled when it
is treading out the corn (Deut. xxv. 4). These
were ordinary prescriptions of humanity, but
they too rest upon the sympathetic identification
of the sufferings and wants of all sentient beings
with those of mankind. It may be objected,
however, that St. Paul denies that the last precept
really was due to nity for the oxen. In i Cor.
ix. 9, referring to it, he says, " Is it for the oxen
that God careth, or saith He it altogether for
our sake? Yea, for our sake it was written."
But there is no real contradiction here. It is
quite impossible that a devout Jew like St. Paul
did not believe that God's " tender mercies are
MOSES' FAREWELL SPEECHES.
6n
over all His works " (Psalm cxlv. 9). He would
have been false to all his training had he not
accepted that as a fundamental axiom. His ap-
parent denial does not refer at all to the historic
fact that the precept zvas given because of God's
care for oxen. It only signifies that, when taken
in its highest sense, it was meant to form charac-
ter in men. St. Paul argues, as Alford says, " that
not the oxen, but those for whom the law was
given, were its objects. Every duty of humanity
has for its ultimate ground, not the mere welfare
of the animal concerned, but its welfare in that
system of which man is the head, and therefore
man's welfare." In fact St. Paul understood
the Old Testament as we have seen it demands
to be understood, and places the duty of kindness
to animals in its right relation to man.
In all relations, therefore, Deuteronomy insists
that life's main principle shall be love illumined
by sympathy. Beginning with God and giving
man's unquiet heart a firm anchorage there, it
commands that all creatures about us shall be
embraced in the same sympathising tenderness.
It forbids us to look upon any of them as mere
instruments for our use, for all of them have ends
of their own in the loving thought of God. God
is for it the great unifying, harmonising power
in the world, and from a right conception of
Him all right living flows. If the New Testa-
ment asks with wonder how a man who loves
not his brother whom he hath seen can love God
whom he hath not seen, the Old Testament
teaches with equal emphasis the complementary
truth that he who loves not God whom he hath
not seen will never love as he ought his brother
whom he hath seen. For to it Yahweh is the
first and last word; and all the growth in kind-
ness, gentleness, consideration, and goodness
which can be traced in the revelation given to
Israel, has its source in a conception of the Di-
vine character which from the first was spiritual,
and was moreover unique in the world.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MOSES' FAREWELL SPEECHES.
Deuteronomy iv. 1-40, xxvii.-xxx.
With the twenty-sixth chapter the entirely
homogeneous central portion of the Book of
Deuteronomy ends, and it concludes it most
worthily. It prescribes two ceremonies which
are meant to give solemn expression to the feel-
ing of thankfulness which the love of God, mani-
fested in so many laws and precepts, covering
the commonest details of life, should have made
the predominant feeling. The first is the utter-
ance of what we have called the " liturgy of grati-
tude " at the time of the feast of firstfruits; and
the second is the solemn dedication of the third
year's tithe to the poor and the fatherless, and
the disclaimer of any misuse of it. Further no-
tice of either after what has already been said in
reference to them would be superfluous. The
closing verses (16-19) of the chapter are a solemn
reminder that all these transactions with God had
bound the people to Yahweh in a covenant.
" Thou hast avouched Yahweh this day to be
thy God " and, " Yahweh hath avouched thee
this day to be a peculiar people {'am scgtdlah)
unto Himself." By this they were bound to
keep Yahweh's statutes and judgments, and do
them with all their heart and with all their soul,
while He, on His part, undertakes on these terms
to set them " high above all nations which He
hath made in praise, and in name, and in hon-
our," and to make them a holy people unto Him-
self.
But the original Deuteronomy as read to King
Josiah cannot have ended with chapter xxvi., for
the thing that awed him most was the threat of
evil and desolation which were to follow the
non-observance of this covenant. Now though
there are indications of such dangers in the first
twenty-six chapters of Deuteronomy, yet threats
are not, so far, a prominent part of this book.
The book as read must consequently have con-
tained some additional chapters, which, in part
at least, must have contained threats. Now this
is what we have in our Biblical Deuteronomy.
But in chapters xxvii. and xxviii. there are re-
duplications which can hardly have formed part
of the original author's work. An examination
of these has led every one who admits composite
authorship in the Pentateuch to see that from
chapter xxvii. onwards the original work has
been broken up and dovetailed again with the
works of JE and P; so that component parts of
the first four books of the Hexateuch appear
along with elements which the author of Deuter-
onomy has supplied. We have, in fact, before
us, from this point, the work of the editor who
fitted Deuteronomy into the framework of the
Pentateuch; and it is of importance, from an
expository point of view even, to endeavour to
restore Deuteronomy to its original form, and
to follow out the traces of it that are left.
As we have said, we must look for the threats
and promises which undoubtedly formed part
of it. These are contained in chapters xxvii. and
xxviii. But a careful reader will feel at once that
chapter xxvii. disturbs the connection, and that
xxviii. should follow xxvi. In chapter xxvii.,
vv. 9 and 10 alone seem necessary to give a
transitiori to chapter xxviii.; and if all the rest
were omitted we should have exactly what the
narrative in Kings would lead us to expect, a
coherent, natural sequence of blessings and
curses, which should follow faithfulness to the
covenant, or unfaithfulness. The rest of chapter
xxvii. is not consistent either with itself or with
Josh. viii. 30, where the accomplishment of that
which is commanded here is recorded. In vv.
1-3 Moses and the elders command the people
to set up great stones and plaister them with
plaister and write upon them all the words of this
law, on the day when they shall pass over Jor-
dan, that they may go in unto the land. In ver.
4 it is said that these stones are to be set up in
Mount Ebal, and there an altar of unhewn stones
is to be built, and sacrifices offered, " and thou
shalt write upon the stones very plainly." From
the position of this last clause and the mention
of Mount Ebal, the course of events would be
([uite different from that which vv. 1-3 suggest.
The stones were, according to the verses 4 ff.,
to be set up in Mount Ebal; out of these an altar
of unhewn stones was to be built: and on them
the law was to be inscribed, and this is what
Joshua says was done. But if we take all the
verses, 1-8, together, we can reconcile them only
by the hypothesis that the stones were set up as
soon as Jordan was crossed, plaistered, and
inscribed with the law: that afterwards they
were removed to Mount Ebal and built into an
altar " of unhewn stone," upon which sacrifices
6l2
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
were offered. But that surely is in the highest
degree improbable; and since we know that in
other cases two narratives have been combined
in the sacred text, that would seem the most
probable solution here. Verses 4-8 will in that
case be a later insertion, probably from J. In
the same connection vv. 15-26 contain a list of
crimes which are visited with a curse and no
blessings; this cannot be the proclamation of
blessing and cursing which is here required.
Further, this list must be by a different author,
for it affixes curses to some crimes which are not
mentioned in Deuteronomy, and omits such sins
as idolatry, which are continually mentioned
there. This section must consequently have been
inserted here by some later hand. It must prob-
ably have been later even than the time of the
writer of Josh. viii. 33 ff., since the arrangement
as reported there differs from what is prescribed
here. Moreover, as there is nothing new in these
sections, and all they say is repeated substantially
in chapter xxviii., we may give our attention
wholly to chapter xxviii. 1-68, as being the origi-
nal proclamation of blessing and curse.
But other entanglements follow. Chapters
xxix. and xxx. manifestly contained an adieu
on the part of Moses, who turns finally to the
people with an affecting and solemn speech of
farewell. That appears in chapters xxix. and
xxx. But for many reasons it is impossible to
believe that these chapters as they stand are the
original speech of Deuteronomy.* The lan-
guage is in large part different, and there are
references to the Book of the Law as being
already written out (chap. xxix. 19 f. 26, and
chap. xxx. 10). It is probably therefore an
editor's rewriting of the original speech, and
from the fact that " it contains many points of
contact with Jeremiah in thoughts and words,"
it is probably to be dated in the Exile. But
there is another noticeable thing in connection
with it. It has a remarkable resemblance in
these and other respects to chapter iv. 1-40.
That passage can hardly have originally followed
chapters i.-iii., if as is most probable these were
at first an historic introduction to Deuteronomy.
The hortative character of iv. 1-40 shows that it
must have been placed where it is by a reviser.
But the language, though not altogether that
of Deuteronomy, is like it, and the thought is
also Deuteronomic. Probably the passage must
have been transferred from some other part of
Deuteronomy and adapted by the editor. A clue
to its true place may perhaps be found in ver. 8,
where " all this law " is spoken of as if it were
already given, and in ver. 5, where we read, " Be-
hold, I have taught you statutes and judgments."
These passagesimplythat the law of Deuteronomy
had been given, and in that case chapter iv. must
belong to a closing speech. V/e probably shall
not be in error, therefore, in thinking that chap-
ters iv. 1-40 and xxix. and xxx. are all founded
on an original farewell speech which stood in
Deuteronomy after the blessing and the curse.
But it may be asked, if that be so, why did an
editor make these changes? The answer is to be
found in two passages in chapters xxxi. and
xxxii. which cannot be harmonised as they stand.
In xxxi. 19 we are told that Yahweh commanded
Moses to write " this song " and teach it to the
children of Israel, " that this song may be a wit-
ness for Me against the children of Israel," and
ver. 22, " So Moses wrote this song." But in
• Cf. Dillniann, " Deuteronomy," pp. 178 ff.
vv. 28 f. we read that " Moses said. Assemble
unto me all the elders of the tribes and your
officers, that I may speak these words in their
ears, and call heaven and earth to witness
against them." Obviously "these words" are
different from " this song," and are meant for
a different purpose. The same ambiguity occurs
at the, end of the song in vv. 44 ff., where we
first read of Moses ending " this song," and in
the next verse we read, " And Moses made an
end of speaking all these words to all Israel."
Now what has become of " these zvords " ? In all
probability they were the substance of chapters
iv. and xxix. and xxx., and were separated and
amplified, because the editor who fitted Deuter-
onomy into the Pentateuch took over the song
in chapter xxxii., as well as those passages of
xxxi. and xxxii. that speak of this song, from
JE. He accepted them as a fitting conclusion
for the career of Moses, and transferred the
original speech, which we suppose to have been
the last great utterance of the original Deuter-
onomy, putting the main part of it immediately
before the song, but taking parts out of it to form
a hortatory ending (such as the other Moses'
speeches have) to that first one which he had
formed out of the historic introduction. This
may seem a very complicated process and an
unlikely one; but after the foundation had been
built by Dillmann, Westphal has elaborated the
whole matter with such luminous force that it
seems hardly possible to doubt that the facts can
be accounted for only in this way. By piecing
together iv., xxx., and xxxi. he produces a
speech so thoroughly coherent and consistent
that the mere reading of it becomes the most
cogent proof of the substantial truth of his
argument.*
An analysis of it will show this, (i) There is
the introduction; up till now the people have
understood neither the commands nor the love
of Yahweh (xxix. 1-9). (2) There is the ex-
planation of the Covenant (xxix. 10-15); (3) A
command to observe the Covenant (iv. i, 2) ; (4)
Warning against individual transgression, which
will be punished by the destruction of the rebel
(xxix. 16-21, iv. 3, 4); (5) Warning against col-
lective transgression, which will be punished by
the ruin of the people (iv. 5-26). The author,
from this point regarding the transgression as
an accomplished fact, announces: (6) The dis-
persion and exile of the people (iv. 27, 28); (7)
The impression produced on future generations
by the horror of this dispersion (xxix. 22-28) ;
(8) The conversion of the exiles to God (iv. 30,
31); (9) Their return to the land of their fathers
(xxx. i-io). (10) In conclusion, it is stated
that the power of Yahweh to sustain the faith of
His people and to save them is guaranteed by
the past (iv. 32-40); and there is no reason there-
fore that the people should shrink from obeying
the commandment prescribed to them. It is a
matter of will. Life and death are before them;
let them choose (xxx. 11-20).
The analysis of the remaining chapters is not
difficult. Chapter xxxi., vv. 14-23 and 30, form
the introduction to the song, chapter xxxii.,
vv. 1-43, just as ver. 44 is the conclusion of it.
Both introduction and song are extracted prob-
* Le Deu/erofiome (Tou\ouse, i8gi'), pp. 62-75. The order
in which he disposes of the verses is as follows : Deut.
xxxi. 24-29, xxix. 1-15, iv. i, 2, xxix. 16-21, iv. ^-jo, xxix. 22-
2», iv. 30,^1, xxx. i-io, iv. 32-40, xxx. Ti-20, xxxii. 45-47. If
before this we place xxxi. 1-13, we shall probably have the
original sequence fully restored.
MOSES' FAREWELL SPEECHES.
613
ably from J and E. Verses 48-52 are after P.
Then follows the blessing of Moses, chapter
xxxiii. Finally, chapter xxxiv. contains an ac-
count of Moses' death and a final eulogy of him,
in which all the sources JE, P, and D have been
called into requisition. The threefold cord which
runs through the other books of the Pentateuch
was untwisted to receive Deuteronomy, and has
been retwisted so as to bind the Pentateuch into
one coherent whole. That is the result of the
microscopic examination which the text as it
stands has undergone, and we may pretty cer-
tainly accept it as correct. But we should not
lose sight of the fact that, as the book is now
arranged, it has a notable coherence of its own,
and the impression of unity which it conveys is
in itself a result of great literary skill. Not
only has the editor combined Deuteronomy into
the other narratives most successfully, but he
has done so not only without falsifying, but so
as to confirm and enhance the impression which
the original book was meant to convey.
We turn now to the substance of the two
speeches — the proclamation of the blessing and
the curse, and the great farewell address. As we
have seen, the first is contained in chapter xxviii.
If any evidence were now needed that this chap-
ter was written later than the Mosaic time, it
might be found in the space given to the curses,
and the much heavier emphasis laid upon them
than upon the blessings. Not that Moses might
not have prophetically foretold Israel's disre-
gard of warnings. But if the heights to which
Israel was actually to rise had been before the
author's mind as still future, instead of being
wrapped in the mists of the past, he could not but
have dwelt more equally upon both sides of the
picture. Whatever supernatural gifts a prophet
might have, he was still and in all things a man.
He was subject to moods like others, and the
determination of these depended upon his sur-
roundings. He was not kept by the power of
God beyond the shadows which the clouds in his
sky might cast; and we may safely say that if the
curses which are to follow disobedience are
elaborated and dwelt upon much more than the
blessings which are to reward obedience, it is
because the author lived at a time of unfaithful-
ness and revolt. Obviously his contemporaries
were going far in the evil way, and he warns
them with intense and eager earnestness against
the dangers they are so recklessly incurring.
But after all we have seen of the spirituality
of the Deuteronomic teaching, and its insistence
upon love as the true bond between men and God
and the true motive to all right action, it is per-
haps disappointing to some to find how entirely
these promises and threats have their centre in
the material world. Probably nowhere else will
the truth of Bacon's famous saying that " Pros-
perity is the blessing of the Old Testament " be
more conspicuously seen than here. If Israel be
faithful she is promised productivity, riches, suc-
cess in war. Even when it is promised that she
shall be established by Yahweh as a holy people
unto Himself, the meaning seems to be that the
people shall be separated from others by these
earthly favours, rather than that they shall have
the moral and spiritual qualities which the word
" holy " now connotes. Other nations shall fear
Israel because of the Divine favour. Israel shall
be raised above them all. If it become unfaith-
ful, on the other hand, it is to be visited with
pestilence, consumption, fever, inflammation,
sword, blasting, mildew. The earth is to be iron
beneath them, and the heaven above them brass.
Instead of rain they are to have dust; they are
to be visited with more than Egyptian plagues.
Their minds are to refuse to serve them; they
are to be defeated in war; their country is to be
overrun by marauders; their wives and children,
their cattle and their crops, are to fall into the
enemy's hands. Locusts and all known pests
are to fall upon their fields; and they themselves
are to be carried away captive, after having en-
dured the worst horrors of siege, and been com-
pelled by hunger to devour their own children.
And in exile they shall be an astonishment, a
proverb, and a by-word, and shall be ruled by
oppressive aliens. Worst of all, they shall there
lose hope in God and " shall serve other gods,
even wood and stone." Their lives shall hang in
doubt before them. In the morning they shall
say, " Would God it were evening," and at even
they shall say, " Would God it were morning."
All the deliverance Yahweh had wrought for
them by bringing them out of Egypt would be
undone, and once more they should go back
into Egyptian bondage.
All that is materialistic enough; but there is no
need to make apology for Deuteronomy, never-
theless. The prophet has taught the higher law;
he has rooted all human duty, both to God and
man, in love to God, and now he tries to enlist
man's natural fear and hope as allies of his
highest principle. How justifiable that is we
have already seen in chapter xii., pp. 551 ff.
But a more serious question is raised when it
is asked, does Nature, in definite sober truth,
lend itself, in the manner implied throughout
this chapter, to the support of religious and moral
fidelity? At a time when imaginative literature
is largely devoting itself to an angry or querulous
denial of any righteous force working for the
unfortunate and the faithful,* there can be no
question what the popular answer to such a ques-
tion would be. But from the ranks of literature
itself we may summon testimony on the other
side. Mr. Hall Caine, in his address at the Edin-
burgh Philosophical Institution, maintains in a
wider and more general way the essence of the
Deuteronomic thesis when he says, " I count
him the greatest genius who touches the mag-
netic and Divine chord in humanity which is al-
ways waiting to vibrate to the sublime hope of
recompense; I count him the greatest man
who teaches men that the world is ruled
in righteousness." And his justification of
that position is too admirable not to be
quoted: " Life is made up of a multitude of frag-
ments, a sea of many currents, often coming into
collision and throwing up breakers. We look
around and see wrong-doing victorious, and
right-doing in the dust; the evil man growing
rich and dying in his bed, the good man becom-
ing poor and dying in the street; and our hearts
sink and we say. What is God doing after all
in this world of His children? But our days
are few, our view is limited, we cannot watch
the event long enough to see the end which
Providence sees." " It is the very province of
imaginative genius," he goes on to say, " to see
that which the common mind cannot see, to oflfer
to it at least suggestions of how these triumphs
of unrighteousness may be accounted for in
accordance with the law that righteousness rules
* Cf. recent fiction, e. g., " The African Farm." " Tess
of the D'Urbevilles," " The Heavenly Twins."
6i4
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
in the world." We would go further. It is one
of the main purposes of inspiration to go beyond
even imaginative genius, to point out in history
not only how right may perhaps ultimately tri-
umph, but how it has been in reality and must be
victorious. For it will not do to shut off the
world of material things from the working of this
great and universal law. Owing to the narrow
fanaticism of science, modern men have become
sceptical, not only of miracle, but even of the
fundamental truth that righteousness is profitable
for the life that now is, that in following right-
eousness men are co-operating with the deepest
law of the universe. But it remains a truth for
all that. It is written deep in the heart of man;
and in more wavering lines perhaps, but still
most legibly, it is written on the face of things.
With the limitations of his time and place, this
is what the Deuteronomist preaches. Doubtless
he has not faced, as Job does, the whole of the
problem; still less has he attained to the final
insight exhibited in the New Testament, that
temporal gifts may be curses in disguise, that
the highest region of recompense is in the
eternal life, in the domain of things which are
invisible but eternal. He does not yet knozv,
though he has perhaps a presentiment of it, that
being completely stripped of all earthly good
may be the path to the highest victory — the
N'ictory which makes men more than conc^uerors
tiirough Christ. Nevertheless he is, making
these allowances, right, and the moderns are
wrong. In many ways obedience to spiritual
inspirations does bring worldly prosperity. The
absence of moral and spiritual faithfulness does
affect even the fruitfulness of the soil, the fecund-
ity of animals, the prevalence of disease, the
stability of ordered life, and success in war. This
was visible to the ancient world generally in a
dim way; but by the inspired men of the Old
Covenant it was clearly seen, for they were en-
lightened for the very purpose of seeing the hand
of God where others saw it not. But they never
thought of tracing out the chain of intermediate
causes by which such results were connected
with men's spiritual state. They saw the facts,
they recognised the truth, and they threw them-
selves back at once upon the will of God as the
sufficient explanation.
We, on the other hand, have been so diligent
in tracing out the immediately preceding links
of natural causation that, for the most part, we
have been fatigued before we reached God. We
consecjuently have lost view of Him; and it is
wholesome for us to be brought sharply into
contact with the ancient Oriental mind as we
are here, in order that we may be forced to go the
whole way back to Him. For the fact is that
much of that very process of decay and destruc-
tion from moral causes is going on before us in
countries like Turkey and Morocco, where social
righteousness is all but unknown, and private
morality is low. A truly modern mind scorns
the idea that the fertility of the soil can be af-
fected by immorality. Yet there is the whole
rif Mesopotamia to show that misgovernment
can make a garden into a desert. Where teem-
ing populations once covered the country with
fruitful gardens and luxurious cities, there are
now in the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates a
few handfuls of people, and all the fertility of the
country has disappeared. Irrigation channels
which made all things live have been choked up
and have been gradually filled with drifting sand.
and one of the most populous and fertile coun-
tries of the world has become a desert. In
Palestine the same thing may be seen. Under
Turkish domination the character of the soil
has been entirely changed. In many places
where in ancient days the hills were terraced to
the top the sweeping rains have had their way,
and the very soil has been carried off, leaving
only rocks to blister in the pitiless sun. Even
in the less likely sphere of animal fecundity
modern science shows that peace and good gov-
ernment and righteous order are causes of ex-
traordinary power. And the movements which
are going on around us at this day in the eleva-
tion and depression of nations and races have a
visible connection with fidelity or lack of fidelity
to known principles of order and justice. This
can be said without concealing how scanty and
partial in most cases such attainments are.
Prevailing principles can be discerned in the
providence which rules the world. And these
are of such a kind that the connection which
obedience to the highest known rules of life
has with fertility, success, and prosperity, is con-
stant and intimate. It is, too, far wider reaching
than at first sight would seem possible. To this
extent, even modern knowledge justifies these
blessings and curses of Deuteronomy.
But it may be asked, Is this all the Old Testa-
ment means by such threats and promises?
Does it recognise any even self-imposed limita-
tions to the direct action of Divine power? Most
probably it does not. Though always keeping
clear of Pantheism, the Old Testament is so
filled and possessed by the Divine Presence that
all second causes are ignored, and the action of
God upon nature was conceived, as it could not
fail to be, on the analogy of a workman using
tools. Now that the methods of Divine action
in nature have been studied in the light of
science, they have been found to be more fixed
and regular than was supposed. The extent of
their operation, too, has been found to be im-
measurably wider, and the purposes which have
to be cared for at every moment are now seen
to be infinitely various. As a result, human
thought has fallen back discouraged, and takes
refuge more and more in a conception of nature
which practically deifies it, or at least entirely
separates it from any intimate relation to the will
of God. It is even denied that there is any
purpose in the world at all, or any goal,
and to chance or fate all the vicissitudes of
life and the mechanical changes of nature are
attributed. But though we must recognise, as
the Old Testament does not, that ordinary Di-
vine action flows out in perfectly well-defined
channels, and is so stable in its movement that
results in the sphere of physical nature may be
predicted with certainty; and though we see, as
was not seen in ancient days, that even God does
not always approach His ends by direct and
short-cut paths, — these considerations only make
the Old Testament view more inspiring and more
healthful for us. We may gather from it the in-
ference that if the fertility of a land, the fre-
quency of disease, and success in war are so
powerfully affected by the moral and spiritual
quality of a people, it is very likely that in subt-
ler and less palpable ways the same influences
l)roduce similar effects, even in regions where
th?y cannot be traced. If so, whatever allowance
may be required for the inevitable simplicity of
Old Testament conceptions on this subject, how-
MOSES' FAREWELL SPEECHES.
615
ever much we miss the limitations we have
learned to regard as necessary, the Deutero-
nomic view as to the effects of moral and spiritual
declension upon the material fortunes of a peo-
ple is much nearer the truth than our timorous
and hesitating half-belief. To find these effects
emphasised and affirmed as they are here, there-
fore, acts as a much needed tonic in our spiritual
life. Coming too from a man who possessed,
if ever man did. Divinely inspired insight into the
process of the world and the ideal of human life,
these promises and warnings bring God near.
They dissipate the mists which obscure the work-
ings of God's Providence, and keep before us
aspects of truth which it is the present tendency
of thought to ignore too much. They declare
in accents which carry conviction that, even in
material things, the Lord reigneth; and for that
the world has reason to be supremely glad.
Certainly Christians now know that prosperity
in material things is by no means God's best
gift. That great principle must be held to
firmly, as well as the legitimacy of the vivid
hopes and fears of Old Testament times regard-
ing the material rewards of right-doing. In
many ways the new principle must overrule and
modify for us those hopes and fears. But with
this limitation we are justified in occupying the
Deuteronomic standpoint and in repeating the
Deuteronomic warnings. For to its very core
the world is God's; and those who find His work-
ing everywhere are those whose eyes have been
opened to the inmost truth of things.
With regard to the farewell speech contained
in chapters xxix. and x'xx. and the related parts
of chapter iv. and chapter xxxi. there is not
much to be said. Taken as a whole, it develops
the promises and threats of the previous chapters,
and repeats again with affectionate hortatory
purpose much of the history. But there is not
a great deal that is new; most of the underlying-
principles of the address have been already dealt
with. Taken according to the reconstruction
of the speech and its reinsertion in its original
framework, the course of things would seem
to have been this. After the threats and prom-
ises had been concluded, Moses, carrying on the
injunction of iii. 28, addressed (chapter xxxii.
8) all the people and appointed Joshua to be his
successor; then he wrote out " this law," and
produced it before the priests and elders of the
people, with the instruction that at the end of
every seven years, at the feast of release, in the
feast of tabernacles, it should be read before all Is-
rael, men, women, and children (chapter xxxi.. vv.
9-13). Then he gave the book to the Levites,
that they might " lay it up " by the side of the
Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh their God. that
it might be there for a witness against them when
they became unfaithful, as he foresaw they would.
He next summons all Israel to him, and delivers
the farewell address contained in chapters iv.,
xxix., and xxx., an outline of which has already
been given (p. 6i.'>. according to Wcstplial's
recombination. This would seem to indicate
that Moses himself inaugurated the custom of
reading the law and giving instruction to all
the people, which he prescribed for the feast
of tabernacles in the year of release. After the
law had been given he addressed the whole peo-
ple in this farewell speech.
But though on the whole there is no need for
detailed exposition here, there are one or two
things which ought to be noticed, things which
express the spirit of Deuteronomy so directly
and so sincerely that they can be identified as
forming part of the original Deuteronomic
speech. One of these is unquestionably xxx.
11-20. At the end of the farewell address a return
is made to the core of the whole Deuteronomic
teaching: "Thou shalt love Yahweh thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy might." This was announced with unique
emphasis at the beginning; it has lain behind all
the special commands which have been insisted
upon since; and now it emerges again into view
as the conclusion of the whole matter. For be-
yond doubt this, and not the whole series of
legal precepts, is what is meant by " this com-
mandment " in verse 11. Both before it, in the
sixth and tenth verses, and after it, in the six-
teenth and twentieth verses, this precept is re-
peated and insisted on as the Divine command.
Had the individual commands or the whole mass
of them together been meant, the phrase used
would have been different. It would have been
that in ver. 10, where they are called " His com-
mandments and His statutes which are written
in this book of the law," or something analogous.
No, it is the central command of love to God,
without which all external obedience is vain,
which is the theme of this last great paragraph;
and a clear perception of this will carry us
through both the obscurities of it, and the diffi-
culties of St. Paul's application of it in the
Romans.
Of this then the author of Deuteronomy says:
" It is not too hard for thee, neither is it far off.
It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say.
Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it
unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may
do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou
shouldest say. Who shall go over the sea for us,
and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that
we may do it? But the word is very nigh unto
thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou
mayest do it." That is to say, there is no mys-
tery or diiificulty about this commandment of
love. Neither have you to go to the uttermost
parts of the sea to hear it, nor need you search
into the mysteries of heaven. It has been
brought near to you by all the mercy and for-
giveness and kindness of Yahweh; it has been
made known to you now by my mouth, even in
its pettiest applications. But that is not all; it
is graven on your own heart, which leaps up in
glad response to this demand, and in answer
to the manifestation of God's love for you. It
is really the fundamental principle of your own
nature that is appealed to. You should clearly
feel that life in the love of God and man is the
only fit life for you who are made in the image
of God. If you do, then the fulfilirient of all the
Divine precepts will be easy, and your lives will
lighten more and more unto the perfect day.
Now, for an Oriental of the pre-Christian era
such teaching is most marvellous. How mar-
vellous it is Christians perhaps find it difficult
to see. In point of fact, many have denied that
Old Testament teaching ever had (this character.
Misled by the doctrines of Islam, the great Sem-
itic religion of to-day, many assert that the re-
ligion of ancient Israel called upon men to sub-
mit to mere power in submitting to God. But
the appeal of our text to the heart of man shows
that this is an error. No such appeal has ever
been made to Mohammedans. Their state of
mind in regard to God is represented by the re-
6i6
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
mark of a recent traveller in Persia. Speaking
of the Persian Babis, who may be described
roughly as an heretical sect whose minds have
been formed by Mohammedanisrrr, he^ says:
" They seemed to have no conception of abso-
lute good, or absolute truth; to them good was
merely what God chose to ordain, and truth
what He chose to reveal, so that they could not
understand how any one could attempt to test
the truth of a religion by an ethical and moral
standard."* Now that is precisely the opposite
of the Deuteronomic attitude. Israel is encour-
aged and incited to right action by having it
pointed out that not only experience, not only
Divinely given statutes and judgments, but the
very nature of man itself guarantees the truth
of this supreme law of love. The law laid upon
men is nothing strange to, or incongruous with,
their own better selves. It is the very thing
which their hearts have cried out for; when it is
proclaimed the higher nature in man recognises
it and bows before it. It is not received because
of fear, nor is it bowed before because it is
backed by power which can smite men to the
dust. No; even in its ruins human nature is
nobler than that; and Deuteronomy everywhere
teaches with burning conviction that God is too
ethical and spiritual in nature to accept the sub-
mission of a slave.
This reading of our passage is plainly that
which St. Paul takes in Rom. x. 5 and 6. He
perceives, what so many fail to do, that the spirit
and scope of the Deuteronomic teaching are
different from that of the purely legal sections
of the Pentateuch. Paul therefore quotes the
Pentateuch as having already made the distinc-
tion between works and faith which he wishes
to emphasise, and as having distinctly given
preference to the latter. Leviticus keeps men at
the level of the worker for wages, while Deuter-
onomy in this passage, by making love to God
the essence of all true observance of the law,
raises them almost to the level of sons. And
just as in those ancient days the highest mani-
festations of God had not to be laboured for and
sought by impotent strivings, but had plainly
been made known to them and had found an echo
in their hearts, so now the highest revelation had
been brought near to men in Christ, and had
found a similar response. They did not need
to seek it in heaven, for it had been brought to
earth in the Incarnation. They did not need to
descend into the abyss, for all that was needed
had been brought thence by Christ at His resur-
rection. And in the New Testament as in the
Old, the simplicity of the entrance into true
relations with God is emphasised. Love and
faith are the fundamental conditions. From
them obedience will naturally issue, since " to
faith all things are possible, and to love all
things are easy."
CHAPTER XXV.
THE SONG AND BLESSING OF MOSES.
(A) The Song of Moses.
Deuteronomy xxxii.
Critics have debated the date, authorship,
and history of this song. For the present pur-
♦ "A Year Among the Persians," E. G. Browne, p. 406.
pose it is sufficient, perhaps, to refer to the state
ment on these points in the note below.*
But in discussing the meaning and contents
of the song the differences referred to cause no
difficulties. On any supposition the time and
circumstances, whether assumed as present, or
actually and really present to the prophet's mind,
can clearly be identified as not earlier than those
of the Syrian wars. Accepted as dealing with
that time, this poem takes its place among the
Psalms of that period. Its subject is a very
common one in Scripture: the goodness of Yah-
weh to his people, and their unfaithfulness to
Him; His grief at their rebellion; His punish-
ment of them by heathen oppressors; and His
turning in love to them, along with His de-
struction of the nations who had prematurely
* The song is described, in the narrative framework, as
delivered through Moses to the children of Israel. On the
other hand, internal evidence points to a date after the
establishment of the monarchy— when the days of Moses
and the events of the wilderness were old, when the fruits
of the land were gifts of God in present use, and when
ingratitude and rebellion had become conspicuous, so
that judgment was impending. Either, then, Moses took
his .stand, in the spirit, at a point of time long subsequent
to his own death, adapted the song to its circumstances,
and spoke not to his own generation but to one much later;
or a later prophet must be the writer. The objection to
the former view is supported by arguments drawn from
various features in the language and the allusions of the
song, which are asserted to be indicative of the later
origin. On the detail of these we cannot dwell. But the
most interesting part of the argument is the position that
the transference of the prophetic consciousness to a re-
mote future period, in order to give hope ana guidance to
a generation not the prophet's own, is too improbable to
be admitted.
Such a process is now generally regarded as not impos-
sible indeed, but unheard of in the history of jrophecy.
The examination of the prophets of the Old'Testi ment has
convinced students that the prophet's vision starts from
his own time, and is primarily for the comfort and warn-
ing of his contemporaries. His words may have a more
remote reference, but must have the nearer one. Hence
Isa. xl. — Ixvi. is now ascribed to a prophet or prophets of
the Exile. The principle is really the same as that which
determines the authorship of Deut. xxxiv. 5-12. No one
now holds the view of some Jews, that Moses by the spirit
of prophecy wrote this himself. Yet if Moses could in a
poem address his people as sinning and suffering through
rebellions induced by their prosperitj' in Canaan, which
they had not entered when he died, one might as well be-
lieve him to describe his own decease. In both cases we
have to suppose the mind of Moses transported to a period
when he had been removed by death, that he might look
back upon and speak of events which when he wrote were
still future. Kow in both cases a reason is lacking.
Every one accepts the view that since Joshua or Eleazar
was there to write the account of Moses' death, it is un-
likely the lawgiver should have been inspired to write it
himself. Jiist so, since Yahweh inspired new prophets at
every crisis of His people's history, it seems unlikely that
the spirit of Moses should be transferred to, and made at
home in, the circumstances of a distant generation, in or-
der to deliver to it a message which could have been made
known by a prophet to whom the time was present.
Neither Kamphausen nor Oettli nor Dillmann nor the
English expositors who accept the non-Mosaic authorship
of the song have any doubt as to the supernatural charac-
ter of prophecy. They found upon observations as to the
manner of Old Testament prophecy, which ought to regu-
late interpretation.
Accordmg to critical views the ascription to Moses of
the reception and delivery of this song was taken by the
Deuteronomist from JE. Kautzsch supposes that an edi-
tor to whom the song was known as passing under the
name of Moses may have inserted it. Dillmann suggests
grounds for believing that several prayers and poems
ascribed to Moses (including Psalm xc.) were in circula-
tion in prophetic circles in the Northern Kingdom, and
that this one of them was inserted here as its appropriate
place. The case would be parallel to the ascription of
various later Psalms to David. Compare also the dis-
cussions as to the song of Hannah, i Sam. ii.
The view that a mistake as to the Mosaic authorship,
for which the writers of JE were not responsible, was
handed on in perfect good faith, is compatible with the
doctrine of inspiration as held by representatives of the
orthodox Evangelical school in Germany, and by the
newer Evangelicals in England. C/. Oettli, "Deuteron-
omy," p. 22, and Sanday's " Bampton Lecture."
Peuteronomy xxxii.] SONG AND BLESSING OF MOSES.
617
triumphed over the people of God. Practically
this is the burden of all the prophecies, as indeed
it may be said to be the burden of the whole
Book of Deuteronomy itself. Here it is stated
and elaborated with great poetic skill; but in the
main, the essential thought, there is little that has
not already been elucidated.
As regards form the poem is among the finest
specimens of Hebrew literary art which the Old
Testament contains. Every verse contains at
least two parallel clauses of three words or word-
complexes each, and the parallelism in the great
majority of instances is of the " Synonymous "
kind; that is to say, "the second line enforces
the thought of the first by repeating, and as it
were echoing it in a varied form." * But into this
as a foundation there is wrought a great deal
of pleasing variation. The two-clause verses are
-jfaried by single instances or couplets or triplets
of four-clause verses; while in two cases, at the
emphatic end of sections, in vv. 14 and 39, the
rare five-clause verse is found. Further, the
synonymous parallelism is relieved by occasional
appearances of the " synthetic " parallelism, in
which " the second line contains neither a repeti-
tion nor a contrast to the thought of the first,
but in different ways supplements and completes
it," t e. g., vv. 8, 19, and 27.
The contents of the song are in every way
worthy of the origin assigned to it, and higher
praise than that it is impossible to conceive.
Beginning with a fine exordium calling upon
heaven and earth to give ear, the inspired poet
expresses the hope that his teaching may fall
with refreshing and fertilising power upon the
hearts of men, for he is about to proclaim the
name of Yahweh, to whom all greatness is to
be ascribed. In vv. 4 fif. the character and deal-
ings of Yahweh are set over against those of
the people: —
"The Rock! His deeds are perfect,
For all His ways are judgment ;
A God of faithfulness and without falsity,
Just and upright is He."
They, on the contrary. were perverse and
crooked; and, acting corruptly, they requited all
Yahweh's benefits with rebellion. To win them
from that perverseness, he calls upon his people
to look back upon the whole course of God's
dealings with them. Even before Israel had ap-
peared among the nations, Yahweh had taken
thought for His people. When He assigned
their lands to the various nations of the world
He had always before Him the provision that
must be made for the children of Israel, and had
left a space for them from which none but
Yahweh could ever drive them out. For He had
the same need of and delight in His people as
the nations had in the lands assigned to them,
the lot of their inheritance. And not only had
He thus prepared a place for Israel from the
beginning, but He had led him through the wil-
derness, through '■ the waste, the howling des-
ert."
" He compassed him about. He cared for him.
He kept him as the apple of His eye."
To depict the Divine care worthily, he ventures
upon a simile of a specially tender kind, rare in
the Old Testament, but to which our Lord's
comparison of His own brooding affection for
♦ Cf. Driver's "Introduction," 5th edition, p. 340.
iCf. Driver, c/i. loc.
Jerusalem to that of a " hen gathering her
chickens under her wing " is parallel.
" As an eagle stirs up her nest.
Flutters above her young ;
He, Yahweh, spread abroad His wings, He took him,
He bore him upon His pinions."
All the hardship and the toil were of God's ap-
pointment to drive His beloved people upwards
and onwards. Whatever they might thick or
believe now, it was Yahweh alone, without com-
panion or ally, who had done this for them,
Ijorne them up through it, and had bestowed
upon them all the luxury of the goodly land once
promised to their fathers. Even from the rocks
He had given them honey, and the rocky soil had
produced the olive tree. They had, too, all the
luxuries of a pastoral people in abundance, and
the wheat and foaming wine which were the
finest products of agriculture.
In every way their God had blessed them.
They had all the prosperity which a complete
fulfilment of the will of God could have brought,
biit the result of it all was unfaithfulness and
rejection of Him. Jeshurun, the upright people,
as the sacred singer in bitter irony calls Israel,
waxed fat and wanton. Instead of being drawn
to God by His benefits, they had been puffed
up with conceit concerning their own power and
discernment. Full of these, they had mingled
idolatrous rites with their worship of Yahweh.
He had suffered them to read the results of their
own unfaithfulness in defeat at the hands of
their foes.
Instead of seeking the cause of their ill-success
in themselves, they had found it in the weakness
of their God. All the victories Yahweh had
given them over foes whose strength they
had feared were forgotten, and they " despised
the Rock of their salvation." They had adopted
new and upstart deities whom their fathers had
never heard of, who as they had come up in a day
might disappear in a day, and neglected the
Rock who begat them.
Yahweh on His part saw all this, and scorned
His people and their doings. In a vivid imagina-
tive picture the poet represents Him as resolving
to hide His face from them, to see what their
end would be. Without the shining of God's
countenance there could be but one issue for a
people who were so faithless and perverse. He
will recompense them for their doings.
"They made Me jealous with a no-God,
They vexed lie with their vain idols.
And I will make them jealous with a no-people,
With a foolish nation will I vex them."
For the fire of Divine wrath is kindled against
them. It burns in Yahweh with an all-consum-
ing power, and fills the universe even to the
lowest depths of Sheol. Upon this sinful people
it is about to burst forth; Yahweh will exhaust
all His arrows upon them. By famine and
drought; by disease and the rage of wild beasts,
and of "the crawlers of the dust"; by giving
them up to their enemies, and by overwhelming
them with terror. He will destroy this people,
'■ the young man and the virgin, the suckling and
the man of grey hairs " alike. Nothing could
save them, save Yahweh's respect for His own
name.
" I had said, I shall blow them away,
I shall make their memory to cease from among men:
Were it not that I feared vexation from the enemy.
Lest their adversaries should misdeem,
6i8
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
Lest they should say, Our hand is exalted,
And Yahweh hath not done all this."
Nothing but that stood between them and
utter destruction, for as a nation they had no ca-
pacity for receiving and profiting by instruction.
If they had been wise they would have known
that there was but a step between them and
death; they would have seen that their deeds had
separated them from Yahweh, and could have but
one issue. Their frequent and shameful defeats
should have taught them that, for
" How could one chase a thousand.
And two put to flight ten thousand,
Were it not that their Rock had sold them.
And that Yahweh had delivered them up ? "
There was no possible explanation of Israel's
defeats but this; for neither in the gods of the
heathen nor in the heathen nations themselves
was there anything to account for them. Their
gods were not comparable to the Rock of Israel;
even Israel's enemies knew as much as that.
Israel might forget and doubt Yahweh's power,
but those who had been smitten before Him in
Israel's happier days knew that He was above all
their gods. Nor was the explanation to be
sought in the heathen nations themselves. For
they were not vines of Yahweh's planting, but
shoots from the vine of Sodom, tainted by the
soil of Gomorrah. They were, perhaps, in race,
of the old Canaanite stock; in any case they were
morally and spiritually related to them, and their
acts were such as brought death and destruction
with them. In themselves, consequently, they
could not have been strong enough to discomfit
the people of God as they were doing, nor could
they have been helped to that by any favour of
His. Only the determination of Yahweh to
chastise His people could explain Israel's un-
happy fate in war.
But Yahweh's purpose was only to chastise. He
was in no way finally forgetful of His chosen, nor
of the ineradicable evil of their enemies' nature.
The inner character of men and things is always
present to Him, and their deeds are laid up with
Him as that which must be dealt with, for it is
one of the glories of Deity to sweep evil away
and to restore anything that has good at its heart.
Recompense is God's great function in the world,
and evil, however strong it may be, and however
long it may triumph, must one day be dealt with
by Him. It is laid up and sealed
"Against the day of vengeance and of recompense.
Against the time when their foot shall slip ;
For the day of their calamity is at hand.
And hastening are the things prepared for them."
Without that, justice could never be done to
the people of God; and justice should be done
to them when they had been brought to the
verge of extinction, when, according to the an-
tique Hebrew phrase, there " was none fettered
or set free," none left under or over age. Then
when all but the worst had come, Yahweh would
demand, " Where are their gods, with whom
they took refuge, and who have eaten the fat
of their sacrifices, and drunk the wine of their
drink offerings?" He will challenge them to
arise and help in this last disastrous state of their
votaries.
But there will be no response, and it will be
made clear beyond all doubting that Yahweh
alone is God. He will declare Himself, saying: —
" See now that I, I, am He,
And there is no god with Me :
/kill, and /make alive ;
I wound, and I heal :
And there is none that delivereth out of My hand."
In that great day of Yahweh's manifested
glory He will stand forth in the fulness of aveng-
ing power. Before the universe He will pledge
Himself by the most solemn oath to bring down
the pride of His enemies. In a death-dealing
judgment, such as is seen only when the evil ele-
ments in the world have brought about a mere
carnival of wickedness, and only universal death
can cleanse. He will recompense upon evil-doers
the evil they have wrought, and to a renovated
world bring peace. There are few finer or more
impressive imaginative passages in Scripture than
this:—
" For 1 lift up Mj' hand to heaven,
And say, (As) I live for ever,
If I whet My gleaming sword,
And My hand take hold on judgment,
I will take vengeance upon Mine enemies.
And I will recompense them that hate Me.
I will make Mine arrows drunk with blood,
And My sword shall devour flesh.
With the blood of the slain and the captives.
From the chief of the leaders of the enemy."
With this great vision of judgment the poet
leaves his people. For them the first necessity
evidently was that they should be assured that
Yahweh reigned, that evil could not ultimately
prosper. With their whole horizon dominated
and illumined by this tremendous figure of the
ever living and avenging God, their faith in the
moral government of the world and in the ulti-
mate deliverance of their nation would be re-
stored.
The poem closes with a stanza in which the
seer and singer calls upon the nations to rejoice
because of Yahweh's people. The deliverance
worked for them will be so great and so memo-
rable that even the heathen who see it must re-
joice. They will see His justice and His faith-
fulness, and will gain new confidence in the sta-
bility and the moral character of the forces which
rule the world.
(B) The Blessing of Moses.
Deuteronomy xxxiii.
Besides the farewell speeches and the farewell
song, we have in this chapter yet another closing
utterance attributed to Moses. Here, as in the
case of the song, we relegate critical matters to
the note below.*
* The blessing of Moses was certainly not written by the
author of Deuteronomy : the vocabulary and the style are
different from his. Nor probably was the poem inserted
here by him, but rather by the final editor of the Penta-
teuch who is believed to have brought these closing chap-
ters into their present shape Uf- chap. xxiv.). The
authority on which he relied may have been E.
As to the authorship of the blessing, Volck and Keil
ascribe it to Moses. The great majority of recent students
regard it, at all events in its present form, as post-Mosaic,
on grounds drawn from features in the jjoem, and from
the principles of prophetic exegesis referred to in the note
(p. 6i6). Opinions difter much asto the date to be assigned,
varying from the time of David to that of Jeroboam IL
The' general assumption is that the blessing is the work of
a Worthern Israelite ; and the feelingfor the tribes of Levi
and Judah which it embodies is the chief indication on
which a conjecture can be hazarded. That would agree
with a date later than Solomon and not later than Jehosh-
aphat— a period when many in the Northern Kingdom
still looked with reverence to the sanctuary at Jerusalem,
and when the Northern Levites still resented the intru-
sion by Jeroboam of a mixed multitude into the priest-
hood.
As to form, and partly as to contents, the blessing of
Deuteronomy xxxiii.] SON(i AND BLESSING OF MOSES.
619
We must notice in the first place the remark-
able difference in tone and outlook between the
blessing and the song of Moses. In the latter
evil-doing and approaching judgment are the
burden; here the outward and inward condition
of Israel leaves little to be desired. Satisfaction
is breathed in every line, for both temporally
and spiritually the state of the people is almost
ideally happy. Nowhere, is there a shadow; even
on the horizon there is scarcely a cloud. Now
even an optimist would need a background of
actual prosperity to draw such a picture of idyllic
happiness for any nation, and we may therefore
conclude that the poem has in view one of the
few halcyon periods of Israel, before social
wrongs had ruined the yeomen farmers, or war
and conquest had corrupted the powerful. The
nation is as yet faithful to Yahweh, and possesses
in peace the land which He had given them to
inherit.
The central part of the poem is of course the
ten blessings promised to the various tribes, but
these are preceded by an introduction (vv. 2-5),
in which the formation of the people is traced
to Yahweh's revelation of Himself and His
coming forth as their King. They are followed
also by a concluding section (vv. 26-29), ii^ which
the God of Jeshurun is declared to be incom-
parable, and His people are depicted as
supremely happy under His protecting care.
The language is in parts obscure, and though the
general scope is always plain, yet there are verses
the meaning of which can only be conjectured.
This is especially the case in the introduction.
Of the five lines of ver. 2, the fourth and fifth
as they stand are hardly intelligible; the fifth
indeed is not intelligible at all. In ver. 3 again,
while the first and second clauses are fairly clear,
the third and fourth are as they stand untrans-
latable. But the general signification of the
introductory verses (2-5) is that the Divine
revelation of Himself which Yahweh bestowed
upon His people as He came with them from
Sinai, Paran, and Seir through the wilderness,
and the establishment of the covenant which
made Yahweh Israel's King, together with the
bestowal of an inheritance upon them, is the
foundation and beginning of that happiness
which is to be described. It is all traced back
to the " dawning " of God upon them. His
" shining out " upon them from Sinai, and Seir,
and Paran. These are named simply as the
most prominent points in that region whence the
people came out into Canaan, and where the
great revelation had been bestowed. God had
risen like the sun and had shed forth light upon
them there, so that they walked no more in dark-
ness. The sight of God was, on this view, the
great and fundamental fact in the history of the
chosen people. They, like all who have seen that
great sight, were henceforth separate from
others, with different duties and obligations, with
hopes and desires and joys unknown to all be-
side. And the ground of this condescension on
the part of God was His love for His people.
He loved them, and the saints among them were
upheld by Him. By Moses He gave them a law,
Moses is modelled on the blessing of Jacob (Gen. xli.xl.
One conspicuous difference is the introduction into that
before us of a prose heading before most of the sections,
analogous to the headings which appear in Arabic poetry
(as the "Hamasa ") before each quatrain or longer poem".
There is no ground for treating these as later insertions,
nor for separating other portions, as some have proposed,
as later than the main composition.
which was to hold from generation to generation;
and He had crowned His gifts to them by becom-
ing their King when the heads of the people
entered into covenant with Him.
Then follow the blessings, beginning with
good wishes for Reuben as the firstborn. But
the tribe is not highly favoured. It is however
less severely dealt with than in Jacob's blessing.
There instability and obscurity are foretold of it.
Here it would seem as if the fortunes of the
tribe were at the lowest ebb, and a wish is ex-
pressed that it may not be suffered to die out.
From the earliest times the tribe of Reuben
seems to have been tending to decay. At the first
census taken under Moses the number of
Reubenites capable of bearing arms was 46,500
men (Numb. i. 21), at the second 43.730 (Numb,
xxvi. 7). Both passages are from P, and con-
sequently this decadence of the tribe must have
been present to that author's mind. In David's
day they had still possession of part of their
heritage, but even then their best estate was past.
They had allowed many Moabites to remain in
the territory they conquered. These most cer-
tainly caused trouble and gained the upper hand
in places, until before the days of Mesa, king of
Moab, as we learn from his inscription,* a great
part of the cities formerly Reubenite were in
Moabite or Gadite hands. In Isaiah xv. and xvi.
again, Heshbon and Elealeh, cities still Reuben-
ite in Mesa's day, appear as Moabite, so that the
bulk of the territory assigned to the tribe must
have been lost.f This record confirms the view
that the blessing was written between Rehoboam
and Jehoshaphat, and throws light upon our
verse: —
" May Reuben live, and not die,
So that his men be few."
The blessing of Judah follows, but in contrast
with the great destiny foretold for this tribe in
Jacob's blessing what is here said is strangely
short and unenthusiastic: —
" Hear, O Yahweh, Judah's voice.
And bring hiin to his people ;
With his hands has he striven for it (his people) ;
And a help against his enemies be thou."
Some whose opinions we are bound to respect,
as Oettli, think this refers merely to Judah's
being appointed to lead the van of the in-
vasion, as in Judges i. i and xx. 8. In
that case we should have to conceive that on
some occasion Judah was absent leading the
conquest, and got into dangerous circum-
stances, which are here referred to. But it
would seem that any such temporary danger
could hardly have a place here. In all the other
blessings permanent conditions only are re-
garded; and the sole historical fact we really
know that would explain this reference is the
division of the kingdom. But, it may be said,
all critics agree that the author of the blessing
is a Northern Israelite: now we cannot suppose
a Northern man to speak in this way of Judah,
for it was the ten tribes that revolted from the
house of David, not Judah from them. We
must remember, however, that though that is
how Scripture, which in this matter represents
the Southern view, regards the matter, the
Northern Israelites could look at the separation
from another standpoint. To those even who
* Dillmann, " Deuteronomy," p. 420.
t Baethgen's Riehm, " Handworterbuch," p. 1321.
620
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
were favourable to the Davidic house, and re-
gretted the folly of Rehoboam, it might seem
that Judah had first broken away from the king-
dom as united under Saul; and the revolt under
Jeroboam would appear to be only a resump-
tion of the older state of things, from which
Judah had again separated itself. What circum-
stance can be referred to in the request to hear
Judah's voice cannot now be ascertained; but
it is not at all unlikely that some indication of a
wish for reunion, perhaps expressed in some
public prayer, may have been given in the first
period of the separation. The rest of the verse
would fit this hypothesis as well as it fits the
other, and I think with the light we at present
have we must hold the reference to be as sug-
gested.
With the eighth verse the blessing of Levi
(one of the two most heartfelt and sympathetic)
begins. In it Yahweh is addressed thus: —
"Thy Urim and thy Thummimbe to the menU'.e., tribe) of
thy devoted one (2>., Moses or Aaron),
Whom thou didst prove at Massah,
With whom thou didat strive at the waters of Meribah."
In the last lines the relative pronoun is am-
biguous, as it may refer either to " men," for
which in Hebrew we have the collective singular
'ish, or to " thy devoted one." The last is the
more probable; but in either case there is a
superficial discrepancy here between the histori-
cal books and this statement. In Exod. xvii. 1-7,
as well as in Deuteronomy itself, it is the people
who strove with Moses and proved or tempted
Yahweh. On this account some would have us
believe that a difTerent account of the events at
Massah and Meribah was in this writer's mind.
But that is the result of a mere itch for discover-
ing discrepancies. It lies in the very nature of
the case that there should be another side to it.
The beginning was with the people; but just as
the wandering in the wilderness is said to have
been meant by God to prove Israel, so this in-
subordination of the people was meant to prove
Moses or Aaron, and their failure to stand the
proof made Yahweh strive with them. The
verse, then, founds Levi's claim to possess the
chief oracle and to instruct Israel first of all
upon their connection with Moses or Aaron,
or both, since they had been exceptionally tried
and had proved their devotion. The next verse,
then, goes on to found it also on the faithfulness
of the Levites, when they were called upon by
Moses (Exod. xxxii. 26-29) to punish the people
for their worship of the golden calf. In vv. 27
and 29 of that chapter we find the same phrases,
9 "Who (i.e., the tribe) said unto his father and to his
mother,
I have not seen him ;
Who recognised not his brother, and would know
nought of his son ;
For they kept Thy commandment,
And kept guard over Thy covenant."
Being such —
10 "Let them teach Jacob Thy judgments,
And Israel Thy Torah ;
Let them put incense in Thy nostrils,
And whole burnt-offerings upon Thine altars."
Here we have the whole priestly duties as-
signed to the Levites. They are to perform
judicial functions; to give Torah, or instruction,
by means of the Urim and Thummim and other-
wise; to offer incense in the Holy Place, and
sacrifices in the court of the Temple. As early
as this, therefore (on any supposition we need
regard, long before Deuteronomy), we find the
Levites fully established as the priestly tribe.
Before the earliest writing prophets this was so —
a fact of the greatest importance for the history
of Israelite religion. The remaining verse be-
seeches Yahweh to accept the work of Levi's
hands, and to smite down his enemies. Evi-
dently when this was written special enmity
was being shown to this tribe; and, as has been
said already, the religious proceedings of Jero-
boam I. would be sufficient to call forth such a
cry to Yahweh.
In ver. 12 the tribe of Benjamin is dealt with,
and it is depicted as specially blessed by the
Divine favour and the Divine presence. Yah-
weh covers him all the day long, and dwells be-
tween his shoulders. There can hardly be a
doubt that the reference is to the situation of the
Temple at Jerusalem, on the hill of Zion, towards
the loftier boundary of Benjamin's territory.
Verses 13-17 contain the blessing of Joseph,
i. e., of the two tribes Ephraim and Manasseh.
13 " Blessed of Yahweh be his land
By the precious things of heaven from above,
By the deep which crouches beneath ;
14 " By the precious things of the sun,
And the precious things of the moons ;
15 " And by the (precious things of the) tops of the ancient
mountains
And by the precious things of the everlasting hills ;
16 " Aiid by the precious things of the earth and its ful-
ness.
And may the good-will of Him that dwelt in the bush
Come upon Joseph's head,
And upon the top of the head of the crowned among
his brethren.
17 " May the firstborn of his ox be glorious ;
And the horns thereof like the horns of the wild-ox ;
With them may he gore the peoples, even all the
earth's ends together.
These (2. e., thus blessed) are the myriads of Ephraim,
And these the thousands of Manasseh."
Suprem.e fertility is to be his, and the favour
of Yahweh is to rest upon him as the kingly
tribe in Israel. The curious phrase at the be-
ginning of the seventeenth verse has been sup-
posed to be a reference to some individual,
Joshua, Jeroboam II., or to the Ephraimite
kings as a whole. But the subject of the bless-
ing is the Josephite tribes, and there seems to be
no good reason why the reference should be
changed here. It cannot, therefore, refer to less
than a whole tribe, and as according to Gen.
xlviii. 14 Ephraim received the blessing of the
firstborn, it must be Ephraim which is Joseph's
firstborn ox. This view is confirmed by the last
clause of the verse, in which the myriads of
Ephraim are spoken of, and only the thousands
of Manasseh. Obviously this must refer to
times like those of Omri, when the Israelite king-
ship was in its first youthful energy, and was
extending conquest on every hand.
The benedictions which remain are addressed
to Zebulun, Issachar, Gad, Dan, Naphtali, and
Asher. They need little comment beyond close
translation.
18 " And of Zebulun he said,
Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out ;
And, Issachar, in thy tents.
ig "They shall call the peoples unto the mountain ;
They shall offer sacrifices of righteousness:
For they shall suck the abundance of the seas.
And the hidden treasures of the sand."
MOSES' CHARACTER AND DEATH.
621
The territory of Zebulun stretched from the
Sea of Galilee to the Mediterranean, probably
quite down to the sea near Akko, in any case
near enough to give it an active share in the
sea traffic. Issachar, whose tribal land was the
plain of Esdraelon, also shares in it; but the
contrast between " thy going out " and " thy
tents " implies that Zebulun took the more act-
ive part in the traffic. The reference in verse
19, clauses o and b, is obscure. As the Septuagint
reads " they shall destroy " instead of " unto the
mountain," the text may be corrupt. It may
perhaps be an allusion to the sacrificial feasts at
inaugurated fairs to which surrounding peoples
were called, as Stade suggests.
20 "And of Gad he said,
Blessed be the enlarger of Gad :
He dwelleth as a lioness.
And teareth the arm, yea, the crown of the head.
ai "And he looked out the first part for himself,
Because there a (tribal) ruler's portion lay ready ;
And he came with the heads of the people,
He executed the justice of Yahweh,
And His judgments in company with Israel."
At this time Gad was in possession of a wide
territory, and was famed for courage and success
in war. His foresight in choosing the first of the
conquered land as a worthy tribal portion is
praised, and his faithfulness in carrying out his
bargain to accompany the nation in its attack
on the west Jordan land.
22 " And of Dan he said,
Dan is a lion's whelp.
Leaping forth from Bashan."
This does not mean that Dan's territory was
Bashan, but only that his attack was as fierce and
unexpected as that of a lion leaping forth from
*ihe crevices and caves of the rocks in Bashan.
23 "And of Naphtali he said,
O Naphtali, sated with favour,
And full of the blessing of Yahweh :
Possess thou the sea and the south."
The soil in the territory of Naphtali was
specially fruitful, in the region of Huleh and on
the shore of the Sea of Gennesaret. These are
the sea and the hot south part which the tribe is
railed upon to take as a possession, and because
<if which the favour of Yahweh and His blessing
i'pecially rested upon it.
24 " And of Asher he said,
Blessed above children be Asher ;
May he be the favoured of his brethren,
And dip his feet in oil.
25 "Iron and brass (be) thy bars ;
And as thy days (so may) thy strength (be)."
The last line is extremely doubtful. The word
translated " thy strength " is really not known,
and that meaning probably implies another read-
ing; " thy bars " in the previous line is also
c'oubtful. The reference to oil probably implies
that the olive tree was specially fruitful, in the
« ountry inhabited by Asher, but why he should
be specially favoured of his brethren can now
hardly be conjectured.
In the concluding verses we have an exaltation
nf Israel's God and of His people. Speaking
out of the time when Israel had driven out its
enemies and was in full and undisturbed posses-
sion of its heritage (ver. 28), the poet declares
tv) Jeshurun how incomparable God is. He rides
upon the heaven to bring help to them, and He
40_Vol. I.
comes in the clouds with majesty. The God of
old time is Israel's refuge or dwelling, covering
him from above, and beneath, i. e., on the earth.
His everlasting arms bear His people up in their
weariness, and shelter them there against all foes.
He has proved this by thrusting out before them,
and by commanding them to destroy, their ene-
mies.
28 "And so Israel came to dwell in safety,
The fountain of Jacob alone,
In a land of corn and wine ;
Yea, His heavens drop down dew.
29 " Happy art thou, O Israel :
Who is like unto thee ?
A people saved by Yahweh,
The shield of thy help
And the sword of thy majesty !
Thine enemies shall feign friendship to thee :
And thou shalt tread upon their high places."
CHAPTER XXVI.
MOSES' CHARACTER AND DEATH.
It has been often said, and it has even be-
come a principle of the critical school, that the
historical notices in the earlier documents of the
Old Testament represent nothing but the ideas
current at the time when they were written.
Whether they depict an Abraham, a Jacob, or a
Moses, all they really tell us is the kind of char-
acter which at such times was held to be heroic.
In this way the value of the historic parts of
Deuteronomy has been called in question, and we
have been told that all we can gather from them
about Moses is the kind of character which the
pious, in the age of Manasseh, would feel justified
in attributing to their great religious hero. But
it is manifestly unfair to estimate the statements
of men who write in good faith, as if they were
only projecting their own desires and prejudices
upon a past which is absolutely dark. It may
be true that such writers might be unwilling to
narrate stories concerning the great men of the
past which were inconsistent with the esteem in
which they were held; but it is much more cer-
tain that their narratives will represent the tradi-
tion and the current knowledge of their time re-
garding the heroes of their race. Unless this
be true, no reliance could be placed upon any-
thing but absolutely contemporary documents;
even these would be open to suspicion, if the
human mind were so lawless as to have no scru-
ple in filling up all gaps in its knowledge by
imaginations. We must protest, therefore,
against the notion that what J and E and D
tell us concerning the life and character of Moses
must be discounted in any effort we make to
represent to ourselves the life and thought of
that great leader of Israel. They tell us much
more than what was thought fitting for a leader
of the people in the ninth and eighth and seventh
centuries b. c. They tell us what was believed
in those times about Moses; and much of what
was believed about him must have rested upon
good authority, upon entirely reliable tradition,
or upon previous written narratives concerning
him.
Up till recently it was held, by men as eminent
even as Reuss, that writing was unknown in the
days of Moses, and that for long afterwards oral
tradition alone could be a source of knowledge
of the past. But recent discoveries have shown
that this is an entire mistake. Long before
622
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
Moses writing was a common accomplishment
in Canaan; and it seems almost ridiculous to sup-
pose that the man who left his mark so indelibly
upon this nation should have been ignorant of
an art with which every master of a village or
two was thoroughly conversant. Moreover the
fact that the same root (k-t-b) occurs in every
Semitic tongue with the meaning " to write,"
would seem to indicate that before their separa-
tion from one another the art of writing was
known to all the Semitic tribes. The new facts
enormously strengthen that probability, and
make the arguments advanced by those who hold
the opposite view look even absurd. But if
writing were known and practised in Moses' day
in Canaan, it would be marvellous if many of
the great events of the early days had not been
recorded. It would be still more marvellous
if the comparatively late writings, which alone
we have at our disposal, had not embodied and
absorbed much older documents.
But for still another reason the critical dictum
must be held to be false. Applied in other
fields and in regard to other times, this same
principle would deprive us of almost every char-
acter which has been considered the glory of
humanity. Zarathustra and Buddha have alike
been sacrificed to this prejudice, and there are
men living who say that we know so little about
our Lord Jesus Christ that it is doubtful whether
He ever existed. A method which produces such
results nmst be false. The great source of prog-
ress and reform has always been some man
possessed by an idea or a principle. Even in our
own days, when the press and the facilities for
communication have given general tendencies a
power to realise themselves which they never
had in the world's history before, great men are
the moving factors in all great changes. In
earlier ages this was still more the case. It is
an utterly unjustifiable scepticism which makes
meij contradict the grateful recollection of man-
kind, in regard to those who have raised and
comforted humanity. Through all obscurities
and confusions we can reach that Indian Prince
for whom the sight of human misery embittered
his own brilliant and enjoyable life. We refuse
to give up Zarathustra, though his story is more
obscure and entangled than that of almost any
other great leader of mankind. Especially in a
history like that of Israel, which purports to
have been guided in a special manner by revela-
tions of the will of God, the individual man filled
with God's spirit is quite indispensable. Even
if mythical elements in the story could be proved,
that would not shake our faith in the existence
of Moses; for as Steinthal, who holds the very
" advanced " opinion that solar myths have
strayed into the history of Moses, wisely says,
it is quite as possible to distinguish between the
rnythical and the historical Moses as it is to dis-
tinguish between the historical Charlemagne and
the mythical. Because of the general reliability
of tradition regarding great men therefore, and
because also of the proofs we have that writing
was common before Moses' day, we need not
burden ourselves with the assumption or the
fear that the Deuteronomic character of Moses
may be unreliable.
But in endeavouring to set forth this concep-
tion of the character of Moses, we cannot con-
fine ourselves to what appears in this book. It
is generally acknowledged that the author had
at least the Yahwist and the Elohist documents
in their entirety before him, and regarded them
with respect, not to say reverence. Conse-
quently we must believe that he accepted what
they said of Moses as true. The only document
in the Pentateuch that he may not have known
in any shape was the Priest Codex, but that
makes no attempt to depict the inner or outer
life of Moses. All the personal life and colour
in the Biblical narrative belongs to the other
sources. For a personal estimate, therefore, we
lose little by excluding P. Only one other
cause of suspicion in regard to the historical
parts of Deuteronomy could arise. If it, com-
paratively modern as it is, contained much that
was new, if it revealed aspects of character for
which no authority was quoted, and of which
there was no trace in the earlier narratives, there
might be reasonable doubt whether' these new
details were the product of imagination. But
there is very little more in Deuteronomy than
there is in the historical parts of the other books,
though the older narratives are repeated with a
vivid and insistive pathos which almost seems
to make them new.
Combining then what the Deuteronomist him-
self says with what the Yahwist and Elohist docu-
ments contain, we find that the claim usually
made for Moses, that he was the founder of an
entirely new religion, is not sustained. Again
and again it is asserted that Yahweh had been
the God of their fathers, of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob — so that Moses was simply the renewer of
a higher faith which for a time had been cor-
rupted. Some have even asserted that there had
been all down the ages to Moses the memory
of a primeval revelation. But if there ever was
such a thing, we learn from Josh. xxiv. 2, a verse
acknowledged to be from the Elohist, that that
" fair beginning of a time " had been entirely
eclipsed, for Terah, the father of Abraham, had
served other gods beyond the flood. Abraham,
therefore, rather than Moses, is regarded as the
founder of the religion of Yahweh. Whether the
word Yahweh (Exod. vi. 3) was known or not
makes little difference, for all our four authori-
ties teach that Moses' work was the revival of
faith in that which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
had believed. But the bulk of the people would
appear to have been ignorant regarding the
God of their fathers; and probablv the concep-
tion which Deuteronomy shares with J and E
is that in Moses' day Yahweh was the special
God of a small circle, perhaps of the tribe of
Levi, among whom a more spiritual conception
of God than was common among their country-
men had either been retained, or had arisen
anew. Probably then we ought to conceive the
circumstances of Moses' early life somewhat in
this way. A number of Semitic tribes, more or
less nearly related to each other and to Edoni
and Moab, had settled in Egypt as semi-agri-
cultural nomads. At first they were tolerated:
but they were now being worn down and op-
pressed by forced labour of the most brutal sort.
Either a tribe or a clan among them had the
germs of a purer conception of God, and in tliis
tribe or clan Moses, the deliverer of his people,
was born. Providentially he escaped the deatli
which awaited all Israelite boys in those days,
and grew up in the camp of the enemies of his
people. By this means he received all the cul-
ture that the best of the oppressors had, while
the tie to Israel was neither obscured nor weak-
ened in his mind. At the court of Pharaoh he
MOSES' CHARACTER AND DEATH.
623
could not fail to acquire some notions of state-
craft, and he must have seen that the first step
towards anything great for his people must be
their union and consolidation. But his earliest
effort on their behalf showed that he had not
really considered and weighed the magnitude of
his task. Killing an Egyptian oppressor might
conceivably have served as a signal for revolt.
But in point of fact it frustrated any plans Moses
might have had for the good of his people, and
drove him into the wilderness. Here the germs
of various thoughts which education and ex-
perience of life had deposited in his mind had
time to develop and grow. According to the
narrative, it was only at the end of his long
sojourn in Midian that he had direct revelation
from God. But amid the wide and awful soli-
tudes of that wilderness land, as General Gordon
said of himself in the kindred solitudes of the
Soudan, he learned himself and God. Whatever
deposits of higher faith he had received from his
family, no doubt the long, silent broodings in-
separable from a shepherd's life had increased
and vivified it. Every possible aspect of it must
have been reckoned with, all its consequences ex-
plored; and his great and solitary soul, we may
be sure, had many a time let down soundings into
the deeps which were, as yet, dark to him. And
then — for it is to souls that have yearned after
Him in the travail of intellectual and spiritual
longing that God gives His great and splendid
revelations — Yahweh revealed Himself in the
flame of the bush, and gave him the final assur-
ance and the first impulse for his life's work. It
is a touch of reality in the narrative which can
hardly be mistaken, that it represents Moses as
shrinking from the responsibility which his call
must lay upon him. Behind the few and simple
objections in the narrative, we must picture to
ourselves a whole world of thoughts and feelings
into which the call of God had brought tumult
and confusion. One would need to be a dry-as-
dust pedant not to see here, as in the case of
Isaiah's call, the triumphant issue of a long con-
flict and the decisive moment of a victory over
self, which had had already many stages of de-
feat and only partial success. It is perennially
true to human nature and to the Divine dealings
with human nature, that help from on high comes
to establish and touch to finer issues that which
the true man has striven for with all his powers.
Enlightened and assured by this great revela-
tion of God, Moses left the quiet of the desert
to undertake an extraordinarily difficult task.
He had to weld jealous tribes into a nation; he
had to rouse men whose courage had been
broken by slavery and cruelty to undertake a
dangerous revolt; and he had to prepare for the
march of a whole population, burdened with in-
valids and infants, the feeble and the old, through
a country which even to-day tries all but the
strongest. These things had to be done; and
the mere fact that they were accomplished would
be inexplicable, without the domination of a
great personality inspired by great ideas of a
religious kind. For, in antiquity, the only bond
able to hold incongruous elements together in
one nationality \\T^s religion. With the people
whom Moses had to lead the necessity would
be the same, of even greater. But the political
work which must have preceded any common
action likewise demanded a .great personality.
Though no doubt a common misery might
silence jealousies and make men eager to listen
to any promises of deliverance, yet many trouble-
some negotiations must have been carried
through successfully before these sentences
could have been written with truth: " And Moses
and Aaron went and gathered together all the
elders of the children of Israel, and the people
believed, and bowed their heads and wor-
shipped."
Many conjectures have been hazarded as to
what the centre of Moses' message at this time
really was. Some, like Stade, bring it down to
this, that Yahweh was the God of Israel. Others
add to this somewhat meagre statement another
equally meagre, that Israel was the people of
Yahweh. But unless the character of Yahweh
had been previously expounded to the people,
there seems little in these two declarations to
excite any enthusiasm or to kindle faith. The
mere fact of inducing the tribes to put all other
gods aside is insufficient to account for any of
the results that followed, if to Moses Yahweh
had remained simply a tribal God, of the same
type as the gods of the Canaanites. On the other
hand, if he had risen to the conception of God
as a spirit, of Yahweh as the only living God,
as the inspirer and defender of moral life, or
even if he had made any large approach to these
conceptions, it is easy to understand how the
hearts of the mass of the people were stirred
and filled, even though things so high were not,
by the generality, thoroughly understood or
long retained. But the hearts of all the chosen,
the spiritually elect, would be moved by them as
the leaves are moved by the wind. These, with
Moses at their head, formed a nucleus which
bore the people on through all their trials and
dangers, and gradually leavened the mass to
some extent with the same spirit.
Even after this had been accomplished, the
main work remained to be done. We cannot
agree indeed with many writers who seem to
think that the whole life of the Israelite people
was started anew by Moses. That would in-
volve that every regulation for the most trivial
detail of ordinary life was directly revealed, and
that Moses made a tabula rasa of their minds,
rubbing out all previous laws and customs, and
writing a God-given constitution in their place.
Obviously, that could hardly be; but still a task
very different, yet almost as difficult, remained
for Moses after his first success. His final aim
was to make a virtually new nation out of the
Hebrew tribes; and their whole constitution and
habits had, consequently, to be revised from
the new religious standpoint. He and the nation
alike had inherited a past, and it was no part of
his mission to delete that. Reforms, to be stable,
must have a root in the habits and thoughts of
the people whom they concern. Moses would,
consequently, uproot nothing that could be
spared; he would plant nothing anew which was
already flourishing, and was compatible with the
new and dominant ideas he had introduced. A
great mass of the laws and customs of the He-
brews must have been good, and suitable to the
stage of moral advancement they had reached
before Moses came to them. Any measure of
civilised life involves so much as that. Another
great mass, while lyuig outside of the religious
sphere, must have been at least compatible with
Yahwism. All laws and customs coming under
these two categories, Moses would naturally
adopt as part of the legislation of the new
nation, and would stamp them v.ith his approval
62,
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
as being in accord with the religion of Yahweh.
They would thus acquire the same authority
as if they were entirely new, given for the first
time by the Divinely inspired lawgiver.
But besides these two classes of laws and
customs there must have been a number which
were so bound up with the lower religion that
they could not be adopted. They would either
be obstructive of the new ideas, or they would
be positively hostile to them; for on any sup-
position heathenism of various sorts was largely
mingled with the religion of the Israelite people
before their deliverance and even after it. To sift
these out, and to replace them by others more
in accord with the will of Yahweh as now re-
vealed, must have been the chief work of the
lawgiver. In that more or less protracted period
before Israel came to Sinai, during which Moses
burdened himself with judging the people per-
sonally, he must have been doing this work.
His reflections in the wilderness had doubtless
prepared him for it. In a mind like his, the
fruitful principles received by the inspiration
of the Almighty could not be merely passively
held. Like St. Paul in his Arabian sojourn, we
must believe that Moses in Midian would work
out the results of these principles in many di-
rections; and when he led Israel forth, he must
have been clearly conscious of changes that were
indispensable. But it needed close every-day
contact with the life of the people to bring out
all the incompatibilities which he would have
to remove. Every day unexpected complications
would arise; and the people at any rate, if Moses
himself be supposed to be raised by his inspira-
tion above the needs of experience, would be
able to receive the instruction they needed only
in concrete examples, here a little and there a
little. When they came to " seek Yahweh " in
any matter which perplexed them, Moses gave
them Yahweh's mind on the subject; and each
decision tended to purify and render innocuous
to their higher life some department of public
or private affairs. Every day at that early time
must have been a day of instruction how to apply
the principles of the higher faith just revived.
The better minds among the chiefs were thereby
trained to an appreciation of the new point of
view; and when Jethro suggested that the bur-
den of this work should be divided, quite a suffi-
cient number were found prepared to carry it on.
After this it must have gone on with tenfold
speed, and we may believe that when Sinai was
reached the preliminaries on the human side to
the great revelation had been thoroughly elabo-
rated. The Divine presence had been with Moses
day by day, judging, deciding, inspiring in all
their individual concerns as well as_in their com-
mon affairs. But that would only bring out
more clearly the extent of the reformation that
remained to be wrought; doubtless too it had re-
vealed the dulness of heart in regard to the Di-
vine which has always characterised the mass
•of men. The need for a more complete revela-
tion, a more extended and detailed legislation on
the new basis, must have been greatly felt. In
the great scene at Sinai, a scene so strange and
awe-inspiring that to the latest days of Israel
the memory of it thrilled every Israelite heart
and exalted every Israelite imagination, this
need was adequately met.
In connection with it Moses rose to new
heights of intimacy with the Divine. What he
had already done was ratified, and in the Deca-
logue the great lines of moral and social life were
marked out for the people. But the most re-
markable thing to us, in the narrative of the
circle of events which made the mountain of the
law for ever memorable, is the sublimity attrib-
uted to the character of Moses. From the day
when he smote the Egyptian, at every glimpse
we have of him we find him always advancing in
power of character. The shepherd of Midian is
nobler, less self-assertive, more overawed by com-
munion with God, than the son of Pharaoh's
daughter, noble as he was. Again, the religious
reformer, the popular leader, who needs the very
insistence of God to make him lead, who speaks
for God with such courageous majesty, who
teaches, inspires, and manages a turbulent nation
with such conspicuous patience, self-repression,
and success, is greatly more impressive than the
Moses of Midianite days. But it is here, at
Sinai, that his rank among the leaders of men
is fixed for ever. To the people of that time
God was above all things terrible; and when they
came to the mount and found that " there were
thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon
the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceed-
ing loud," they could only tremble. Their very
fear made it impossible for them to understand
what God desired to reveal concerning Himself.
But in Moses love had cast out fear. Even to
him, doubtless, the darkness was terrible, because
it expressed only too well the mystery which en-
wrapped the end of the Divine purposes of which
he alone had seen the beginnings; even his mind
must have been clouded thick with doubts as to
whither Yahweh was leading him and his people;
yet he went boldly forth to seek God, venturing
all upon that errand.
In previous perplexities the narrative repre-
sents Moses as calling instantly upon Yahweh;
but now, when experience had taught him the
formidable nature of bis task, when difficulties
had increased upon him, when his perplexities
of all kinds must have been simply overwhelm-
ing, he heard the voice of Yahweh callmg him
to Himself. Straightway he went into solitary
communion with Him; and when he passed with
satisfied heart from that communion, he brought
with him those immortal words of the Decalogue
which, amid all changes since, have been ac-
knowledged to be the true foundation for moral
and spiritual life. He brought too a commission
authorising him to give laws and judgments to
his people in accord with what he had heard
and seen on the mount. However we are to
understand the details of the narrative therefore,
its meaning is that at this time, and under these
circumstances, Moses attained his maximum of
inspiration as a seer or prophet, and from that
time onward stood in a more intimate relation
to God than any of the prophets and saints of
Israel who came after him. He had found God;
and from where he stood with God he saw the
paths of religious and political progress plainly
marked out.
Henceforth he was competent to guide the na-
tion he had made as he had not yet been, and
with his power to help them his eagerness to do
so grew. Twice during this %reat crisis of his
life the people broke away into evil, and na-
tional death was threatened. Bi^t with passion-
ate supplications for their pardon he threw him-
self down between God and them. At precisely
the moment when his communion with God was
most complete, he rose to the loving recklessness
MOSES" CHARACTER AND DEATH.
625
of desiring that if they were to be destroyed he
might perish with them. Strangely enough,
though the author of Deuteronomy had this be-
fore him, he does not mention it. It cannot have
struck even him as the crowning point of Moses'
career, as it does us. Even in his day the fitness,
nay, the necessity, of this self-sacrificing spirit
as the fruit of deeper knowledge of God, was not
yet felt; much less could it have been felt in the
days of the earlier historians. There must,
therefore, be reliable information here as to what
Moses actually did. Such love as this was not
part of the Israelite ideal at the time of our
narrative, and from nothing but knowledge of the
fact could it have been attributed to Moses. We
may rank this enthusiasm of love, therefore, as a
reliable trait in his character. But if it be so,
how far must he in his highest moments have
transcended his contemporaries, and even the
best of his successors, in knowledge of the in-
most nature of God! His thought was so far
above them that it remained fruitless for many
centuries. Jeremiah's life and death first pre-
pared the way for its appreciation, but only in the
character of the Servant of Yahweh in Second
Isaiah is it surpassed. Now if in this deepest part
of true religion Moses possessed such excep-
tional spiritual insight, it is vain to attempt to
show that his conception of God was so low,
and his aim for man so limited, as modern
theorists suppose. The truth must lie rather
with those who, like Dr. A. B. Davidson,* see
in him " a profoundly reverential ancient mind
with thoughts of God so broad that mankind
has added little to them. Nothing in the way of
sublimity of view would be incongruous with
such a character, while nothing could be more
grotesque than to shut it up within the limits
of the gross conceptions of the mass of the peo-
ple. He was their guiding star, not their fellow,
in all that concerned God, and his religious con-
ceptions were by a whole heaven removed from
theirs. The entire tragedy of his life just con-
sisted in this, that he had to strive with a
turbulent and gainsaying people, had to bear
with them and train them, had to be content with
scarcely perceptible advances, where his strenu-
ous guidance and his patient love should have
kindled them to run in the way of God's com-
mandments. But though their progress was lam-
entably slow, he gave them an impulse they
were never to lose. Under the inspiration of the
Almighty he so fixed their fundamental ideas
about God that they never henceforth could get
free of his spiritual company. In all their prog-
ress afterwards they felt the impress of his
mind, moulding and shaping them even when
they knew it not, and through them he started
in the world that redemptive work of God
which manifested its highest power in Jesus
Christ."
From this point onward the idea of Moses that
Deuteronomy gives us is that of a great popular
leader, meeting with extraordinary calmness all
the crises of government, and guiding his people
with unwavering steadfastness. Without power,
except that which his relation to God and the
choice of the people gave him, without any offi-
cial title, he simply dominated the Israelites as
long as he lived. And the secret of his success
is plainly told us in the narrative. He would not
move a single step without Divine guidance
(Exod. xxxiii. 12): "And Moses said unto the
* "Moses' God," British Weekly, February 2, 1893.
Lord, See, Thou sayest unto me. Bring up this
people: but Thou hast not let me know whom
Thou wilt send with me." (Ver. 14) " And He
said, Must I go in person with thee and bring
thee to thy place of rest? And Moses said. If
Thou dost not go with us in person, then rather
lead us not away hence." That can only mean
that he laid aside self-will, that he put away
personal sensitiveness, that he had learned to feel
himself unsafe when vanity or self-regard asserted
themselves in his decisions, that he sought con-
tinually that detachment of view which absolute
devotion to the Highest always gives. It means
also that he knew how dark and dull his own
vision was, that clouds and darkness would al-
ways be about him, and that it would be impos-
sible for him to choose his path, unless he knew
what the Divine plan for his people was. And
all that is narrated of him afterward shows that
his prayer was granted. His patience under
trial has been handed down to us as a marvel.
Though his brother and sister rebelled against
him, he won them again entirely to himself.
Though a faction among the people rose against
his authority under Dathan and Abiram, his
power was not even shaken. Amid all the per-
versity and childish fickleness of Israel he kept
them true to their choice of the desert, " that
great and terrible wilderness," as against Egypt
with the flesh-pots. He kept alive their faith
in the promise of Yahweh to give them a land
flowing with milk and honey, and what was
more and greater than that, their faith in Him
as their Redeemer. By his intercourse with
Yahweh he was upheld from falling away from
his own ideals, as so many leaders of nations
have done, or from despairing of them.
The complaints and perversities of the people
did however force him into sin; and perhaps we
may take it that tlie outbreak of petulance when
he smote the rock was only one instance of some
general decay of character on that side, or per-
haps one should rather say, of some general
falling away from the self-restraint which had
distinguished him. It seems strange that this
one failure should have been punished in him, by
exclusion from the land he had so steadfastly be-
lieved in, the land which most of those who
actually entered it would never have seen but
for him. And it is pathetic to find him among
that great company of martyrs for the public
good, those who in order to serve their people
have neglected their own characters. Under the
stress of public work and the pressure of the
stupidity and greed of those whom they have
sought to guide, many leaders of men have been
tempted, and have yielded to the temptation, to
forget the demands of their better nature. But
whatever their services to the world, such un-
faithfulness does not pass unpunished. They
have to bear the penalty, whosoever they be;
and Moses was no more an exception than
Cromwell or Savonafola was, to mention only
some of the nobler examples. He had been
courageous when others had faltered. He had
been pre-eminently just; for in founding the
judicial system of Israel he had guarded alike
against the tyranny of the great and against un-
just favour to the small. He had laid a firm hand
upon the education of youth, determmed that
the best inheritance of their people, the knowl-
edge of the laws of Yahweh and of His provi-
dences, should not be lost to them. He had
cleared their religion in principle of all that
626
THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY.
was unworthy of Yahweh, and he had by resolute
valour, and by uncompromising sternness to
■enemies, brought his great task to a successful
issue. But the reward of it all, the entrance into
the land he had virtually won for his people,
was denied to him. It is one of the laws of the
Divine government of the world, that with those
to whom God specially draws near He is more
rigorous than with others. Amos clearly saw
and proclaimed this principle (Amos iii. 2).
" Hear this word that Yahweh hath spoken
against you, children of Israel," he says; "You
only have I known of all the families of the
earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your
iniquities." The pathetic picture of the aged
lawgiver, judge, and prophet, beseeching God in
vain that he might share in the joy which was
freely bestowed upon so many less known and
less worthy than he, pushes home that strenu-
ous teaching. For his sin he died with his last
earnest wish unfulfilled, and it was sadly longing
eyes that death's finger touched. We' remember
also that, so far as we can judge, he had no
certain hope of a future life other than the
shadowy existence of Hades. " Though he slay
me yet will I trust him " had a much more
tragic meaning for Old Testament saints than it
can ever have for us, for whom Christ has
brought life and immortality to light. Yet, with
a so much heavier burden, and with so much
less of gracious support, they played their high
part. That solitary figure on the mountain-top,
about to die with the fulfilment of his passionate
last wish denied him by his God, must shame us
into silence when we fret because our hopes have
perished. All those nations which have had that
figure on their horizon have been permanently
enriched in nature by it. In a thousand ways it
has shot forth instructions; but, above all, it
has made men worthy in their own eyes; for it
has been a continuous reminder that God can and
ought to be served unfalteringly, even when the
reward we wish is denied us, and when every
other consolation is dim.
But the question may now arise. Is not this
character of Moses which the author of Deuter-
onomy partly had before him and partly helped
to elaborate, too exalted to be reliable? Can we
suppose that a man in Moses' day and circum-
stances could actually have entertained such
thoughts, and have possessed such a character
as we have been depicting? In essentials it
would appear to be quite possible. Putting aside
all distracting questions about details, and re-
membering that it is a mere superstition to sup-
pose that the wants and appliances of civilisation
are necessary to loftiness of character and depth
of thought, where is there anything in the situa-
tion of Moses which should make this view of
him incredible? No doubt there was a rudeness
in his surroundings which must necessarily have
affected his nature; and the forms of his think-
ing in that early, though by no means primitive,
time must have differed greatly from ours.
Moreover, as an instrument for scientific inquiry
and for the verification of facts, the human mind
must have been greatly less effective then than
it is to-day. But none of these things have
much influence upon a man's capacity to receive
a new and inspiring revelation as to God. Other-
wise no child could be a Christian. As regards
the rudeness of his surroundings, we must not
consciously or unconsciously degrade him to the
level of a modern Bedouin. Among the host he
led, some doubtless were at that level; but the
bulk of Israel must have been above it; and
Moses himself, from his circumstances and his
natural endowment, must have stood side by side
with the most cultured men of his time. What-
ever ignorance or error in science he may have
been capable of, and however rude, according to
our ideas, his manner of life, there was nothing in
these to shut him out from spiritual truth. That
which Prof. Henry Morley has finely said of
Dante * must have been true, mutatis mutandis,
of a man like Moses. " Dante's knowledge is
the knowledge of his time," but " if spiritual
truth only came from right and perfect knowl-
edge, this would have been a world of dead souls
from the first to now, for future centuries in
looking back at us will wonder at the little faulty
knowledge that we think so much. But let the
known be what it may, the true soul rises from it
to a sense of the Divine mysteries of wisdom and
love. Dante's knowledge may be full of igno-
rance, and so is ours. But he fills it as he can
with the spirit of God." In the East this is even
more conspicuously true, even to this day. What
an Israelite under similar conditions might be is
seen in the prophet Amos. His external condi-
tion was of the poorest — a gatherer of sycamore
fruit must have been poor even for the East —
yet he knew accurately the history, not only of
his own people, but of the surrounding nations,
and brooded on the purpose of God in regard
to his own people and the world, till he became
a fit recipient of prophetic inspirations. But in-
deed the whole history of Christianity is a dem-
onstration of this truth. From the first days,
when " not many mighty, not many noble were
being called," when it was specially the message
to listening slaves, the religion of Christ has had
its greatest triumphs among the " poor of the
world, rich in faith," but in nothing else. These
have not only believed it, but they have lived it,
and amid the meanest and rudest surroundings,
with the most limited outlook, have built up
characters often of even resplendent virtue.
Whatever primitiveness we may fairly ascribe,
therefore, to the life and surroundings of Moses,
that is no reason why we should think it in-
credible that he had received lofty spiritual truth
from God. If he did such things for Israel as
we have seen, if, as almost all admit, he actually
made a nation, and planted the seeds of a reli-
gion of which Christianity is the natural comple-
ment and crown, then the view ~tfiat he had a
greatly higher idea of God than those about him
is not only credible but necessary. If his teach-
ing concerning Yahweh had amounted only to
this, that He was the only God Israel was to
worship, and that they were to be solely His
people, then on such a basis nothing more than
the ordinary heathen civilisations of the Semitic
people could have been built. But if he had the
thought of God which is embodied in the Deca-
logue, that could bring with it everything in the
character of Moses that seems too high for those
early days. The knowledge of God as a spiritual
and moral being could not fail to moralise and
spiritualise the man. The lofty conception of
human duty, the submission to the will of God,
the passionate love for his nation which made
personal loss nothing to Moses, may well have
been evoked by the great truth which formed his
prophetic revelation.
* " Convito of Dante," Morley's "Universal Library,"
Introduction, pp. 6 ff.
MOSES" 'CHARACTER AND DEATH.
627
But the narrative itself, considered merely as
a history, is of such a nature as to give confi-
dence that it rests upon some record of an actual
life. Ideal sketcl;^es of great men (setting aside
the products of modern fictive art) are much
more uniform and superficially coherent than this
character of Moses. The purpose of the writer
either to exalt or to decry carries all before it,
and we get from such a source pictures of char-
acter so consistent that they cannot possibly be
true. Here, however, we have nothing of that
kind. Rashnesses and weaknesses are narrated,
and even Moses' good qualities are manifested
in unexpected ways in response to unexpected
evils in the people. The mere fact, also, that his
grave was unknown is indicative of truth.
Though it would be absurd to say that wherever
we have the graves of great men pointed out,
there we have a mythical story, it is nevertheless
true that in the case of every name or character
which has come largely under the influence of
the myth-making spirit, the grave has been made
much of. The Arabian imagination here seems
to be typical of the Semitic imagination; and in
all Moslem lands the graves of the prophets and
saints of the Old Testament are pointed out with
great reverence, even, or perhaps we should say
especially, if they be eighty feet long. Though
a well-authenticated tomb of Moses,* therefore,
would have been a proof of his real existence and
life among men, the absence of any is a stronger
proof of the sobriety and truth of the narrative.
That with the goal in sight, and with his great
work about to come to fruition, he should have
turned away into the solitude of the mountains
to die, is so very unlikely to occur to the mind
of the writer of an ideal life of an ideal leader,
that only some tradition of this as a fact can
account for it. The unexpectedness of such an
end to a hero's career is the strongest evidence
of its truth.
The result of all the indications is that the story
of Moses, as the author of Deuteronomy knew it,
rests upon authentic information handed down
somehow, probably in written documents, from
the earliest time. Apart from the question of
inspiration, therefore, we may rest upon it as
reliable in all essentials. Only in him, and the
revelation he received, have we an adequate
cause for the great upheaval of religious feeling
which shaped and characterised all the aft«r-
history of Israel.
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
CONTENTS.
Chapter I.
Introductory : — The Book of Joshua,
Chapter II.
Joshua's Antecedents,
Chapter III.
A Successor to Moses,
Chapter IV.
Joshua's Call, ....
Chapter V.
Joshua's Encouragement,
Chapter VI,
Joshua's Charge to the People,
Chapter VII.
The Spies in Jericho.
Ch pier VIII.
Jordan Reached,
Chapter IX.
Jordan Divided,
Chapter X.
Circumcision and Passover — Manna and Corn,
Chapter XI.
The Captain of the Lord's Host,
Chapter XII.
The Fate of Jericho,
Chapter XIII.
Kahab Saved, ....
Chapter XIV.
Achan's Trespass,
Chapter XV.
Achan's Punishment,
Chapter XVI.
The Capture of Ai, .
Chapter XVII.
Ebal and Gerizim,
page
. 633
. 638
. 642
. 644
. 647
. 650
. 353
. 656
. 659
. 662
. 664
. 668
. 671
. 674
. 677
. 680
. 683
page
Chapter XVIII.
The Stratagem of tiie Giheonites, . . . 685
Chapter XIX.
The Ba'tle of Bethhoron, 688
Chapter XX.
The Battle of Merom 692
Chapter XXI.
Joshua's Old Age — Division for the Eastern
Tiibes 695
Chapter XXII.
The Iniieritance of Caleb, .... 698
Chapter XXT:I.
The Distribution of the Land, . . /oi
Chapter XX iV.
The Inheritance of J udah, . . . 704
Chapter XXV.
The Inheritance of Joseph, .... 708
Chapter XXVI.
The Distribution Completed, . . . .711
Chapteu XXVI r.
The Cities of Refuge, ..... 714
Chapter XXVIII.
The Inheritance of the Levites, . . . 713
Chapter XXIX.
No Failure of God's Promise, .... 721
Chapier XXX.
The Altar Ed, ....... 724
Chapter XXXI.
Jehovah the Champion of Israel, . . . 727
Chapter XXXII.
Joshua's Last Appeal, ..... 730
Chapter XXXIII.
Joshua's Work for Israel, 7^3
631
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
BY WILLIAM GARDEN BLAIKIE, D. D., LL. D.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY: THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
With a purely historical book like Joshua be-
fore us, it is of importance to keep in view
two ways of regarding Old Testament history,
in accordance with one or other of which any
exposition of such a book must be frarned.
According to one of these views, the historical
books of Scripture, being given by inspiration of
God, have for their mam object not to tell the
story or dwell on the fortunes of the Hebrew
nation, but to unfold God's progressive revelation
of Himself made to the seed of Abraham, and to
record the way in which that revelation was re-
ceived, and the effects which it produced. The
story of the Hebrew nation is but the frame in
which this Divine revelation is set. It was God's
pleasure to reveal Himself not through a formal
treatise, but in connection with the history of a
nation, through announcements and institu-
tions and practical dealings bearing in the first
instance on them. The historical books of the
Hebrews therefore, while they give us an ex-
cellent view of the progress of the nation, must
be studied in connection with God's main pur-
pose, and the supernatural interpositions by
which from time to time it was carried out.
The other view regards the historical books
of the Hebrews in much the same light as we
look on those of other nations. Whatever may
have been their origin, they are, as we find them,
like other books, and our purpose in dealing
with them should be the same as in dealing with
books of similar contents. We are to deal with
them, in the first instance at least, from a
natural point of view. We are to regard them
as recording the history and development of
an ancient nation — a very remarkable nation, no
doubt, but a nation whose progress may be re-
ferred to ascertainable causes. If we find natural
causes sufficient to account for that progress, we
are not to call in supernatural. It is an acknowl-
edged law, at least as old as Lord Bacon, that
no more causes are to be assigned for phenomena
than are true and sufficient to account for them.
This law, and the investigations which have taken
place under it, have expunged much that used to
be regarded as supernatural from the history of
other nations; and it will only be according to
analogy if the same result is reached in con-
nection with the history of Israel.
In this spirit we have recently had several
treatises dealing with that history from a purely
natural standpoint. Very earnest endeavours
have been made to clear the atmosphere, to
expiscate facts, to apply the laws of history, to
weigh statements in the balances of probability,
to reduce the Hebrew history to the principles
of science. The general efifect of this method
has been to bring out results very different from
those previously accepted. In particular, there
has been a thorough elimination of the super-
natural from Hebrew history. Natural causes
have been judged sufficient to explain all that
occurred. The introduction of the supernatural
in the narrative was due to those obvious causes
that have operated in the case of other nations
and other religions: — love of the mythical, a
patriotic desire to glorify the nation, the exag-
gerating tendency of tradition, and readiness to
translate symbolical pictures into statements of
literal occurrences. Hebrew historians were not
exempted from the tendencies and weaknesses
of other historians, and were ready enough to
colour and apply their narratives according to
their own views. It is when we subject the He-
brew books to such principles as these (such
writers tell us) that we get at the real history of
the nation, deprived no doubt of much of the
glory with which it has usually been invested,
but now for the first time reliable history, on
which the most scientific may depend. And as
to its moral purpose, it is just the moral purpose
that runs through the scheme of the world, to
show that, amid much conflict and confusion,
the true, the good, the just, and the merciful
become victorious in the end over the false and
the evil.
The difference between the two methods, as an
able writer remarks, is substantially this, that
" the one regards the Hebrew books a' an un-
folding of God's nature, and the other as an un-
folding of the nature of man."
The naturalistic method claims emphatically
to be scientific. It reduces all events to histor-
ical law, and finds for them a natural explanation.
But what if the natural explanation is no expla-
nation? What becomes of the claim to be scien-
tific if the causes assigned are not sufficient to
account for the phenomena? If science will not
tolerate unnatural causes, no more should it
tolerate unnatural effects. A truly scientific
method must show a fit proportion between cause
and effect. Our contention is that, in this re-
spect, the naturalistic method is a failure. In
many instances its causes are wholly inadequate
to the effects. We are compelled to fall back on
the supernatural, otherwise we are confronted
with a long series of occurrences for which no
reasonable explanation can be found.
We are reminded of an incident which a popu-
lar writer, under the nom de plume of Edna Lyall,
has introduced in a novel, bearing the title " We
Two." Erica, the daughter of an atheist, as-
sists her father in conducting a journal. _ She
gets from him for review a Life of David Living-
stone, with instructions to leave his religion en-
tirely out. As she proceeds with the work, she
becomes convinced that the condition is impos-
sible. To describe Livingstone without his re-
ligion would be like playing " Hamlet " without
the part of Hamlet. Not only does she find her
task impossible, but when she comes to an inci-
dent where Livingstone, in most imminent
danger of his life, gets entire composure of
mind from an act of devotion, she becomes con-
vinced that this could not have happened had
there not been an objective reality correspond-
ing to his belief; and she is an atheist no more.
Erica now believes in God. Se non e vera e
hen trovato.
In like manner, we believe that to delineate
633
634
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
Old Testament history without reference to the
supernatural is as impossible as to describe
Livingstone apart from his religion. You are
balifled in trying to explain actual events. Long
ago, Edward Gibbon tried to account for the
rapid progress and brilliant success of Christian-
ity in the early centuries by what he called sec-
ondary causes. It was really an attempt to
eliminate the supernatural from early Christian
history. But the five causes which he specified
were really not causes, but effects, — effects of
that supernatural action which had its source in
the supernatural person of Jesus Christ. These
" secondary causes " never could have existed
had not Jesus Christ already commended Him-
self to all sorts of men as a Divine Saviour, sent
by God to bless the world. In like manner we
maintain that behind the causes by which our
naturalistic historians attempt to explain the re-
markable history of the Jewish people, there lay
a supernatural force, but for which the Hebrews
would not have been essentially different from
the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, or
any other Semitic tribe in their neighbourhood.
It was the supernatural element underlying He-
brew history that made it the marvellous devel-
opment it was; and that element began at the
beginning and continued more or less actively
till Jesus Christ came in the flesh.
Let us try to make good this position. Let
us select a few of the more remarkable occur-
rences of early Hebrew history, and, in the lan-
guage of Gibbon, make " a candid and reasonable
inquiry " whether or not they can be accounted
for, on the ordinary principles of human nature,
without a supernatural cause.
I. It is certain that from the earliest times, and
during at least the first four centuries of their his-
tory, the Hebrew people had an immovable con-
viction that the land of Canaan was divinely
destined to be theirs. Of the singular hold which
this conviction took of the minds of the patri-
archs, we have innumerable proofs. Abraham
leaves the rich plains of Chaldsea to dwell in
Canaan, and spends a hundred years in it, a
stranger and a pilgrim, without having a single
acre of his own. When he sends to Padan Aram
for a wife to Isaac he conjures his servant on
no account to listen to any proposal that Isaac
should settle there; the damsel must at all haz-
ards come to Canaan. When Jacob determines
to part from Laban, he sets his face resolutely
towards his native land across the Jordan, al-
though his injured brother is there, thirsting
as he knows for his blood. When Joseph sends
for his father to go down to Egypt, Jacob must
get Divine permission at Beersheba before he can
comfortably go. Joseph, for his services to
Egypt, might reasonably have looked for a mag-
nificent tomb in that country to cover his re-
mains and perpetuate his memory; but, strange
to say, he prefers to remain unburied for an
indefinite time, and leaves a solemn charge to
his people to bury hiin in Canaan, carrying his
bones with them when they leave Egypt. In
the bitterness of their oppression by Pharaoh it
would have been much more feasible for their
champions, Moses and Aaron, to try to obtain
a relaxation of their burdens; but their demand
was a singular one — liberty to go into the wilder-
ness, witli the hardly concealed purpose of escap-
ing to the land of their affections. Goshen was
a goodly land, but Canaan had a dearer name —
it was the land of their fathers, and of their
brightest hopes. The uniform tradition was, that
the God whom Abraham worshipped had prom-
ised to give the land to his posterity, and along
with the land other blessings of mysterious but
glorious import. With this promise was con-
nected that Messianic hope which like a golden
thread ran through all Hebrew history and liter-
ature, brightening it more and more as the ages
advanced.
It is vain to account for this extraordinary
faith in the land as theirs, and this remarkable
assurance that it would be the scene of un-
wonted blessing, apart from a supernatural com-
munication from God. To suppose that it orig-
inated in some whim or fancy of Abraham's
or in the saga of some old bard like Thomas the
Rhymer, and continued unimpaired century after
century, is to suppose what was never realised
in the history of any people. In vain do we look
among natural causes for any that could have so
impressed itself on a whole nation, and swayed
their whole being for successive ages with irre-
sistible force. That " God spake to Abfaham
to give him the land " was the indefeasible con-
viction of his descendants; nor could any con-
sideration less powerful have sustained their
hopes, or nerved them to the efforts and perils
needful to realize it.
2. No more can the leaving of Egypt, with all
that followed, be accounted for without super-
natural agency. It is the contention of the
naturalistic historian that the Israelites were very
much fewer in number than the Scripture narra-
tive alleges. But if so, how could an empire,
with such immense resources as the monuments
show Egypt to have had, have been unable to
retain them? Wellhausen affirms that at the
time Egypt was weakened by a pestilence. We
know not his authority for the statement; but if
the Egyptians were weakened, the Israelites (un-
less supernaturally protected) must have been
weakened too. Make what we may of the con-
test between Moses and Pharaoh, it is beyond
dispute that Pharaoh's pride was thoroughly
roused, and that his firm determination was not
to let the children of Israel go. And if we grant
that his six hundred chariots were lost by some
mishap in the Red Sea, what were these to the
immense forces at his disposal, and what was
there to hinder him from mustering a new force,
and attacking the fugitives in the wilderness
of Sinai? Pharaoh himself does not seem to
have entered the sea with his soldiers, and was
therefore free to take other steps. How, then,
are we to account for the sudden abandonment
of the campaign?
3. And as to the residence in the wilderness,
even if we suppose that the Israelites were mucii
fewer in numljer than is stated, they were far too
great a multitude to be supported from the scanty
resources of the desert. The wilderness alreadv
had its inhabitants, as Moses knew right well
from his experience as a shepherd; it had it>
Midianites and Amalekites and other pastoral
tribes, by whom the best of its pastures were
eagerly appropriated for the maintenance of their
flocks. How, in addition to these, were tlie
hosts of Israel to obtain support?
4. And how are we to explain the extraordinary
route which they took? Why did they not ad-
vance towards Canaan by the ordinary way — the
wilderness of Shur. Beersheba, and Hebron?
Why cross the Red Sea at all, or have anything
to do with Mount Sinai and its awful cliffs, which
INTRODUCTORY: THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
635
a glance at the map will show was entirely out
of their way? And when they did take that
route, what would have been easier than for
Pharaoh, if he had chosen to follow them with
a new force, to hem them in among these tre-
mendous mountains, and massacre or starve them
at his pleasure? If the Israelites had no super-
natural power to fall back on, their whole course
was simply madness. We may talk of good
fortune extricating men from dilhculties, but what
fortune that can be conceived could have availed
a people, professing to be bound for the land of
Canaan, that, without food or drink or stores of
any kind, had wandered into the heart of a vast
labyrinth, for no reasonable purpose under the
sun?
5. Nor can the career of Moses be made intel-
ligible without a supernatural backing. The
contention is, that the desire of the people in
Egypt for deliverance having become very
strong, especially in the tribe of Levi, they sent
Aaron to find Moses, remembering his former
attempt on their behalf; and that, under the
able leadership of Moses, their deliverance was
secured by natural means. But does this explain
the actual campaign in Sinai? Who ever heard
of a leader that, after he had roused the enthu-
siasm of his people by a brilliant deliverance, ar-
rested their further progress in order to preach
to them for a twelvemonth, and give them a sys-
tem of law? Did Moses not possess that instinct
of a general that must have urged him to push
on the moment the Egyptians were drowned, and
amid the enthusiasm of his own troops and the
consternation of the Canaanites, fling his army
upon the seven nations, and seize their land by
a coup de main? Abraham before him and
Joshua after him found the value of such prompt,
sudden movements. Never had a leader a more
splendid opportunity. What could have induced
Moses to throw away his chance, bury his people
among the mountains, and remain inactive for
months upon months? Is there any conceivable
explanation but that he acted by supernatural
direction? The Divine plan was entirely differ-
ent from any that human wisdom would have
contrived. It is as clear as day that, had there
been no Divine power controlling the movement,
the course taken by Moses would have been
simply insane.
6. Nor could the law of Moses, first given in
such circumstances, have acquired the glory
which surrounded it ever after, had there been
no manifestation of the Divine presence at Sinai.
The people were greatly dissatisfied, especially
at their delays. The only course that would have
quieted them was to push on towards Canaan,
so that their minds might be animated by the
enthusiasm of hope. Under their detentions
they greedily seized every occasion that pre-
sented itself for growling against Moses. How
little they were in sympathy with his ideas of
religion and worship was apparent from the af-
fair of the golden calf. The history of the time
is an almost unbroken record of murmuring,
complaining, and rebellion. Yet the law which
originated with Moses in these circumstances
became the very idol of the people, and, accord-
ing to the naturalistic historians, was the means
of creating the nation, and welding the tribes
into a living unity! We can (|uitc easily under-
stand how. in spite of all their growlings, the law
as given at Sinai should have taken the firmest
hold of their imagination and kindled their ut-
most enthusiasm in the end, if it was accom-
panied by those tokens of the Divine presence
which the whole literature of the Hebrews as-
sumes. And if Moses was closely identified with
the Divine Being, the surpassing glory of the
occasion must have been reflected on him. But
to suppose that a discontented people should
have had their enthusiasm roused for the law
simply because this Moses commanded them
to observe it, and that they should ever after have
counted it the holiest, the most Divine law that
men had ever known, is again to postulate an
effect without a cause, and to suppose a whole
people acting in disregard of the strongest pro-
pensities of human nature.
7. Then, as to the generalship of Moses. How
are we to explain the further detention of the
people in the wilderness for nearly forty years?
If this was not the result of a supernatural Di-
vine decree, it must have proceeded from the
inability of Moses to lead the people to victory.
No people who had struggled out of bondage in
order to enter a land flowing with milk and
honey, would of their own accord have spent
forty years in the wilderness. At Hormah, they
were willing to fight, but Moses would not lead
them, and they were beaten. Either the wander-
ing of the forty years was a Divine punishment,
or the generalship of Moses was at fault. He
abandoned himself to inaction for an unprece-
dented period. There was no shadow of benefit
to be gained by this delay; nothing could come
of it (apart from the Divine purpose) but wearing
out the patience of the people, and killing them
with the sickness of hope deferred. And if it
should be said that the forty years' wandering
was a myth, and that probably the wilderness
sojourn di'd not exceed a year or two at most,
is it conceivable that any people in its senses
would invent such a legend? — a legend that
covered them with shame, and that was felt to
be so disgraceful that the whole region was
shunned by them.; insomuch that with the ex-
ception of Elijah, we do not read of any mem-
ber of the nation ever making a pilgrimage to the
spot which otherwise must have had overwhelm-
ing attractions.
8. At last Moses suddenly awakes to activity
and courage. And the next difficulty is to ac-
count for his success at the eleventh hour of his
life, if he had no supernatural help. No phrase
occurs more frequently in naturalistic explana-
tions than " it is likely." Likelihood is the
touchstone to which all extraordinary statements
are brought, although, as Lord Beaconsfield used
to tell us. ■' it is the unexpected that happens."
Borrowing the touchstone for the nonce, we may
ask. Is it likely that, after a sleep of eight-and-
thirty years, Moses of his own accord, witliout
any apparent change of circumstances, sprang
suddenly to his feet, and urged the people to at-
tempt the invasion of the land? Is it likely that
all the inertia and fears of the people vanished
in a moment, as if at the touch of a magician's
wand? And when it came to actual fighting, is
it likely that these shepl.erds of the desert were
able of themselves not only to stand before a
trained and successful warrior like Sihon King
of the Amorites. who had so lately overrun the
country, but to defeat him utterly and take pos-
session of his whole territory? Is it likely that
Sihon's neighbour. Og King of Bashan. though
warned by the fate of Sihon, and therefore sure
to make a more careful defence, shared the fate
636
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
of the other king? Or if Og was a mere myth,
as Wellhausen strangely maintains, is it likely
that the Israelites got possession of the powerful
cities and well-defended kingdom of Bashan
without striking a blow? Is it likely that, after
this brilliant victory, Moses, who was still in full
vigour, detained them again for weeks to preach
old sermons, and sing them songs, and make pa-
thetic speeches, instead of dashing at once at the
petrified people on the other side, and acquiring
the great prize — Western Palestine? Strange
mortal this Moses must have been! — wise enough
to give the people an unexampled constitution
and system of laws, and yet blind to the most
obvious laws of military science, and the most
elementary perceptions of common sense.
And now we come to Joshua, and to the book
that records his achievements.
Joshua was no prophet; he made no claim to
the prophetic character; he succeeded Moses
only as military leader. Consequently the Book
of Joshua contains little matter that would fall
under the term " revelation." But both the work
of Joshua and the book of Joshua served an im-
portant purpose in the plan of Divine manifesta-
tion, inasmuch as they showed God fulfilling
His old promises, vindicating His faithfulness,
and laying anew a foundation for the trust of
His people. In this point of view, both the work
and the book have an importance that cannot
be exaggerated. The naturalistic historian re-
gards the book as merely setting forth, with
sundry traditional embellishments, the manner in
which one people ousted another from their
country, much as those who were then evicted
had dispossessed the previous inhabitants. But
whoever believes that, centuries before, God made
a solemn promise to Abraham to give that land
to his seed, must see in the story of the settlement
the unfolding of a Divine purpose, and a solemn
pledge of blessings to come. " The Ancient of
days," who " declares the end from the begin-
ning," is seen to be faithful to His promises; and
if He has been thus faithful in the past, he may
surely be trusted to be faithful in the future.
If, then, Joshua's work was a continuation of
the work of Moses, and his book of the books
of Moses, both must be regarded from the same
point of view. You cannot explain either of
them reasonably in a merely rationalistic sense.
Joshua could no more have settled the people in
Canaan by merely natural means than Moses
could have delivered them from Pharaoh and
maintained them for years in the wilderness. In
the history of both you see a Divine arm, and in
the books of both you find a chapter of Divine
revelation. It is this that gives full credibility
to the miracles which they record. What hap-
pened under Joshua formed a most important
chapter of the process of revelation by which
God made Himself known to Israel. In such
circumstances, miracles were not out of place.
But if the Book of Joshua is nothing more than
the record of a raid by one nation on another,
miracles were uncalled for, and must be given up.
Rationalists may count us wrong in believing
that the Hebrew historical books are more than
Hebrew annals — are the records of a Divine
manifestation. But they cannot hold us unreas-
onable or inconsistent if, believing this, we be-
lieve in the miracles which the books record.
Miracles assume a very different character when
they are connected into a sublime purpose in the
economy of God; when they signalize a great
epoch in the history of revelation — the comple-
tion of a great era of promise, the fulfilment of
hopes delayed for centuries. The Book of
Joshua has thus a far more dignified place in the
history of revelation than a superficial observer
would suppose. And those historians who bring
it down to the level of a mere record of an in-
vasion, and who leave out of account its bearing
on Divine transactions so far back as the days
of Abraham, spoil it of its chief glory and value
for the Church in every age. There is nothing
of more importance, whether for the individual
believer or for the Church collectively, than a
firm conviction, such as the Book of Joshua em-
phatically supplies, that long delays on God's
part involve no forgetfulness of His promises,
but that whenever the destined moment comes
" no good thing will fail of all that He hath
spoken."
The Book of Joshua consists mainly of two
parts; one historical, the other geographical. It
was the old belief that it was the work of a
single writer, with such slight revision at an after
time as a writing might receive without essen-
tial interference with its substance. The author
was sometimes supposed to be Joshua himselfj
but more commonly one of the priests or elders
who outlived Joshua, and who might therefore
fitly record his death. It has been remarked that
there are several traces in the book of contem-
porary origin, like the remark on Rahab — " She
dwelleth in Israel even unto this day " (vi. 25).
It must be allowed, we think, that there is not
much in this book to suggest to the ordinary
reader either the idea of a late origin or of the
use of late materials.
But recent critics have taken a different view.
Ewald maintained that, besides the Jehovist and
Elohist writers of whose separate contributions
in Genesis the evidence seems incontrovertible,
there were three other authors of Joshua, with
one or more redactors or revisers; The view of
Kuenen and Wellhausen is similar, but with this .
difference, that the Book of Joshua shows so
much affinity, both in object and style, to the
preceding five books, that it must be classed with
them, as setting forth the origin of the Jewish
nation, which would not have been complete
without a narrative of their settlement in
their land. The composition of Joshua is there-
fore to be brought down to a late date; we owe it
to the documents, writers, and editors concerned
in the composition of the Pentateuch; and in-
stead of following the Jews in classing the first
five books by themselves, we ought to include
Joshua along with them, and in place of the
Pentateuch speak of the Hexateuch. Canon
Driver substantially accepts this view; in his
judgment, the first part of the book rests mainly
on the JE (Jehovist-Elohist) document, with
slight additions from P (the priestly code) and
D" (the second Deuteronomist). The second
half of the book is derived mainly from the
priestly code. But Canon Driver has the can-
dour to say that it is much more difficult to
distinguish the writers in Joshua than in the
earlier books; and so little is he sure of his
ground that even such important documents as
J and E have to be designated by new letters,
a and b. But, all the same, he goes right on with
his scheme, furnishing us with tables all through,
in which he shows that the Book of Joshua con-
INTRODUCTORY: THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
63?
sists of ninety different pieces, no two consecu-
tive pieces being by the same author. Most of
it he refers to three earher writings, but some of
these were composite, and it is hard to say how
many hands were engaged in putting together
this simple story.
One is tempted to say of this complicated but
confidently maintained scheme, that it is just
too 'complete, too wonderfully finished, too
clever by half. Allowing most cordially the
remarkable ability and ingenuity of its authors,
we can hardly be expected to concede to them
the power of taking to pieces a book of such
vast antiquity, putting it in a modern mincing
machine, dividing it among so many supposed
writers, and settling the exact parts of it written
by each! Is there any ancient writing that might
not yield a similar result if the same ingenuity
were exercised upon it?
To judge of the source of writings by apparent
varieties of style, and call in a different writer
for every such variety, is to commit oneself to a
very precarious rule. There are doubtless cases
where the diversity of style is so marked that the
inference is justified, but in these the evidence
is unmistakably clear. Often the evidence
against identity of authorship appears very clear,
while it is absolutely worthless. Suppose that
three thousand years hence an English book
should be found, consisting, first, of an eloquent
exposition of a parliamentary budget; secondly,
^ scheme for Home Rule in Ireland; thirdly,
A dissertation on Homer; and fourthly, essays on
the " Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture "—
how convincingly might the critics of the day
demonstrate, beyond possibility of contradiction,
that the book could not be the work of the single
man who bore the name of William E. Gladstone!
In like manner, it might be made very plain that
Milton could never have written both " L' Alle-
gro " and " II Penseroso," or " Paradise Lost "
and the " Defence of the English People."
Cowper could not have written " John Gilpin "
and " God moves in a mysterious way." Samuel
Rutherford could not have written his " Letters "
and his " Divine Right of Church Government."
Moreover, in the course of years a writer may
change his style, even when his subject is the
same. The earlier essays of Mr. Carlyle show
no traces of that most quaint, terse, graphic style
which became one of his outstanding character-
istics in later years. Perhaps the most remark-
able instance of change of style in a great writer
is that of Jeremy Bentham. In Sir James
Mackintosh's Dissertation prefixed to the " En-
cyclopasdia Britannica " (eighth edition) he says:
" The style of Mr. Bentham underwent a more
remarkable revolution than perhaps befell that
of any other celebrated writer. In his early
works, it was clear, free, spirited, often and
seasonably eloquent. . . . He gradually ceased to
use words for conveying his thoughts to others,
but merely employed them as a short-hand to
preserve his meaning for his own purpose. It
is no wonder that his language thus became
obscure and repulsive. Though many of his
technical terms are in themselves exact and
pithy, yet the overflow of his vast nomenclature
was enough to darken his whole diction."
If we compare the criticism of the Book of
Joshua with that (let us say) of Genesis, the dif-
fttrence in the clearness of the conclusions is
very great. By far the most striking basis of the
criticism of Genesis is the feature that was no-
41— Vol. L
ticed first — the occurrence of different Divine
names, Elohim and Jehovah, in different portions
of the book. Now, although it is held that the
combined JE document was used in compiling
Joshua, there is no trace of this distinction of
names in that book. Nor is there much trace of
other distinctions found in Genesis. So that it
is no great wonder that Canon Driver is un-
certain whether, after all, that was the document
that was used in compiling Joshua. Then, as to
the grounds on which the Deuteronomist is
supposed to have had a share in the book.
Wherever anything is said indicating that under
Joshua the Divine purposes and ordinances en-
joined by God on Moses were fulfilled, that is
referred to the Deuteronomist writer, as if it
would have been unnatural for an ordinary his-
torian to call attention to such a circumstance.
For instance, the remark of Rahab that as soon
as the Canaanites heard what God had done to
Egypt, and to the two kings of the Amorites on
the other side of Jordan, their hearts fainted,
is referred to the Deuteronomist, as if it had
rather been an idea of his than a statement of
Rahab's. It is strange that Canon Driver should
not have seen that this is the very hinge of
Rahab's speech, because it gives us the explana-
tion of the remarkable faith that had taken pos-
session of her polluted heart. The truth is, we
can hardly conceive that any part of the book
should have been written by one who did not
connect Joshua with Moses, and both of them
with the patriarchs, and who was not impressed
by the vital connection of the earlier with the
later transactions, and likewise by the single
Divine purpose running through the whole his-
tory.
But we are far from thinking that there is no
foundation for any of the conclusions of the
critics regarding the Book of Joshua. What
seems their great weakness is the confidence with
which they assign this part to one writer and that
part to another, and bring down the composition
of the book to a late period of the history. That
various earlier documents were made use of by
the author of the book seems very plain. For
instance, in the account of the crossing of the
Jordan, use seems to have been made of two
documents, not always agreeing in minute de-
tails, and pieced together in a primitive fashion
characteristic of a very early period of literary
composition. The record of the delimitation of
the possessions of the several tribes must have
been taken from the report of the men that were
sent to survey the country, but it is not a com-
plete record. There are other traces of different
documents in other parts of the book, but any
diversities between them are quite insignificant,
and in no degree impair its historical trustworthi-
ness. .
As to the hand of a reviser or revisers in the
book, we see no difficulty in allowing for such.
We can conceive an authorised reviser expanding
speeches, but thoroughly in the line of the speak-
ers, or inserting explanatory remarks as to
places, or as to practices that had prevailed " unto
this day." But it is atrocious to be told of re-
visers colouring statements and modifying facts
in the interests of religious parties, or even in the
interest of truth itself. Any alterations in the
way of revision seem to have been very limited,
otherwise we should not find in the existing
text those awkward joinings of different docu-
ments which are not in perfect accord. Who-
638
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
ever the revisers were, they seem to have judged
it best to leave these things as they found them,
rather than incur the responsibiHty of altering
what had already been written.
It has generally been assumed by spiritual ex-
positors that there must be something profoundly
symbolical in a book that narrates the work of
Joshua, or Jesus, the first, so far as we know, to
bear the name that is " above every name." The
subject is considered with some fulness in Pear-
son's " Exposition of the Creed," and various
points of resemblance, not all equally valid,* are
noted between Joshua and Jesus.
The one point of resemblance on which we
seem to be warranted to lay much stress is, that
Joshua gave the people rest. Again and again
we read — " The land rested from war " (xi. 23),
"The land had rest from war" (xiv. 15),
" The Lord gave them rest round about " (xxi.
44), " The Lord your God hath given rest unto
your brethren " (xxii. 4), " The Lord had given
rest unto Israel from all their enemies round
about" (xxiii. i). That was Joshua's great
achievement, as the instrument of God's purpose.
Yet in Hebrews we read that this was not the
real rest — it was only a symbol of it: " If Joshua
had given them rest, then would God not after-
ward have spoken of another day." The real
rest was the rest arising from faith in Jesus
Christ. Many persons look on Joshua as a
somewhat dry book, full of geographical names,
as unsuggestive as they are hard and unfamiliar.
Yet on every one of the places so named faith
may see inscribed, as in letters from heaven,
the sweet word rest. Each of these places be-
came a home for men who had been wandering
for some forty years in a waste howling wilder-
ness. At last they reached a spot where they did
not fear the long familiar summons to " arise and
depart." The sickly mother, the consumptive
maiden, the paralysed old man might rest in
peace, no longer terrified at the prospect of
journeys which only increased their ailments and
aggravated their sufferings.
The spiritual lesson of this book then is, that
in Jesus Christ there is rest for the pilgrim. It
is no slight or unevangelical lesson. It is the
echo of His own glorious words, " Come unto
Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and
I will give you rest." Whosoever is weary —
whether under the burden of care, or the sense
of guilt, of the bitterness of disappointment, or
the anguish of a broken heart, or the conviction
that all is vanity — the message of this book to
him is, — " There remaineth a rest to the people
of God." Even now, the rest of faith; and here-
after, that rest of which the voice from heaven
proclaimed — " Blessed are the dead which die
in the Lord from he- ceforth: yea, saith the Spirit.
* " The hand of Mosesand Aaron broughtthe people out
of Egypt, but left the:n in the wilderness, and could not
seat them in Canaan. . . . Joshua, the successor, onlj'
could effect that in which Moses failed. . . . The death
of Moses and the succession of Joshua pre-signified the
continuance of the law till Jesus came. . . . Moses mu.st
die that Joshua might succeed. . . . If we look on Joshua
as the judge and ruler of Israel, there is scarce an action
which is not predictive of our Saviour. He begins his
office at the banks of the Jordan where Christ is baptised,
and enters upon the public exercise of his prophetical
office. He chooseth there twelve men out of the people to
carry twelve stones over with them ; as our Jesus thence
began to choose His twelve apostles. ... It hath been
observed that the saving Rahab the harlot alive foretold
what Jesus once should speak to the Jews— 'Verily I say
unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the
kingdom of God before you.' . . ."
that they may rest from their labours; and their
works do follow them."
CHAPTER II.
JOSHUA'S ANTECEDENTS.
Four hundred years is a long way to go back
in tracing a pedigree. Joshua's might have been
traced much farther back than that — back to
Noah, or for that matter to Adam; but Israelites
usually counted it enough to begin with that
son of Jacob who was the head of their tribe.
It could be no small gratification to Joshua that
he had Joseph for his ancestor, and that of the
two sons of Joseph he was sprung from the one
whom the dying Jacob so expressly placed be-
fore the other as the heir of the richer blessing
(i Chron. vii. 20-27). It is remarkable that the
descendants of Joseph attached no consequence
to the fact that on the side of Joseph's wife they
were sprung from one of the highest function-
aries of Egypt (Gen. xli. 45), any more than the
children of Mered, of the tribe of Judah, whose
wife, Bithiah, was a daughter of Pharaoh (i
Chron. iv. 18), gained rank in Israel from the
royal blood of their mother. The glory of high
connections with the heathen counted for noth-
ing; it was entirely eclipsed by the glory of the
chosen seed. To be of the household of God
was higher than to be born of kings.
Joshua appears to have come of the principal
family of the tribe, for his grandfather, Elishama
(i Chron. vii. 26), was captain and head of his
tribe (Num. i. 10, ii. 18), and in the order of
march through the wilderness marched at the
head of the forty thousand five hundred men that
constituted the great tribe of Ephraim; while his
son. Nun, and his grandson, Joshua, would of
course march beside him. Not only was
Elishama at the head of the tribe, but apparently
also of the whole " camp of Ephraim," which,
besides his own tribe, embraced Manasseh and
Benjamin, being the whole descendants of Rachel
(Num. ii. 24). Under their charge in all likeli-
hood was a remarkable relic that had been
brought very carefully from Egypt — the bones of
Joseph (Exod. xiii. 19). Great must have been
the respect paid to the coffin which contained the
embalmed body of the Governor of Egypt, and
which was never lost sight of during all the
period of the wanderings, till at length it was
solemnly deposited in its resting-place at
Shechem (Josh. xxiv. 32). Young Joshua,
grandson of the prince of the tribe, must have
known it well. For Joshua was himself cast in
the mould of Joseph, an ardent, courageous. God-
fearing, patriotic youth. Very interesting to him
it must have been to recall the romance of Jo-
seph's life, his grievous wrongs and trials, his
gentle spirit under them all, his patient and
invincible faith, his lofty purity and self-control,
his intense devotion to duty, and finally his mar-
vellous exaltation and blessed experience as the
saviour of his brethren! And that coffin must
have seemed to Joshua ever to preach this
sermon, — " God will surely visit you." With
Joseph, young Joshua believed profoundly in
his nation, because he believed profoundly in
his nation's God; he felt that no other people in
the world could have such a destiny, or could
be so worthy of the service of his life.
This sense of Israel's relation to God raised in
him an enthusiastic patriotism, and soon brought
JOSHUA'S ANTECEDENTS.
639.
him under the notice of Moses, who quickly dis-
cerned in the grandson a spirit more congenial
to his own than that of either the father or the
grandfather. Not even Moses himself had a
warmer love than Joshua for Israel, or a more
ardent desire to serve the people that had such a
blessed destiny. In all likelihood the first im-
pression Joshua made on Moses might have been
described in the words — " It came to pass that
the soul of Moses was knit with the soul of
Joshua, and Moses loved him as his own soul."
In no other way can we account for the ex-
traordinary mark of confidence with which
Joshua was honoured when he was selected in the
early days of the wilderness sojourn, not only
to repel the attack which the Amalekites had
made upon Israel, but to choose the men by
whom this was to be done. Why pass over
father and grandfather, if this youth, Joshua,
had not already displayed qualities that fitted him
for this difficult task better than either of them?
We cannot but note, in passing, the proof we
have of the contemporaneousness of the history,
that no mention is made of the reasons why
Joshua of all men was appointed to this com-
mand. If the history was written near the time,
with Joshua's splendid career fresh in the minds
of the people, the reasons would be notorious
and did not need to be given; if it was written
long afterwards, what more natural than that
something should be said to explain the re-
markable choice?
On whatever grounds Joshua was appointed,
the result amply vindicated the selection. On
Joshua's part there is none of that hesitation in
accepting his work which was shown even by
Moses himself when he got his commission at
the burning bush. He seems to have accepted
the appointment with humble faith and spirited
enthusiasm, and prepared at once for the peril-
ous enterprise.
And he had little enough time to prepare, for
a new attack of the Amalekites was to be made
next day. We may conceive him, after prayer
to his Lord, setting out with a few chosen com-
rades to invite volunteers to join his corps,
rousing their enthusiasm by picturing the dast-
ardly attack that the Amalekites had made on
the sick and infirm (Deut. xxv 17, 18), and
scattering their fears by recalling the promise to
Abraham, " I will bless them that bless thee, and
curse him that curseth thee." That Moses knew
him to be a man of faith whose trust was in the
living God was shown by his promise to stand
next morning on the hill top with the rod of
God in his hand. Yes, the rod of God! Had
not Joshua seen it stretched out over the Red
Sea, first to make a passage for Israel, and there-
after to bring back the waters on Pharaoh's host?
Was he not just the man to value aright that
symbol of Divine power? The troop selected
by Joshua may have been small as the band of
Gideon, but if it was as full of faith and courage
it was abundantly able for its work!
The Amalekites are sometimes supposed to
have been descendants of an Amalek who was
the grandson of Esau (Gen. xxxvi. 12), but the
name is much older (Gen. xiv. 7), and was ap-
plied at an early period to the inhabitants of the
tract of country stretching southwards from the
Dead Sea to the peninsula of Sinai. Whatever
may have been their origin, they were old in-
habitants of the wilderness, well acquainted prob-
ably with every mountain and valley, and well
skilled in that Bedouin style of warfare which
even practised troops are little able to meet.
They were therefore very formidable opponents
to the raw levy of Israelites, who could be but
little acquainted with weapons of war, and were
wholly unaccustomed to battle.
The Amalekites could not have been ignorant
of the advantage of a good position, and they
probably occupied a post not easy to attack and
carry. Evidently the battle was a serious one.
The practised and skilful tactics of the Amalek-
ites were more than a match for the youthful
valour of Joshua and his comrades; but as often
as the uplifted rod of Moses was seen on the
top of the neighbouring hill, new life and cour-
age rushed into the souls of the Israelites, and
for the time the Amalekites retreated before
them. Hour after hour the battle raged, till the
arm of Moses became too v/eary to hold up the
rod. A stone had to be found for him to sit on,
and his comrades, Aaron and Hur, had to hold
up his hands. But even then, though the ad-
vantage was on the side of Joshua, it was sunset
before Amalek was thoroughly defeated. The
issue of the battle was no longer doubtful —
" Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with
the edge of the sword " (Exod. xvii. 13).
It was a memorable victory, due in effect to
the hand of God as really as the destruction of
the Egyptians had been, but due instrumentally
to the faith and fortitude of Joshua and his
troop, whose ardour could not be quenched by
the ever-resimied onslaughts of Amalek. And
when the fight was over, Joshua could not but
be the hero of the camp and the nation, as really
as David after the combat with Goliath. Con-
gratulations must have poured on him from every
quarter, and not only on him, but on his father
and grandfather as well. To Joshua these would
come with mingled feelings; gratification at hav-
ing been able to do such a service for his people,
and gratitude for the presence of Him by whom
alone he had prevailed. " Not unto us, Lord,
not unto us, but to Thy name be the glory." It
was a splendid beginning for Israel's wilderness
history, if only it had been followed up by the
people in a kindred spirit. But there were not
many Joshuas in the camp, and the spirit did not
spread.
It is remarkable what a hold that incident at
Rephidim has taken on the Christian imagina-
tion. Age after age, for more than three thou-
sand years, its influence has been felt. Nor can
it ever cease to impress believing men that, so
long as Moses holds out his rod, so long as
active trust is placed in the power and presence
of the Most High in the great battle with sin and
evil, Israel must prevail; but if this trust should
fail, if Moses should let down his rod, Amalek
will conquer. It was well that Moses was in-
structed to write the transaction in a book and
rehearse it before Joshua. Well also that it
should be commemorated by another memorial,
an altar to the Lord with the name of " Jehovah-
nissi," the Lord my banner. How often has
faith looked out towards that unknown mountain
where Aaron and Hur held up the weary arms of
Moses, and what a new thrill of courage and
hope has the spectacle sent through hearts often
" faint yet pursuing " ! Happily on Joshua the
efifect was wholesome; a less spiritual man would
have been pufifed up by his remarkable victory;
but in him its only efifect, as was shown by the
whole tenor of his future life, was a firmer trust
640
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
in God, and a deeper determination to wait only
on Him.
It was no wonder that after this Joshua was
selected by Moses to be his personal comrade
and attendant in connection with that most
solemn of all his duties — the receiving of the law
on the top of the mount. Here again was a most
distinguished honour for so young a man.
Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, with seventy of the
elders, were summoned to ascend to a certain
height and worship afar off; while Moses, ac-
companied by Joshua, went up into the mount
of God (Exod. xxiv. 13). What became of
Joshua while Moses was in immediate fellowship
with God is not very apparent. The first impres-
sion we derive from the narrative is that he
was with Moses all the time, for when Moses
begins his descent Joshua is at his side (Exod.
xxxii. 17). Yet we cannot suppose that in that
most solemn transaction of Moses with Jehovah
when the law was given any third party was
present. On a careful study of the narrative
throughout it will probably be seen that when,
after going up a certain distance in company
with Aaron and his sons and the seventy elders,
Moses was called to a higher part of the mount,
Joshua accompanied Moses (Exod. xxiv. 13), and
that he was with Moses during the six days when
the glory of God abode fon Mount Sinai and a
cloud covered the mount (ver. 15) ; but that when
God again, after these six days, called to Moses
to ascend still higher, and Moses " went into the
midst of the cloud, and gat him up to the
mount" (ver. 18), Joshua remained behind. His
place of rest would thus be half-way between the
spot where the elders saw God's glory and the
summit where God talked with Moses. But the
remarkable thing is, that from that place Joshua
would seem never to have moved all the forty
days and forty nights when Moses was with
God. We can hardly conceive a case of more
remarkable obedience, a more striking instance
of the quiet waiting of faith. To a youth of his
spirit and habits the restraint must have been
somewhat trying. We know that Aaron did not
remain long on the hill, for he was at hand when
the people cried for " gods to go before them "
(Exod. xxxii. i). Impatience of God's slow
methods had been a snare to the fathers — to
Abraham and Sarah in the matter of Hagar; to
Rachel when she raised the petulant cry, " Give
me children, or else I die"; to Jacob when the
promises seemed broken to atoms, and " all
things " seemed " against him." Joseph alone
had stood the trial of patience, and now Joshua
showed himself of the like spirit. The word of
Moses to him was like an anchor holding the
ship firmly against the force of wind and tide.
What a solemn time it must have been, and what
a precious lesson it must have taught him for
the whole future of his life!
More than three thousand years have sped
away, but have the servants of God on an aver-
age reached the measure of Joshua's patience?
Prayers unanswered, promises unfulfilled, sick-
ness protracted during weary years of pain, dis-
appointments and trials coming in troops as if all
God's waves and billows were passing over them,
active persecution bringing all the devices of tor-
ture to bear upon them, — how have such things
tried the patience, the waiting power of the
servants of God! But let them remember that
if the trial be severe the recompense is great, and
that in the end nothing will grieve them more
than to have distrusted their Master and thought
it possible that His promises would fail. " God
is not unrighteous to forget." Richard Cecil tells
that once, when walking with his little son, he
bade him wait for him at a certain gate till he
should return. He thought he would be back in
a few minutes, but meanwhile an unexpected oc-
currence constrained him to go into the city,
where, imder an engrossing piece of business,
he remained all day utterly forgetful of his
charge to the boy. On his return at night to his
suburban home, the boy was nowhere to be
found. In a moment the order to remain at the
gate flashed on his father's memory. Was it
possible he should still be there? He hurried
back and found him — he had been told to wait
till his father returned, and he had done as he
had been told. The boy that could act thus must
have been made of no common stuff. So are
they who can say, " I waited patiently for the
Lord, and He inclined unto me, and heard my
cry."
At last Joshua rejoins his master, and they
proceed towards the foot of the mount. As they
approach the camp, a noise is heard from afar.
His military instinct finds an explanation, —
" There is a noise of war in the camp." No,
says the more experienced Moses; it is neither
the shout of victors nor of vanquished, it is the
noise of singing I hear; and so it was. For when
they reached the camp, the people were at the
very height of the idolatrous revelling that fol-
lowed the construction and worship of the golden
calf, and the sounds that fell on the ears of Moses
and Joshua were the bacchanalian shouts of un-
holy and shameful riot. What a contrast to the
solemn and holy scene on the top! What a
gulf lies between the holy will of God and the
polluted passions of men!
During the painfvil scenes that ensued, Joshua
continued in faithful attendance on Moses; and
when Moses removed the tabernacle (the tem-
porary structure hitherto used for sacred ser-
vices) and placed it outside the camp, Joshua
was with him, and departed not out of the taber-
nacle (Exod. xxxiii. 11). We are not told
whether he ascended the mount the second time
with Moses, but it is likely that he did. At
all events he was much with Moses at this early
and susceptible period of his life. The young
man did not recoil from the company of the old,
nor did he who had been commander in the bat-
tle of Rephidim shrink from the duty of a serv-
ant. Deeper and deeper, as he kept company
with Moses, must have been his impression of his
wisdom, his faith, his loyalty to God, and his
entire devotion to the welfare of his people; and
stronger and stronger must have waxed his own
desire that if ever he should be called to a
similar service he might show the same spirit and
fulfil the same high end!
The next time that Joshua comes into notice
is not so flattering to himself. It is on that
occasion when the Spirit descended on the
seventy elders that had been appointed to assist
Moses, and they prophesied round about the
tabernacle. Two of the seventy were not with
the rest, but nevertheless they got the spirit and
were prophesying in the camp. The military
instinct of Joshua was hurt at the irregularity,
and his concern for the honour of Moses was
roused by their apparent indifference to the
presence of their head. He hurried to inform
Moses, not doubting but he would interfere to
JOSHUA'S ANTECEDENTS.
641
correct the irregularity. But the narrow spirit
of youth met with a memorable rebuke from the
larger and more noble spirit of the leader, —
" Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that
all the Lord's people were prophets, and that
the Lord would put His Spirit upon them! "
Not long after this Joshua was appointed to
another memorable service. After the law-giv-
ing had been brought to an end, and the host of
Israel had removed from the mountain to the
borders of the promised land, he was appointed
one of the twelve spies that were sent forward to
explore the country. Formerly his name had
been Oshea; it was now changed to Jehoshua or
Joshua. The changing of the name was in itself
significant, and still more the character of the
change, by which a syllable of the Divine name
was inserted in it. For, by the practice of the
nation, the changing of a name denoted a man's
entrance on a new chapter of his history, or
his coming out before the world in a new
character. So it was when Abrarn's name
was changed to Abraham, Sarai's to Sarah, and
Jacob's to Israel; so also when Simon became
Cephas, and Saul Paul. But the new name given
to Joshua was in itself more remarkable — Joshua,
that is, Jehovah saves: in the New Testament,
Jesus. No doubt it looked back on the victory
of Rephidim when the Lord wrought such a
deliverance in Israel through Joshua. But it
indicated that the feature that had appeared at
Rephidim would continue to characterise him
during his life. It was a testimony from Moses,
and from Him who inspired Moses, to the char-
acter of Joshua, as it had come out during all
the close intercourse of Moses with him. And
it invested Joshua with a dignity that ought to
have raised him very highly in the eyes of the
other spies, and of all the congregation of Is-
rael. Who could be more worthy of their respect
than the young man who had shown himself so
faithful in all his previous history, and who
had now received a name that indicated that it
would be the distinction of his life, like Him
whom he prefigured, to lead his people to the
enjoyment of God's salvation?
The forty days spent by the twelve men in
exploring the land were a great contrast to the
forty days spent by Joshua on the mount. All
was inactivity and patient waiting in the one
case; all was activity and bustle in the other.
For there is a time to work and a time to rest.
If at the one period Joshua had to put a restraint
on his natural activity, at the other he could
give it full swing.
Apart from its more immediate object, this
early tour through Palestine must have been
one of surpassing interest. To witness each spot
that had been made memorable and classical by
the lives of his forefathers; to sit by the well
of Beersheba, and recall all that had happened
there; to repose under Abraham's oak at Mamre;
to bow at the cave of Machpelah; to recall the
visits of angels at Bethel, and the ladder which
had been seen going up to heaven, — was not only
most thrilling, but to a man of Joshua's faith
most inspiring; because every spot that had such
associations was a witness that God had given
them the land, and a proof that even though
the sons of Anak were there, and their cities
were walled up to heaven, the God of Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob would be faithful to His
promise, and, if the people would only trust Him,
would right speedily place them in full possession.
Caleb and Joshua were the only two men
whose faith stood the test of this survey; the
rest were thoroughly cowed by the greatness of
the difificulties. And Caleb seems to have been
the foremost of the two, for in some places he is
named as if he stood alone. Probably he was
the one who came forward and spoke; but even
if Joshua's faith was not so strong at first, it was
no dishonour to be indebted to the greater cour-
age and confidence of his brother.
We can hardly doubt that in their long marches
and quiet encampments the twelve men had many
a discussion as to what they would advise, and
that the ten felt themselves beaten both in argu-
ment and in faith by the two. Long before they
returned to the camp of Israel they had taken
their sides, and by the sides they had taken they
were determined to abide.
When they come back, the ten open the busi-
ness and give their decided judgment against any
attempt to take possession of the land. Im-
patient of their misrepresentations, Caleb perhaps
strikes in, repudiates the notion that the people
are not able to take possession, and urges them
in God's name to go up at once. But it is
easier far to stir up discontent and fear than to
stimulate faith. The cry of the congregation,
" Up, make us a captain, and let us return to
Egypt," shows how strongly the tide of unbe-
lief is flowing. Moses and Aaron are over-
whelmed. The two leaders fall on their faces be-
fore the congregation. But neither the cry of
the congregation nor the attitude of Moses and
Aaron daunts the two faithful spies. With
clothes rent they rush in, renewing their com-
mendations of the land, laying hold of the Al-
mighty Protector, and scorning the opposition of
the inhabitants, whose hearts were cowed with
terror and whose defence was departed from
them. It was a fine spectacle, — the two against
the million — the little remnant " faithful found
among the faithless." But it was all in vain.
" All the congregation bade stone them with
stones." And in their impulsive and excitable
temper the horrible cry would have been obeyed
had not the glory of the Lord shone out and
arrested the infatuated people (Num. xiv. 10).
For this shameless sin the penalty was very
heavy. The congregation were to wander in the
wilderness for forty years till all that generation
should die of¥; the ten unfaithful spies were to
die at once of a plague before the Lord; and not
one of the generation that left Egypt was to en-
ter the promised land. How easily can God de-
feat the purposes of man! Where is now the
proposal to make a captain and return to Egypt?
" How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,
son of the morning! "
Joshua and Caleb are doubly honoured; their
lives are preserved when the other ten die of the
plague; and they alone, of all the grown rflen
of that generation, are to be allowed to enter
and obtain homes in the land of promise.
For eight-and-thirty years we hear nothing
more of Joshua. Like Moses, he has an interest-
ing youth, then a long burial in the wilderness,
and then he emerges from his obscurity and
does a great work, second only to that of Moses
himself. The first mention of him after his
long eclipse is immediately before the death
of Moses. God virtually appoints him to be
his successor, and directs both of them to pre-
sent themselves in the tabernacle of the con-
642
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
gregation (Deut. xxxi. 14). And Moses calls
him to his office, gives him a charge and says,
" Be strong and of a good courage: for thou
shalt bring the children of Israel into the land
which I sware unto them: and I will be with
thee " (Deut. xxxi. 23).
We might earnestly desire, in entering on the
study of Joshua's life, to draw aside the veil that
covers the eight-and-thirty years, and see how
he was further prepared for his great work. We
might like to look into his heart, and see after
what fashion this man was made to whom the
destruction of the Canaanites was entrusted.
A religious warrior is a peculiar character: a
Gustavus Adolphus, an Oliver Cromwell, a
Henry Havelock, a General Gordon; Joshua was
of the same mould, and we should have liked to
know him more intimately; but this is denied
to us. He stands out to us simply as one of the
military heroes of the faith. In depth, in steadi-
ness, in endurance, his faith was not excelled by
that of Abraham or of Moses himself. The one
conviction that dominated all in him was, that he
was called by God to his work. If that work was
often repulsive, let us not on that account with-
hold our admiration from the man who never
conferred with flesh and blood, and who was
never appalled either by danger or difificulty, for
he " saw Him who is invisible."
CHAPTER III.
A SUCCESSOR TO MOSES.
Joshua i. 2.
There are some men to whom it is almost
impossible to find successors. Men of imperial
mould; Nature's primates, head and shoulders
above other men, born to take the lead. Not
only possessed of great gifts originally, but
placed by Providence in situations that have
wonderfully expanded their capacity and made
their five talents ten. Called to be leaders of
great movements, champions of commanding in-
terests, often gifted with an imposing presence,
and with a magnetic power that subdues oppo-
sition and kindles enthusiasm as if by magic.
What a bereavement when such men are sud-
denly removed! How poor in comparison those
who come next them, and from among whom
successors have to be chosen! When the He-
brews mourned the death of Samson, the differ-
ence in physical strength between him and his
brethren could not have appeared greater than
the intellectual and moral gulf appears between
a great king of men. suddenly removed, and the
bereaved children that bend helpless over his
grave.
A feeling of this sort must have spread itself
through the host of Israel when it was known
that Moses was dead. Speculation as to his suc-
cessor there could be none, for not only had
God designated Joshua, but before he died xVIoses
had laid his hands upon him, and the people had
acknowledged him as their coming leader. And
Joshua had already achieved a record of no com-
mon order, and had been favoured with high
tokens of the Divine approval. Yet what a
descent it must have seemed from Moses to
Joshua! From the man who had so often been
face to face with God, who had commanded the
•^^,1 to make a wav for the redeemed of the Lord
to pass over, who had been their legislator and
their judge ever since they were children, to
whom they had gone in every difficulty, and
who for wisdom and disinterestedness had gained
the profound confidence of every one of them;
— what a descent, we say, to this son of Nun,
known hitherto as but the servant of Moses — an
intrepid soldier, no doubt, and a man of unfalter-
ing faith, but whose name seemed as if it could
not couple with that of their imperial leader!
Well though Joshua did his work in after life,
and bright though the lustre of his name ulti-
mately became, he never attained to the rank of
Moses. While the name of Moses is constantly
reappearing in the prophets, in the Psalms, in the
Gospels, in the Epistles, and in the Apocalypse,
that of Joshua is not found out of the historical
books except in the speech of Stephen and that
well-known passage in the Hebrews (iv. 8),
where the received version perplexes us by
translating it Jesus. But it was no disparage-
ment of him tiiat he was so far surpassed by the
man to whom, under God, the very existence of
the nation was due. And in some respects,
Joshua is a more useful example to us than
Moses. Moses seems to stand half-way in
heaven, almost beyond reach of imitation.
Joshua is more on our own level. If not a man
of surpassing genius, he commends himself as
having made the best possible use of his talents,
and done his part carefully and well.
The remark has been made that eras of great
creative vigour are often succeeded by periods
dull and commonplace. The history of letters
and of the fine arts shows that bursts of artistic
splendour like the Renaissance, or of literary
originality like the Augustan age in Roman or
the Elizabethan in English literature, are not fol-
lowed by periods of equal lustre. And the same
phenomenon has often been found in the Chris-
tian Church. In more senses than one the Apos-
tles had no successors. Who in all the sub-
apostolic age was worthy even to untie the lalchet
of Peter, or John, or Paul? The inferiority is so
manifest that had there been nothing else to
guide the Church in framing the canon of the
New Testament, the difference between the writ-
ings of the Apostles and their companions on
the one hand, and of men like Barnabas, Clement
of Rome, Polycarp. Ignatius, and Hermes on the
other, would have sufficed to settle tlie question.
So also at the era of the Reformation. Hardly
a country but had its star or its galaxy of the first
magnitude. Luther and Melancthon, Calvin and
Coligny, Fare! and Viret. John a-Lasco and
John Knox. Latimer and Cranmer, — what in-
comparable men they were! But in the age that
followed what names can we find to couple with
theirs?
Of other sections of the Church the same re-
mark has been made, and sometimes it has been
turned to an unfair use. If in the second gener-
ation, after a great outburst of power and grace,
there are few or no men of equal calibre, it does
not follow that the glory has departed, and that
the Church is to droop her head, and wonder
to what unworthy course on her part the degen-
eracy is to be ascribed. We are not to expect
in such a case that the laws of nature will be set
aside to gratify our pride. We are to recognise
a state of things which God has ordained for
wise purposes, although it may not be flattering
to us. We are to place ourselves in the attitude
in which Joshua was called to place himself
Jo.ihna i. 2]
A SUCCESSOR TO MOSES.
643
when the curt announcement of the text as to
Moses was followed by an equally curt order to
him — " Moses My servant is dead; now there-
fore arise."
The question for Joshua is not whether he
is a fit person to succeed Moses. His mental
exercise is not to compare himself with Moses,
and note the innumerable points of inferiority on
every side. His attitude is not to bow down
his head like a bulrush, mourning over the de-
parted glory of Israel, grieving for the mighty
dead, on whose like neither he nor his people
will evei look again. If there ever was a time
when it might seem excusable for a bereaved
nation and a bereaved servant to abandon them-
selves tc a sense of helplessness, it was on the
death of Moses. But even at that supreme mo-
ment the command to Joshua is, " Now there-
fore arise." Gird yourself for the new duties
and responsibilities that have come upon you.
Do not worry yourself with asking whether you
are capable of doing these duties, or with vainly
looking within yourself for the gifts and qualities
which marked your predecessor. It is enough
for you that God in His providence calls you
to take the place of the departed. If He has
called you. He will equip you. It is not His
way to send men a warfare on their own charges.
The work to which He calls you is not yours but
His. Remember He is far more interested in its
success than you can be. Think not of yourself,
but of Him, and go forth under the motto, " We
will rejoice in Thy salvation, and in the name of
our God we will set up our banners."
In many different situations of life we may
hear the same exhortation that was now ad-
dressed to Joshua. A wise, considerate, and
honoured father is removed, and the eldest son,
a mere stripling, is called to take his place, per-
haps in the mercantile office or place of business,
certainly in the domestic circle. He is called
to be the comforter and adviser of his widowed
mother, and the example and helper of his
brothers and sisters. Well for him when he
hears a voice from heaven, " Your father is
dead: now therefore arise! " Rouse yourself
for the duties that now devolve upon you;
onerous they may be and beyond your strength,
but not on that account to be evaded or repu-
diated; rather to be looked on as spurs provided
and designed by God, that you may apply your-
self with heart and soul to your duties, in the
belief that faithful and patient application shall
not be without its reward!
Or it may be that the summons comes to some
young minister as successor to a father in Is-
rael, whose ripe gifts and fragrant character have
won the confidence and the admiration of all.
Or to some teacher in a Sunday-school, where
the man of weight, of wise counsel, and holy in-
fluence has been suddenly snatched away. But
lie the occasion what it may, the removal of any
man of ripe character and gifts always comes to
tlie survivor with the Divine summons, " Now
therefore arise! " That is the one way in which
you must try to improve this dispensation; the
world is poorer for the loss of his gifts — learn you
to make the most of yours!
It was no mean impression of Moses that God
meant to convey by the designation, " Moses My
servant." It was not a high-sounding title,
certainly. A great contrast to the long list of
honourable titles sometimes engraved on men's
coffins or on their tombs, or proclaimed by
royal herald or king-at-arms over departed kings
or nobles. One of the greatest of men has no
handle to his name — he is simply Moses. He
has no titles of rank or office — he is simply " My
servant." But true greatness is " when un-
adorned adorned the most." Moses is a real
man, a man of real greatness; there is no occa-
sion therefore to deck him out in tinsel and gilt;
he is gold to the core.
But think what is really implied in this desig-
nation, '■ My servant." Even if Moses had not
been God's servant in a sense and in a degree in
which few other men ever were, it would have
been a glorious thing to obtain that simple ap-
pellation. True indeed, the term " servant of
God " is such a hackneyed one, and often so
little represents what it really means, that we
need to pause and think of its full import.
There may be much honour in being a servant.
Even in our families and factories a model serv-
ant is a rare and precious treasure. For a real
servant is one that has the interest of his master
as thoroughly at heart as his own, and never
scruples, at any sacrifice of personal interest or
feeling, to do all that he can for his master's
welfare. A true servant is one of whom his
master may say, " There is absolutely no need for
me to remind him what my interest requires; he
is always thinking of my interest, always on the
alert to attend to it, and there is not a single
thing I possess that is not safe in his hands."
Does God possess many such servants? Who
among us can suppose God saying this of him?
Yet this was the character of Moses, and in God's
eyes it invested him with singular honour. It
was his distinction that he was " faithful in all
his house." His own will was thoroughly sub-
dued to the will of God. The people of whom
God gave him charge were dear to him as a
right hand or a right eye. All personal interests
and ambitions were put far from him. To ag-
grandise himself or to aggrandise his house never
entered into his thoughts. Never was self more
thoroughly crucified in any man's breast.
Beautiful and delightful in God's eyes must have
seemed this quality in Moses, — his absolute dis-
interestedness, his sensibility to every hint of his
Master's will, his consecration of all he was
and had to God, and to his people for God's
sake!
It was thus no unsuggestive word that God
used of Moses, when he told Joshua that "' His
servant " was dead. It was a significant indi-
cation of what God had valued in Moses and now-
expected of Joshua. The one thing for Joshua
to remember about Moses is, that he was the
servant of God. Let him take pains to be the
same; let him have his car as open as that of
Moses to every intimation of God's will, his will
as prompt to respond, and his hand as quick to
obey.
Was not this view of the glory of Moses as
God's servant a foreshadow of what was after-
wards taught more fully and on a wider scale by
our Lord? " The Son of man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give
His life a ransom for many." Jesus sought to
reverse the natural notions of men as to what
constitutes greatness, when He taught that, in-
stead of being measured by the number of serv-
ants who wait on us, it is measured rather by
the number of persons to whom we become
servants. And if it was a mark of Christ's own
humiliation that " He took on Him the form of
644
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
a servant," did not this redound to His highest
glory? Was it not for this that God highly ex-
alted Him and gave Him a name that is above
every name? Happy they who are content to be
God's SERVANTS in whatsoever sphere of life He
may place them; seeking not their own, but al-
ways intent upon their Master's business!
And now Joshua must succeed Moses and be
God's servant as he was. He must aim at this
as the one distinction of his life; he must seek in
every action to know what God would have him
to do. Happy man if he can carry out this ideal
of life! No conflicting interests or passions will
distract his soul. His eye being single, his
whole body will be full of light. The power
that nerves his arm will not be more remarkable
than the peace that dwells in his soul. He will
show to all future generations the power of a
" lost will," — not the suppression of all desire,
according to the Buddhist's idea of bliss, but
all lawful natural desires in happy and harmo-
nious action, because subject to the wise, holy,
and loving guidance of the will of God.
Thus we see among the other paradoxes of His
government, how God uses death to promote life.
The death of the eminent, the aged, the men of
brilliant gifts makes way for others, and stimu-
lates their activity and growth. When the cham-
pion of the forest falls the younger trees around
it are brought more into contact with the sun-
shine and fresh air, and push up into taller and
more fully developed forms. If none of the
younger growth attains the size of the champion,
a great many may be advanced to a higher aver-
age of size and beauty. If in the second genera-
tion of any great religious movement few or
none can match the " mighties " of the previous
age, there may be a general elevation, a rise of
level, an increase of efficiency among the rank
and file.
In many ways death enters into God's plans.
Not only does it make way for the younger men,*
but it has a solemnizing and quickening effect
on all who are not hardened and dulled by the
wear and tear of life.
What a memorable event in the spiritual history
of families is the first sudden affliction, the first
breach in the circle of loving hearts! First, the
new experience of intense tender longing, baffled
by the inexorable conditions of death; then the
vivid vision of eternity, the reality of the unseen
flashing on them with living and awful power,
and giving an immeasurable importance to
the question of salvation; then the drawing
closer to one another, the forswearing of all
animosities and jealousies, the cordial desire for
unbroken peace and constant co-operation; and
if it be the father or the mother that has been
taken, the ambition to be useful, — to be a help
not a burden to the surviving parent, and to do
what little they can of what used to be their
father's or their mother's work. Death becomes
actually a quickener of the vital energies; in-
* '• Can death itself when seen in the lij^ht of this truth
[the adjustment of every being in animated nature to
every other] be denied to'be an evidence of benevolence ?
I think not. The law of animal generation makes neces-
sary the law of animal death, if the largest amount of
animal happiness is to be secured. If there had been less
death there must also have been less life, and what life
there was must have been poorer and meaner. Death is
a condition of the prolificness of nature, the multiplicity
of species, the succession of generations, the co-existence
of the young and the old ; and these things, it cannot
reasonably be doubted, add immensely to the sum of ani-
mal happiness."— Flint's " Theism," p. 251.
stead of a withering influence, it drops like
the gentle dew, and becomes the minister of
life.
And death is not alone among the destructive
agencies that are so often directed to life-giving
ends. What a remarkable place is that which is
occupied by Pain among God's instruments of
good! How many are there who, looking back
on their lives, have to confess, with a mixture of
sadness and of joy, that it is their times of great-
est suffering that have been the most decisive in
their lives, — marked by their best resolutions, —
followed by their greatest advance! And it
sometimes would seem as if the acuter the suffer-
ing the greater the blessing. How near God
seems at times to come to the height of cruelty
when really He is overflowing with love! He
seems to select the very tenderest spots on which
to inflict His blows, the very tenderest and
purest affections of the heart. It is a wonder-
ful triumph of faith and submission when the
sufferer stands firm and tranquil amidst it all.
And still more when he can find consolation in
the analogy which was supplied by God's own
act, — " He that spared not His own Son, but
delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not
with Him also freely give us all things? "
And this brings us to our last application.
Our Lord Himself, by a beautiful analogy in
nature, showed the connection, in the very high-
est sense, between death and life — " Except a
grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it
abideth alone; but if it die it beareth much fruit."
" Without shedding of blood there is no remis-
sion of sin." When Jesus died at Calvary, the
headquarters of death became the nursery of life.
The place of a skull, like the prophet's valley
of dry bones, gave birth to an exceeding great
army of living men. Among the wonders that
will bring glory to God in the highest throughout
eternity, the greatest will be this evolution of
good from evil, of happiness from pain, of life
from death. And even when the end comes,
and death is swallowed up of victory, and death
and hell are cast into the lake of fire, there will
abide with the glorified a lively sense of the in-
finite blessing that came to them from God
through the repulsive channel of death, finding
its highest expression in that anthem of the
redeemed — " Thou wast slain, and hast re-
deemed us TO God by Thy blood."
CHAPTER IV.
JOSHUA'S CALL.
Joshua i. 2-5.
Joshua has heard the Divine voice summoning
him to the attitude of activity — " Arise! " Direc-
tions follow immediately as to the course which
his activity is to take. His first step is to be
a very pronounced one — " Go over this Jordan ":
enter the land, not by yourself, or with a handful
of comrades, as you did forty years ago, but
" thou and all this people." Take the bold step,
cross the river; and when you are across the
river, take possession of the country which I
now give to your people. The time has come
for decided action; it is for you to show the way,
and summon your people to follow.
It was a very solemn and striking moment,.
Joshua i. 2-5.]
JOSHUA'S CALL.
645
second only in interest to that when, forty years
before, their fathers had stood at the edge of the
sea, with the host of Pharaoh hurrying on be-
hind. At length the hour has come to take
possession of the inheritance! At length the
promise made so many hundred years ago to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is ripe for fulfilment!
You, children of Israel, have seen that God
is in no haste to fulfil His promises, and your
hearts may have known much of the sickness of
hope deferred. But now you are to see that after
all God is faithful. He never forgets. He makes
no mistakes. His delays are all designed for
good, either to chasten or to try, and thus con-
firm and bless His people. He will now bring
forth your righteousness as the light and your
judgment as the noon-day.
There were two things that might make
Joshua and the people hesitate to cross the Jor-
dan. In the first place, the river was in flood;
it was the time when the Jordan overflowed its
banks (Josh. iii. 15), and, being a rapid river,
crossing it in such circumstances might well seem
out of the question. But in the second place,
to cross the Jordan was to throw down the
gauntlet to the enemy. It was a declaration of
war, and a challenge to them to do their worst.
It was a signal for them to assemble, fight for
their hearths and homes, and strain every nerve
to annihilate this invader who made such a bold
claim to their possessions. All the children of
Anak whom Joshua had seen on his former visit
would now range themselves against Israel; all
the seven nations would muster their bravest
forces, and the contest would not be like Joshua's
battle with Amalek, finished in a single day, but
a long succession of battles, in which all the re-
sources of power and skill, of craft and cunning
would be brought to bear against Israel. Ac-
cording to appearances, nothing short of this
would be the result of compliance with the*
command, " Go over this Jordan."
On the one hand, therefore, compliance was
physically impossible, and on the other, even if
possible, it would have been fearfully perilous.
But it is never God's method to give impossible
commands. The very fact of His commanding
anything is a proof of His readiness to make it
possible, nay, to make it easy and simple to those
who have faith to attempt it. " Stretch out thy
hand," said Christ to the man with the withered
hand. "Stretch out my hand?" the man might
have said in astonishment, — " why, it is the very
thing I am unable to do." " Rise up and walk,"
said Peter to the lame man at the Beautiful gate.
" How can I do that?" he might have replied;
" don't you see that I have no use of my limbs? "
But in these cases the helpless men had faith in
those who bade them exert themselves; they be-
lieved that if they tried they would be helped,
and helped accordingly they were. So too in
the present case. Joshua knew that he and the
host could not have crossed the Jordan as it
then was by any contrivance in his power; but
he knew that it was God's command, and he was
sure that He would provide the means. He felt
as if God and the people were in partnership,
each equally interested in the result, and equally
desirous to bring it about. Whatever it was
necessary for God to do he was assured would
be done, provided he and the people entered into
the Divine plan, and threw all their energies into
the work. Not a word of remonstrance did
Joshua of?er, not a word of explanation of the
Divine plan did he ask; he acted as a servant
should;
. " His not to make reply,
His not to reason why ; "
his only to trust and obey.
This faith in Divine power qualifying feeble
mortals for the hardest tasks has originated some
of the noblest enterprises in the history of the
world. It was a Divine voice Columbus seemed
to hear bidding him cross the wild Atlantic, for
he desired to bring the natives of the distant
shores beyond it into the pale of the Church;
and it was his faith that sustained him when his
crew became mutinous and his life was not safe
for an hour. It was a Divine voice Livingstone
seemed to hear bidding him cross Africa, strike
up into the heart of the continent, examine its
structure, and throw it open from shore to shore;
and never was there a faith stronger or steadier
than that which bore him on through fever and
famine, through pain and sickness, through dis-
appointment and anguish, and, even when the
cold hand of death was on him, would not let
him rest until his work was done.
Often in the spiritual warfare it is useful to
apply this principle. Are we called to believe?
Are we called to make ourselves a new heart and
a new spirit? Are we summoned to fight, to
wrestle, to overcome? Certainly we are. But
is not this to tantalize us by ordering us to do
what we cannot do? Is not this like telling a
sick man to get well, or a decrepit old creature
to skip and frisk I'ke a child? It would be so
if the principle of partnership between God and
us did not come into play. Faith says, God is
my partner in this matter. Partners even in an
ordinary business put their resources together,
each doing what his special abilities fit him for.
In the partnership which faith establishes be-
tween God and you, the resources of the infinite
►Partner become available for the needs of the
finite. It is God's part to give orders, it is your
part to execute them, and it is God's part to
strengthen you so to do. It is this that makes
the command reasonable, " Work out your salva-
tion with fear and trembling; for it is God that
v/orketh in you both to will and to do of His
good pleasure." Faith rejoices in the partner-
ship, and goes forward in the confidence that the
strength of the Almighty will help its weakness,
not by one sudden leap, but by that steady
growth in grace that makes the path of the just
like the shining light, that shineth more and
more unto the perfect day.
It was a great thing for God to announce that
He was now in the act of turning His old, old
promise into reality, — that the land pledged to
Abraham centuries ago was now at length to
become the possession of his descendants. But
the gift could be of no avail unless it was actually
appropriated. God gave the people the right to
the land; but their own energy, made effectual
through His grace, could alone secure the pos-
session. In a remarkable way they were made
to feel that, while the land was God's gift, the
appropriation and enjoyment of the gift must
come through their own exertions. Just as in a
higher sphere we know that our salvation is
wholly the gift of God; and yet the getting hold
of this gift, the getting linked to Christ, the en-
trance as it were into the marriage covenant with
Him involves the active exertion of our own
will and energy, and the gift never can be ours
if we fail thus to appropriate it.
646
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
As soon as God mentions the land, He ex-
patiates on its amplitude and its boundaries. It
was designed to be both a comfortable and an
ample possession. In point of extent it was a
spacious region, — " from the wilderness and this
Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river
Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto
the great sea, towards the going down of the
sun." And it was not merely bits or corners
of this land that were to be theirs, they were not
designed to share it with other occupants, but
■' every place that the sole of your foot shall tread
upon, to you have I given it, as I spake unto
Moses." It was in no meagre or stingy spirit
that God was now to fulfil His ancient prom-
ise, but in a way corresponding to the essential
bountifulness of His nature. For it is a delight-
ful truth that God's heart is large and liberal,
and that He delights in large and bountiful gifts.
Has He not made this plain to all in the arrange-
ments of nature? What more lavish than the gift
of light, ever streaming from the sun in silver
showers? What more abundant than the fresh
air that, like an inexhaustible ocean, encompasses
our globe, or the rivers that carry their fresh and
fertilizing treasures unweariedly through every
meadow? What more productive than the vege-
table soil that under favourable conditions teems
with fruits and flowers and the elements of food
for the use and enjoyment of man?
And when we turn to God's provision in grace
we find glorious proofs of the same abundance
and generosity. We see this symbolized by the
activity and generosity of our Lord, as He went
about " preaching the gospel of the kingdom,
and healing all manner of sickness and all manner
of disease among the people." We understand
the spiritual reality of which this was the symbol,
when we call to mind the Divine generosity that
receives the vilest sinners; the efficacy of the
blood that cleanses from all sin; the power of the*
Spirit that sanctifies soul, body, and spirit; the
wisdom of the providence that makes all things
work together for good; the glory of the love
that makes us now " sons of God, and it doth
not yet appear what we shall be; but we know
that when He shall appear we shall be like Him,
for we shall see Him as He is." And once more
it appears in the glory and amplitude of the
inheritance, of which the land of Canaan was
but the type, prepared of God's infinite bounty
for all who are His children by faith. Our
Father's house is both large and well furnished;
it is a house of many mansions; and the inherit-
ance which He has promised is incorruptib^ and
undefiled and fadeth not away.
It is a grand truth, of which we never can
:nake too much, this bountifulness of God, and
the delight which He has in being bountiful. It
is emphatically a truth for faith to apprehend and
enjoy, because appearances are so often against
it. Appearances were fearfully against it while
the Israelites were groaning in their Egyptian
l)ondage, and hardly less so, despite the manna
;ind the water from the rock, during the forty
years' wandering in the desert. But that was a
period of correction and of training, and in such
circumstances lavish bounty was out of the ques-
tion.
The most bountiful man on earth could not
pour out all the liberality of his heart on the
inmates of a hospital for the sick; he may give
all that sick men need, but he must wait till they
are well before he can give full scope to his
generosity. While we are in the body we are
like patients in a hospital, and the kindest feelings
from God toward us must often take the form of
bitter medicines, painful operations, close re-
straint, stinted diet, and it may be silence and
darkness. Rut wait till we are well, and then we
shall see what God hath prepared for him that
waiteth for Him! Wait till we go over Jordan
and take possession of the land! Two things
will be seen in the clearest light — the supreme
bountifulness of God. and the sinfulness of that
impatient and suspicious spirit to which we are
so prone. What a humiliation, if humiliation be
possible in heaven, to discover that all the time
when we were fretting and grumbling, God was
working out His plans of supreme beneficence
and love, waiting only till we should come of
age to make us heirs of the universe!
It is natural to ask why, if the boundaries of
the promised land were so extensive, if they
reached so far on the north-east as the Euphrates,
and if they extended from Lebanon on the north
to the confines of Egypt on the south, there
should have been any difficulty about the two
and a half tribes occupying the land east of the
Jordan, where only by a special permission they
obtained their settlement. For it is plain from
the narrative that it was contrary to God's first
intention, so to speak, that they should settle
there, and that the land west of the Jordan was
that to which the promise was held specially to
apply. It will hardly do to say, as some have
said, that the extension of the land to the Eu-
phrates was a figure of speech, a poetical fringe
or ornament as it were, intended to show that
places adjacent to the land of Israel would share
in some degree the radiance of its light and the
influence of the Divine presence among its peo-
ple. For the promise of God was really of the
nature of a charter, and figures of poetry are
not suitable in charters. It is rather to be
understood that, in the iinal purpose of God, the
possession included the whole of the ample do-
main contained within the specified boundaries,
but that at first it would be confined vvithin a
narrower space. If the people should prove faith-
ful to the covenant, the wider dominion would
one day be conferred on them ; but they v.ere to
start and get consolidated in a narrower territory.
And the narrower space was that which had
already been consecrated by the residence of the
fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The country
west of Jordan was the land of their pilgrimage;
and even when Lot and Abraham had to sepa-
rate, it was not proposed that either should cross
the river. The little strip lying between the
Jordan and the sea was judged most suitable for
the preparatory stage of Israel's history; but had
the nation served God with fidelity, their countrj'
would have been extended— as in the days of
David and Solomon it really was — to the dimen-
sions of an empire. The rule afterwards an-
nounced was to be virtually brought into opera-
tion— " To him that hath shall be given." Hence
the view taken of the settlement of the two and
a half tribes east of the Jordan. It was not ille-
gitimate; it was not inconsistent with the cove-
nant made with the fathers; but it was for the
time inexpedient, seeing that it exposed them to
risks, both material and spiritual, which it would
have been better for them to avoid.
One geographical expression, in the delimita-
tion of the country, demands a brief explanation.
While the countrv is defined as embracing th.e
Joshua i. 6-9.]
JOSHUA'S ENCOURAGEMENT.
647
whole territory from Lebanon to the Euphrates,
it is also defined as consisting in that direction
of " all the land of the Hittites." But were not
the Flittites one of the seven nations whose land
was promised to Abraham and the fathers, and
not even the first in the enumeration of these?
Why should this great north-eastern section
of the promised domain be designated " the land
of the Hittites " ?
The time was when it was a charge against
the accuracy of the Scripture record that it
ascribed to the Hittites this extensive dominion.
That time has passed away, inasmuch as, within
quite recent years, the discovery has been made
that in those distant times a great Hittite em-
pire did exist in the very region specified, be-
tween Lebanon and the Euphrates. The dis-
covery is based on twofold data: references in the
Egyptian and other monuments to a powerful
people, called the Khita (Hittites), with whom
even the great kings of Egypt had long and
bloody wars; and inscriptions in the Hittite
language found in Hamah, Aleppo, and other
places in Syria. There is still much obscurity
resting on the history of this people. That the
Hittites proper prevailed so extensively has been
doubted by some; a Hittite confederacy has been
supposed, and sometimes a Hittite aristocracy
exercising control over a great empire. The
only point which it is necessary to dwell on here
is, that in representing the tract between Leb-
anon and Euphrates as equivalent to " all the
land of the Hittites," the author of the Book of
Joshua made a statement which has been abund-
antly verified by recent research.*
To encourage and animate Joshua to under-
take the work and position of Moses it is very
graciously promised — " There shall not any man
be able to stand before thee all the days of thy
life: as I was with Moses, so will I be with thee:
I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." The in-
variable success promised was a greater boon
than the greatest conquerors had been able to
secure. Uniform success is a thing hardly known
to captains of great expeditions, even though
in the end they may prevail. But the promise
to Joshua is, that all his enemies shall flee be-
fore him. None of his battles shall be even neu-
tral, his opponents must always give way.f No
son of Anak shall be able to oppose his onward
march; no giant, like Og King of Bashan, shall
terrify either him or his troops. Lie will " on-
ward still to victory go,"- — the Lord of hosts ever
with him, the God of Jacob ever his defence.
And» this was no vague, indefinite assurance.
It was sharply defined by a well-known example
in the immediate past — " As I was with Moses,
so I will be with thee." In what a remarkable
variety of dangers and trials God was with
Aloses! Now he had to confront the grandest
monarch on earth, supported by the strongest
armies, and upheld by what claimed to be the
mightest gods. Again he had to deal with an
apostate people, mad upon idols, and afterwards
with an excited mob. ready to stone him.
Anon he had to overcome the forces of nature
and bend them to his purposes; to call water
*See "The Kmpire of tlie Hittites." Bv William
Wrigfht, D. D.. F. K. G. S. London, iS85.
■I- The promise is not inconsistent with the fact that
Joshua's troops were defeated by the men of Ai. In such
promises tliere is an implied condition of steadfa.st regard
to God's will on the part of those who receive them, and
this condition was violated at Ai, not by Joshua, indeed,
but by one of his people.
from the rock, to sweeten the bitter fountain, to
heal the fiery bite, to cure his sister's leprous
body, to bring down bread from heaven, and
people the air with flocks of birds. Moreover,
he had to be the messenger of the covenant be-
tween God and Israel, to unfold God's law in its
length and breadth and in all its variety of appli-
cation, and to obtain from the people a hearty
compliance — " All that the Lord hath said unto
us, that will we do." What a marvellous work
Moses did! What a testimony his life presented
to the reality of the Divine presence and guid-
ance, and what a solid and indefeasible ground
of trust God gave to Joshua when He said, " As
I was with Moses, so will I be with thee."
And this is crowned with the further assur-
ance, " I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee," —
an assurance which is extended in the Epistle
to the Hebrews to all who believe. We are so
apt to view these promises as just beautiful ex-
pressions that we need to pause and think what
they really mean. A promise of Divine presence,
Divine protection and guidance and blessing all
the days of our life, is surely a treasure of in-
expressible value. It is no slight matter to real-
ise that this is in God's heart — that He has a con-
stant, unvarying feeling of love toward us, and
readiness to help; but we must believe this in
order to get the benefit of it; and, moreover,
He must be left to determine the time, the man-
ner, and the form in which His help is to come.
Alas for the unbelief, the suspicion, the fear that
is so prone to eat out the spirit of trust, and
in our trials and difficulties make us tremble as
if we were alone! What a profound peace, what
calm enjoyment and blessed hope fall to the lot
of those who can believe in a God ever near, and
in His unfailing faithfulness and love! Was it
not the secret alike of David's calmness, of our
Lord's serenity, and of the cheerful composure
of many a martyr and many a common man and
woman who have gone through life undisturbed
and happy, that they could say—" I have set
the Lord always before me; because He is at my
right hand, I shall not be moved " ? God grant
us all that, like Abraham, we may " stagger not
at the promise of God through unbelief, but that
being strong in faith we may give glory to God,
and believe that what He hath promised He is
able also to perform."
CHAPTER V.
JOSHUA'S ENCOURAGEMENT.
Joshua i. 6-9.
God has promised to be with Joshua, but
Joshua must strive to act like one in partnership
with God. And that He may do so, God has
just two things to press on him: in the first place,
to be strong and of a good courage; and in the
second place, to make the book of the law his
continual study and guide. In this way he shall
be able to achieve the specific purpose to which
he is called, to divide the land for an inheritance
to the people, as God hath sworn to their fathers;
and likewise, more generally, to fulfil the condi-
tions of a successful life — " then shalt thou make
thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have
.good success."
First. Joshua must be strong and very cour-
648
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
ageous. But are strength and courage really
within our own power? Is strength not abso-
lutely ? Divine gift, and as dependent on God
in its ordinary degrees as it was in the case of
Samson in its highest degree? No doubt in a
sense it is so; and yet the amount even of our
bodily strength is not wholly beyond our own
control. As bodily strength is undoubtedly
weakened by careless living, by excess of eating
and drinking, by all irregular habits, by the
breathing of foul air, by indolence and self-
indulgence of every kind, so undoubtedly it is
increased and promoted by attention to the
simple laws of health, by activity and exercise,
by sleep and sabbatic rest, by the moderate use
of wholesome food, as well as by abstinence from
hurtful drinks and drugs. And surely the duty
of being strong, in so far as such things can
give strength, is of far more importance than
many think; for if we can thus maintain and in-
crease our strength we shall be able to serve both
God and man much better and longer than we
could otherwise have done. On the other hand,
the feebleness and fitfulness and querulousness
often due to preventable illness must increase the
trouble which we give to others, and lessen the
beneficent activity and the brightening influence
of our own lives.
But in Joshua's case it was no doubt strength
and courage of soul that was mainly meant.
Even that is not wholly independent of the ordi-
nary conditions of the body. On the other hand,
there are no doubt memorable cases where the
elasticity and power of the spirit have been in
the very inverse ratio to the strength of the
body. By cheerful views of life and duty, natural
depression has been counteracted, and the soul
filled with hope and joy. " The joy of the
Lord," said Nehemiah, " is the strength of His
people." Fellowship with God, as our recon-
ciled God and Father in Christ, is a source of
perpetual strength. Who does not know the
strengthening and animating influence of the
presence even of a friend, when we find his fresh
and joyous temperament playing on us in some
season of depression? The radiance of his face,
the cheeriness of his voice, the elasticity of his
movements seem to infuse new hope and courage
into the jaded soul. When he is gone, we try
to shake ofT the despondent feeling that has
seized us, and gird ourselves anew for the battle
of life. And if such an effect can be produced by
fellowship with a fellow-creature, how much
more by fellowship with the infinite God! —
especially when it is His work we are trying to
do, and when we have all His promises of help
to rest on. " God is near thee, therefore cheer
thee " is a perpetual Solace and stimulus to the
Christian soul.
But even men who are full of Christian courage
need props and bulwarks in the hour of trial.
Ezra and Nehemiah were bold, but they had
ways of stimulating their courage, which they
sometimes needed to fall back on, and they could
find allies in unlikely quarters. Ezra could draw
courage even from his shame, and Nehemiah
from his very pride. " I was ashamed," said
Ezra, " to require of the king a band of soldiers
and horsemen to help us against the enemy in the
way;" therefore he determined to face the dan-
ger with no help but the unseen help of God.
And when Nehemiah's life was in danger from
the cunning devices of the enemy, and his friends
advised him to hide himself, he repelled the ad-
vice with high-minded scorn — " Should such a
man as I flee? "
But there is no source of courage like thac
which flows from the consciousness of serving
God, and the consequent assurance that He will
sustain and help His servants. Brief ejaculatory
prayers, constantly dropping from their lips,
often bring the courage which is needed. " Now,
therefore, O God, strengthen my hands," was
Nehemiah's habitual exclamation when faint-
ness of heart came over him. No doubt it was
Joshua's too, as it has always been of the best of
God's servants. Again and again, amid the
murderous threats of cannibals in the New Heb-
rides, the missionary Paton must have sunk into
despair but for his firm belief in the protection
of God.
The other counsel to Joshua was to follow
in all things the instructions of Moses, and for
this end, not to let " the book of the law depart
out of his mouth, but to meditate on it day and
night, that he might observe to do all that was
written therein."
For Joshua was called to be the executor of
Moses, as it were, not to start on an independenr
career of his own; and that particular call he
most humbly and cheerfully accepted. Instead
of breaking with the past, he was delighted to
build on it as his foundation, and carry it out to
its predestined issues. It was no part of his
work to improve on what Moses had done; he
was simply to accept it and carry it out. He had
his brief, he had his instructions, and these it
was his one business to fulfil. No puritan ever
accepted God's revelation with more profound
and unquestioning reverence than Joshua ac-
cepted the law of Moses. No Oliver Cromwell
or General Gordon ever recognised more abso-
lutely his duty to carry out the plan of another,
and, undisturbed himself, leave the issue in His
hands. He was to be a very incarnation of
Moses, and was so to meditate on his law
day and night that his mind should be saturated
with its contents.
This, indeed, was a necessity for Joshua, be-
cause he required to have a clear perception of
the great purpose of God regarding Israel.
Why had God taken the unusual course of enter-
ing into covenant with a single family out of the
mass of mankind? A purpose deliberately
formed and clung to for more than four hundred
years must be a grand object in the Divine mind.
It was Joshua's part to keep the people in mind
of the solemnity and grandeur of their mission
and to call them to a corresponding mode of life.
What can more effectually give dignity and self-
respect to men than to find that they have a
part in the grand purposes of God? To find that
God is not asleep; that He has neither given up
the world to chance nor bound it with a chain of
irreversible law, but that He calls us to be fellow-
workers with Him in a great plan which shall
in the end tend gloriously to advance the highest
welfare of man?
This habit of meditation on the law which
Joshua was instructed to practise was of great
value to one who was to lead a busy life. No
mere cursory perusal of a book of law can se-
cure the ends for which it is given. The mem-
ory is treacherous, the heart is careless, and the
power of worldly objects to withdraw attention is
proveroial. We must be continually in contact
with the Book of God. The practice enjoined
on Joshua has kept its ground among a limited
Joshua i. 6-9.]
JOSHUA'S ENCOURAGEMENT.
649
class during all the intervening generations. In
every age of the Church it has been impressed
on all devout and earnest hearts that there can
be no spiritual prosperity and progress without
daily meditation on the Word of God. It would
be hard to believe in the genuine Christianity of
any one who did not make a practice morning
and evening of bringing his soul into contact
with some portion of that Word. And wher-
ever an eminent degree of piety has been reached,
we shall find that an eminently close study of the
Word has been practised. Where the habit is
perfunctory, the tendency is to omit the medita-
tion and to be content with the reading. Even
in pious families there is a risk that the reading
of the Scriptures morning and evening may push
the duty of meditation aside, though even then
we are not to despise the benefit that arises from
the familiarity gained with their contents.
But, on the other hand, the instances are num-
berless of men attaining to great intimacy with
the Divine will and to a large conformity to it,
through meditation on the Scriptures. To many
the daily portion comes fresh as the manna
gathered each morning at the door of Israel's
camp. Think of men like George Miiller of
Bristol reading the Bible from beginning to end
as many as a hundred times, and finding it more
fresh and interesting at each successive perusal.
Think of Livingstone reading it right on four
times when detained at Manyuema, and Stanley
three times during his Emin expedition. What
resources must be in it, what hidden freshness,
what power to feed and revive the soul! The sad
thing is that the practice is so rare. Listen to
the prophet-like rebuke of Edward Irving to
the generation of his time: " Who feels the sub-
lime dignity there is in a fresh saying descended
from the porch of heaven? Who feels the
awful weight there is in the least iota that hath
dropped from the lips of God? Who feels the
thrilling fear or trembling hope there is in words
whereon the eternal destinies of himself do hang?
Who feels the swelling tide of gratitude within
bis breast for redemption and salvation, instead
of flat despair and everlasting retribution? . . .
This book, the offspring of the Divine mind and
the perfection of heavenly wisdom, is permitted
to lie from day to day, perhaps from week to
week, unheeded and unperused; never welcome
to our happy, healthy, and energetic moods;
admitted, if admitted at all, in seasons of
weakness, feeble-mindedness, and disabling sor-
row. . . . Oh, if books had but tongues
to speak their wrongs, then might this
book exclaim, Hear, O heavens, and give
ear, O earth! I came from the love and em-
brace of God, and mute nature, to whom I
brought no boon, did me rightful homage. . . .
I set open to you the gates of salvation and the
way of eternal life, heretofore unknown. . . .
But ye requited me with no welcome, ye held no
festivity on my arrival; ye sequester me from
happiness and heroism, closeting me with sick-
ness and infirmity; ye make not of me, nor use
me as your guide to wisdom and pru<dence, but
press me into your list of duties, and withdraw
me to a mere corner of your time, and most of
you set me at nought and utterly disregard me.-
... If you had entertained me, I should have
possessed you of the peace which I had with
God when I was with Him and was daily His
delight rejoicing always before Him. . . . Be-
cause I have called and ye refused ... I also
will laugh at your calamity and mock when
your fear cometh." *
It is no excuse for neglecting this habitual
reading of the Book of God that He places us
now more under the action of principles than the
discipline of details. For the glory of principles
is that they have a bearing on every detail of
our life. " Whatsoever ye do in word or in deed,
do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving
thanks unto God and the Father by Him."
What could be more comprehensive than this
principle of action — a principle that extends to
" whatsoever we do " ? There is not a moment
of our waking life, not an action great or small
we ever perform where the influence of this wide
precept ought not to be felt. And how can it
become thus pervasive unless we make it a sub-
ject of continual meditation?
In the case of Joshua, all the strenuous exhor-
tations to him to be strong and of a good cour-
age, and to m.editate on the Divine law as given
by Moses by day and by night, were designed
to qualify him for his great work — " to divide the
land for an inheritance to the people as God had
sworn to their fathers." First of all, the land
had to be conquered; and there is no difficulty
in seeing how necessary it was for one who had
this task on hand to be strong and of a good
courage, and to meditate on God's law. Then
the land had to be divided, and the people settled
in their new life, and Joshua had to initiate them,
as it were, in that life; he had to bind on their
consciences the conditions on which the land
was to be enjoyed, and start them in the per-
formance of the duties, moral, social, and relig-
ious, which the Divine constitution required.
Here lay the most difficult part of his task. To
conquer the country required but the talent of a
military commander; to divide the country was
pretty much an affair of trigonometry; but to
settle them in a higher sense, to create a moral
affinity between them and their God, to turn
their hearts to the covenant of their fathers, to
wean them from their old idolatries and estab-
lish them in such habits of obedience and
trust that the doing of God's will would be-
come to them a second nature, — here was the
difficulty for Joshua. They had not only to be
planted physically in groups over the country,
but they had to be married to it morally, other-
wise they had no security of tenure, but were
liable to summary eviction. It was no land of
rest for idolaters; all depended on the character
they attained; loyalty to God was the one con-
dition of a happy settlement; let them begin to
trifle with the claims of Jehovah, punishment and
suffering, to be followed finally by dispersion and
captivity, was the inevitable result.
It was thus that Joshua had to justify his
name, — to show that he was worthy to be called
by the name of Jesus. The work of Jesus may
be said to have been symbolised both by that
of Moses and that of Joshua. Moses symbolised
the Redeemer in rescuing the people from Egypt
and their miserable bondage there; as " Christ
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law."
Joshua symbolised Him as He renews our hearts
and makes us " meet to be partakers of the in-
heritance of the saints in light." For there are
conditions moral and spiritual essential to our
dwelling in the heavenly Canaan. " Lord, who
shall abide in Thy tabernacle? and who shall
dwell in Thy holy hill? He that hath clean
* " For the Oracles of God : font Orations." Pp. 3-6.
65Q
THE BOOK OF lOSHUA.
hands, and a pure heart; who hath not Hfted up
his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully." The
atmosphere of heaven is too pure to be breathed
by the unregenerate and unsanctified. There
must be an adaptation between the character of
the inhabitant and the place of his habitation.
" Verily, verily, I say unto you. Except a man
be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see
the kingdom of God."
Thus we see the connection between Joshua's
devotion to the book of the law, and success in
the great work of his life — " then thou shalt make
thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have
good success." No doubt he would have the
appearance of success if he simply cleared out
the inhabitants who were so degraded by sin that
God was compelled to sweep them ofif, and settled
His people in their room. But that, after all,
was but a small matter unless accompanied by
something more. It would not secure the peo-
ple from at last sharing the fate of the old in-
habitants; so far at least that though they should
not be exterminated, yet they would be scattered
over the face of the globe. How could Joshua
get rid of these ominous words in the song of
Moses to which they had so lately listened?- —
" They provoked Him to jealousy with strange
gods, with abominations provoked they Him to
anger. They sacrificed to devils, not to God;
to gods whom they knew not. to new gods that
came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.
. . . And He said, I will hide My face from them,
I will see what their end shall be; for they are a
very froward generation, children in whom is
no faith." But even if in the end of the day it
should come to this, nevertheless Joshua might
so move and impress the people for the time
being, that in the immediate future all would be
well, and the dreaded consummation would be
put of? to a distant day.
And so at all times, in dealing with human
beings, we can obtain no adequate and satisfying
success unless their hearts are turned to God.
Your children may be great scholars, or success-
ful merchants, or distinguished authors, or bril-
liant artists, or even statesmen; what does it
come to if they are dead to God, and have no
living fellowship with Jesus Christ? Your con-
gregation may be large and influential, and
wealthy, and liberal; what if they are worldly,
proud, and contentious? We must aim at far
deeper effects, effects not to be found without the
Spirit of God. The more we labour in this
spirit, the more shall our way be made pros-
perous, the better shall be our success. " For
them that honour Me I will honour; but they
that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed."
CHAPTER VI.
JOSHUA'S CHARGE TO THE PEOPLE.
Joshua i. 10-18.
God has spoken to Joshua; it is now Joshua's
part to speak to the people. The crossing of
the Jordan must be set about .at once, and in
earnest, and all the risks and responsibilities
involved in that step firmly and fearlessly en-
countered.
And in the steps taken by Joshua for this pur-
pose we see, what we so often see, how the
natural must be exhausted before the super-
natural is brought in. Thus, in communicating
with the people through the shoterim, or officers,
the first order which he gives is to " command
the people to prepare them victuals." " Vict-
uals " denotes the natural products of the coun-
try, and is evidently used in opposition to
" manna." In another passage we read that " the
manna ceased on the very morning after they
had eaten of the old corn of the land " (chap.
V. 12). This may have been a considerable time
before, for the conquest of Sihon and Og would
give the people possession of ample stores of
food out of the old corn of the land. The manna
was a provision for the desert only, where few or
no natural supplies of food could be found. But
the very day when natural stores become avail-
able, the manna is discontinued. One cannot
but contrast the carefully limited use of the
supernatural in Scripture with its arbitrary and
unstinted employment in mythical or fictional
writings. Often in such cases it is brought in
with a wanton profusion, simply to excite won-
der, sometimes to gratify the love of the gro-
tesque, not because natural means could not have
accomplished what was sought, but through
sheer love of revelling in the supernatural. In
Scripture the natural is never superseded when
it is capable of either helping or accomplishing
the end. The east wind helps to dry the Red
Sea, although the rod of Moses has to be
stretched out for the completion of the work.
The angel of God knocks Peter's chains from
his limbs and opens the prison gates for him.
but leaves him to find his way thereafter as best
he can. So now. It is now in the power of the
people to prepare them victuals, and though
God might easily feed them as He has fed them
miraculously for forty years. He leaves them to
find food for themselves. In all cases the co-
operation of the Divine and the human is carried
out with an instructive combination of gener-
osity and economy; man is never to be idle; alike
in the affairs of the temporal and the spiritual
life, the Divine energy always stimulates to
activity, never lulls to sleep.
A little explanation is needed respecting the
time when Joshua said the Jordan must be
crossed — " within three days." If the narrative
of the first two chapters be taken in chronologi-
cal order, more than three days must have
elapsed between the issuing of this order and the
crossing of the river, because it is expressly
stated that the two spies who were sent to ex-
amine Jericho hid themselves for three days in
the mountains, and thereafter recrossed the Jor-
dan and returned to Joshua (ii. 22). But it is
quite in accordance with the practice of Scripture
narrative to introduce an episode out of its
chronological place so that it may not break up
the main record. It is now generally held that
the spies were sent off before Joshua issued this
order to the people, because it is not likely that
he would have committed himself to a particular
day before he got the information which he ex-
pected the spies to bring. In any case, it is plain
that no needless delay was allowed. Half a week
more and Jordan would be crossed, although
the means of crossing it had not yet been made
apparent; and then the people would be actually
in their own inheritance, within the very country
which in the dim ages of the past had been
promised to their fathers.
Yes, the people generally; but already an ar-
rangement had been made for the Reubenires,
Joshua i. 10-18.]
JOSHUA'S CHARGE TO THE PEOPLE.
651
the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh on
the east side of the river. How, then, were they
to act in the present crisis? That had been
determined between them and Moses when they
got leave to occupy the lands of Sihon and Og,
on account of their suitableness for their abund-
ant flocks and herds. It had been arranged
then that, leaving their cattle and their children,
a portion of the men likewise, the rest would
cross the river with their brethren and take their
share of the toils and risks of the conquest of
Western Canaan. All that Joshua needs to do
now is to remind them of this arrangement.
Happily there was no reluctance on their part to
fulfil it. There was no going back from their
word, even though they might have found a
loophole of escape. They might have said that
as the conquest of Sihon and Og had been ac-
complished so easily, so the conquest of the
western tribes would be equally simple. Or
they might have said that the nine tribes and a
half could furnish quite a large enough army to
dispossess the Canaanites. Or they might have
discovered that their wives and children were
exposed to dangers they had not apprehended,
and that it would be necessary for the entire
body of the men to remain and protect them.
But they fell back on no such after thought.
They kept their word at no small cost of toil and
danger, and furnished thereby a perpetual lesson
for those who, having made a promise under
pressure, are tempted to resile from it when the
pressure is removed. Fidelity to engagements is
a noble quality, just as laxity in regard to them
is a miserable sin. Even Pagan Rome could
boast of a Regulus who kept his oath by return-
ing to Carthage, though it was to encounter a
miserable death. In the fifteenth psalm it is a
feature in the portrait of the man who is to
abide in God's tabernacle and dwell in His holy
hill, that he " sweareth to his own hurt, and
changeth not."
One arrangement was made by these trans-
jordanic tribes that was perfectly reasonable —
a portion of the men remained to guard their
families and their property. The number that
passed over was forty thousand (Josh. iv. 13),
whereas the entire number of men capable of
bearing arms (dividing Manasseh into two) was
a hundred and ten thousand (Num. xxvi. 7, 18,
and 34). But the contingent actually sent was
amply sufificient to redeem the promise, and,
consisting probably of picked men, was no doubt
a very efScient portion of the force. The actual
fighting force of the other tribes would probably
be in the same proportion to the whole; and
there, too, a section Nvfould have to be left to
guard the women, children, and flocks, so that
in point of fact the labours and dangers of the
conquest were about equally divided between all
the tribes.
Here, then, was an edifying spectacle: those
who had been first provided for did not forget
those who had not yet obtained any settlement:
but held themselves bound to assist their brethren
until they should be as comfortably settled as
themselves.
It was a grand testimony against selfishness,
a grand assertion of brotherhood, a beautiful
manifestation of loyalty and public spirit; and,
we may add, an instructive exhibition of the
working of the method by which God's provi-
dence seeks to provide for the dissemination of
many blessings r.mong the children of men. It
was an act of socialism, without the drawbacks
which most forms of socialism involve.
God has allowed many dififerences in the lots
of mankind, bestowing on some ample means,
for which they toiled not neither did they spin;
bestowing, often on the same individuals, a
higher position in life, with corresponding social
influence; setting some nations in the van of the
world's march, bestowing on some churches verj'
special advantages and means of influence: and
it is a great question that arises — what obliga-
tions rest on these favoured individuals and com-
munities? Does God lay any duty on them to-
ward the rest of mankind?
The inquiry in its full scope is too wide for
our limits: let us restrict ourselves to the ele-
ment in respect of which the transjordanic tribes
had the advantage of the others — the element of
time. What do those who have received their
benefits early owe to those who are behind them
in time?
The question leads us first to the family con-
stitution, but there is really no question here.
The obligations of parents to their children are
the obligations of those who have already got
their settlement to those who have not; of those
who have already got means, and strength, and
experience, and wisdom to those who have not
yet had time to acquire them. It is only the
vilest of our race that refuse to own their ob-
ligations here, and this only after their nature
has been perverted and demonised by vice. To
all others it is an obligation which amply re-
pays itself. The affection between parent and
child in every* well-ordered house sweetens the
toil that often falls so heavily on the elders; while
the pleasure of seeing their children filling sta-
tions of respectability and usefulness, and the
enjoyment of their affection, even after they have
gone out into the world, amply repay their past
labours, and greatly enrich the joys of life.
We advance to the relation of the rich to the
poor, especially of those who are born to riches
to those who are born to obscurity and toil.
Had the providence of God no purpose in this
arrangement? You who come into the world
amid luxury and splendour, who have never
required to work for a single comfort, who have
the means of gratifying expensive tastes, and who
grudge no expenditure on the objects of your
fancy: — was it meant that you were to sustain no
relation of help and sympathy to the poor, es-
pecially your neighbours, your tenants, or your
workpeople? Do you fulfil the obligations of
life when, pouring into your coffers the fruits of
other men's toil, you hurry off to the resorts
of wealth and fashion, intent only on your own
enjoyment, and without a thought of the toiling
multitude you leave at home? Is it right of you
to leave deserving people to fall peradventure
into starvation and despair, without so much
as turning a finger to prevent it? What are j'ou
doing for the widows and orphans? Selfish and
sinful beings! let these old Hebrews read you a
lesson of condemnation! They could not self-
ishly enjoy their comfortable homes till they had
done their part on behalf of their brethren, for
wherever there is a brotherly heart a poor
brother's welfare is as dear as one's own.
Then there is the case of nations, and pre-
eminently of our own. Some races attain to
civilisation, and order, and good government
sooner than others. They have all the benefit
of settled institutions and enlightened opinion.
652
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
of discoveries in the arts and sciences, and of the
manifold comforts and blessings with which life
is thus enriched, while other nations are sunk in
barbarism and convulsed by disorder. But how
much more prone are such nations to claim the
rights of superiority than to play the part of the
elder brother! We are thankful for the great
good that has been done in India, and in other
countries controlled by the older nations. But
even in the case of India, how many have gone
there not to benefit the natives, but with the
hope of enriching themselves. How ready have
many been to indulge their own vices at the cost
of the natives, and how little has it pained them
to see them becoming the slaves of new vices that
have sunk them lower than before. Our Indian
opium trafflc, and our drink traffic generally
among native races — what is their testimony to
our brotherly feeling? What are we to think of
the white traders among the South Sea islands,
stealing and robbing and murdering their feebler
fellow-creatures? What are we to think of the
traffic in slaves, and the inconceivable brutalities
with which it is carried on? Or what are we to
think of our traders at home, sending out in al-
most uncountable profusion the rum, and the
gin, and the other drinks by which the poor weak
natives are at once enticed, enslaved, and de-
stroyed? Is there any development in selfishness
that has ever been heard of more heartless and
horrible? Why can't they let them alone, if they
will not try to benefit them? What can come to
any man in the end but the well-merited punish-
ment of those who out of sheer greed have made
miserable savages tenfold more \he children of
hell than before?
We pass over the case of the early settlers
in colonies, because there is hardly any obligation
more generally recognised than that of such set-
tlers to lend a helping hand to new arrivals. We
go on to the case of Churches. The light of sav-
ing truth has come to some lands before others.
We in this country have had our Christianity for
centuries, and in these recent years have had so
lively a dispensation of the gospel of Christ that
many have felt more than ever His power to
forgive, to comfort, to lift us up and bless us.
Have we no duty to those parts of the earth
which are still in the shadow of death? If we are
not actually settled in the Promised Land, we
are as good as settled, because we have the
Divine promise, and we believe in that promise.
But what of those who are yet " without Christ,
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and
strangers to the covenants of promise, having no
hope, and without God in the world"? Have
we no responsibility for them? Have we no
interest in that Divine plan which seeks to use
those who first received the light as instruments
of imparting it to the rest? Infidels object that
Christianity cannot be of God, because if Chris-
tianity furnishes the only Divine remedy for sin
it would have been diffused as widely as the evil
for which it is the cure. Our reply is, that God's
plan is to give the light first to some, and to
charge them to give it freely and cordially to
others. We say, moreover, that this plan is a
wholesome one for those who are called to work
it, because it draws out and strengthens what is
best and noblest in them, and because it tends to
form very loving bonds between those who give
and those who get the benefit. But what if the
first recipients of the light fold their hands, con-
tent to have got the blessing themselves, and de-
cline to do their part in sending it to the rest?
Surely there is here no ordinary combination of
sins! Indolence and selfishness at the root, and,
with these, a want of all public spirit and benefi-
cent activity; and, moreover, not mere neglect
but contempt of the Divine plan by which God
has sought the universal diffusion of the blessing.
Again we say, look to these men of Reuben, Gad,
and Manasseh. They were not the elite of the
race of Israel. Their fathers, at least in the case
of Reuben and Dan, were not among the more
honoured of the sons of Jacob. And yet they
had the grace to think of their brethren, when
so many among us are utterly careless of ours.
And not only to think of them, but to go over
the Jordan and fight for them, possibly die for
them; nor would they think of returning to the
comfort of their homes till they had seen their
brethren in the west settled in theirs.
And this readiness of Reuben, Gad, and the
half-tribe of Manasseh to fulfil the engagement
under which they had come to Moses, was not
the only gratifying occurrence which Joshua
met with on announcing the impending crossing
of the Jordan. For the whole people declared
very cordially their acceptance of Joshua as their
leader, vowed to him the most explicit fidelity,
declared their purpose to pay him the same
honour as they had paid to Moses, and de-
nounced a sentence of death against any one that
would not hearken to his words in all that he
commanded them.
Joshua, in fact, obtained from them a promise
of loyalty beyond what they had ever given to
Moses till close on his death. It was the great
trial of Moses that the people so habitually
complained of him and worried him, embittering
his life by ascribing to him even the natural
hardships of the wilderness, as well as the
troubles that sprang directly from their sins. It
is the unwillingness of his people to trust him,
after all he has sacrificed for them, that gives
such a pathetic interest to the life of Moses, and
makes him, more than perhaps any other Old
Testament prophet, so striking an example of un-
requited affection. After crossing the Red Sea,
all the marvels of that deliverance from Pharaoh
of which he had been the instrument are swal-
lowed up and forgotten by the little inconven-
iences of the journey. And afterwards, when
they are doomed to the forty years' wandering,
they are ready enough to blame him for it, for-
getting how he fell down before God and pled for
them when God threatened to destroy them.
Moreover, his enactments against the idolatry
they loved so well made him anything but popu-
lar, to say nothing of the burdensome ceremonial
which he enjoined them to observe. The time of
real loyalty to Moses was just the little period be-
fore his death, when he led them against Sihon
and Og, and a great stretch of fertile and beauti-
ful land fell into their hands. Moses had just
gained the greatest victory of his life, he had
just become master of the hearts of his people,
when he was called away. For Moses at last did
gain the people's hearts, and those to whom
Joshua appealed could say without irony or
sarcasm, " According as we hearkened unto
Moses in all things, so will we hearken unto
thee."
In point of fact a great change had been ef-
fected on the people at last. Moses had
laboured, and Joshua now entered into his
labours. The same thing has often occurred in
Joshua ii.]
THE SPIES IN JERICHO.
653
history, and notably in our own. In civil life
how much do we owe to the noble champions
of freedom of other days, through whose patriot-
ism, courage, and self-denial the hard fight was
fought and the victory won that enables us to
sit under our vine and under our fig tree. In
ecclesiastical life was it not the blood of the
martyrs and the struggles of those of whom the
world was not worthy, who wandered in deserts
and in mountains and in dens and caves of the
earth, that won for us the freedom and the peace
in which we now rejoice? What blessings we
owe to those that have gone before us! And
how can we better discharge our obligations to
them than by hastening to the aid of those who
have but emerged from the period of struggle
and suffering, like the Christians of Madagascar
or of Uganda, whose fearful sufferings and aw-
ful deaths under the merciless rule of heathen
kings made Christendom stand aghast, and drew
a wail of anguish from her bosom?
The unanimity of the people in their loyalty
to Joshua is a touching sight. So far as appears
there was not one discordant note in that har-
monious burst of loyalty. No Korah, Dathan,
or Abiram rose up to decline his rule and em-
barrass him in his new position. It is a beauti-
ful sight, the united loyalty of a great nation.
Nothing more beautiful has ever been known in
the long reign of Queen Victoria than the crowd-
ing of her people in hundreds of thousands to
witness her procession to St. Paul's on that
morning when she went to return thanks for the
rescue of her eldest son from the very jaws of
death. Not one discordant note was uttered,
not one disloyal feeling was known; the vast
multitude were animated by the spirit of sym-
pathy and affection for one who had tried to do
her duty as a queen and as a mother. It was a
sight not unlike to this that was seen in the
streets of New York at the centennial celebra-
tion of the inauguration of George Washington
as first President of the United States. One
was thrilled by the thought that not only the
multitude that thronged the streets, but the rep-
resentatives of the whole nation, gathered in their
churches throughout the land, were animated
by a common sentiment of gratitude to the man
whose wisdom and courage had laid the founda-
tion of all the prosperity and blessing of the last
hundred years. Are not such scenes the pattern
of that spirit of loyalty which the entire race of
man owes to Him who by His blood redeemed
the world, and whose rule and influence, if the
world would but accept of it, are so beneficent
and so blessed? Yet how far are we from such
a state! How few are the hearts that throb with
true loyalty to the Saviour, and whose most
fervent aspiration for the world is, that it would
only throw down its weapons of rebellion, and
give to him its hearty allegiance! Strange that
the Old Testament Joshua should have got at
once what eighteen hundred years have failed to
bring to the New Testament Jesus! God hasten
the day of universal light and universal love,
when He shall reign from sea to sea, and from
>^he river to the ends of the earth!
"One song employs all nations, and all cry
' Worthy the Lamb, for He was slain for us ! '
The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountain tops
From distant mountains catch the flying joy,
Till nation after nation taught the strain
Earth rolls the rapturous H'^sanna round."
42-Vol. I.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SPIES IN JERICHO.
Joshua ii.
It was not long ere Joshua found an occasion
not only for the exercise of that courage to
which he had been so emphatically called both
by God and the people, but for calling on others
to practise the same manly virtue. For the
duty which he laid on the two spies — detectives
we should now call them — to enter Jericho and
bring a report of its condition, was perhaps the
most perilous to which it was possible for men
to be called. It was like sending them into a den
of lions, and expecting them to return safe and
sound. Evidently he was happy in finding two
men ready for the duty and the risk. Young
men they are called further on (vi. 23), and it is
quite likely that they were leading men in their
tribes. No doubt they might disguise them-
selves, they might divest themselves of anything
in dress that was characteristically Hebrew, they
might put on the clothes of neighbouring peas-
ants, and carry a basket of produce for sale in
the city; and as for language, they might be able
to use the Canaanite dialect and imitate the
Canaanite accent. But if they did try any such
disguise, they must have known that it would
be of doubtful efficacy; the of^cials of Jericho
could not fail to be keenly on the watch, and no
disguise could hide the Hebrew features, or
divest them wholly of the air of foreigners.
Nevertheless the two men had courage for the
risky enterprise. Doubtless it was the courage
that sprang from faith! it was in God's service
they went, and God's protection would not fail
them. To be able to find agents so willing and
so suitable was a proof to Joshua that God had
already begun to fulfil His promises.
Joshua had been a spy himself, and it was
natural enough that he should think of the same
mode of reconnoitring the country, now that
they were again on the eve of making the en-
trance into it which they should have made
nearly forty years before. There is no reason
to think that in taking this step Joshua acted
presumptuously, proceeding on his own counsel
when he should have sought counsel of God.
For Joshua might rightly infer that he ought
to take this course inasmuch as it had been fol-
lowed before with God's approval in the case of
the twelve. Its purpose was twofold — to obtain
information and confirmation. Information as
to the actual condition and spirit of the Canaan-
ites, as to the view they took of the approaching
invasion of the Israelites, and the impression
that had been made on them by all the remark-
able things that had happened in the desert; and
confirmation, — new proof for his own people
that God was with them, fresh encouragement to
go up bravely to the attack, and fresh assurance
that not one word would ever fail them of all the
things which the Lord had promised.
We follow the two men as they leave Shittim,
so named from the masses of bright acacia which
shed their glory over the plain; then cross the
river at " the fords," which flooded though they
were, were still practicable for swimmers; enter
the gates of Jericho, and move along the streets.
In such a city as Jericho, and among such an
immoral people as the Canaanites, it was not
'>54
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
strange that they should fall in with a \yoman
of Rahab's occupation, and should receive an
invitation to her house. Some commentators
have tried to make out that she was not so bad
as she is represented, but only an innkeeper; but
the meaning of the word both here and as trans-
lated in Heb. xi. and James ii. is beyond contra-
diction. Others have supposed that she was one
of the harlot-priestesses of Ashtoreth, but in that
case she would have had her dwelling in the
precincts of a temple, not in an out-of-the-way
place on the walls of the city. We are to re-
member that in the degraded condition of public
opinion in Canaan, as indeed much later in the
case of the Hetairai of Athens, her occupation
was not regarded as disgraceful, neither did it
banish her from her family, nor break up the
bonds of interest and affection between them,
as it must do in every moral community.* It
was not accompanied with that self-contempt
and self-loathing which in other circumstances
are its fruits. We may quite easily understand
how the spies might enter her house simply for
the purpose of getting the information they de-
sired, as modern detectives when tracking out
crime so often find it necessary to win the con-
fidence and worm out the secrets of members
of the same wretched class. But the emissaries
of Joshua were in too serious peril, in too devout
a mood, and in too high-strung a state of nerve
to be at the mercy of any Delilah that might
wish to lure them to careless pleasure. Their
faith, their honour, their patriotism, and their
regard to their leader Joshua, all demanded the
extremest circumspection and self-control; they
were, like Peter, walking on the sea; unless they
kept their eye on their Divine protector, their
courage and presence of mind would fail them,
they would be at the mercy of their foes.
Whether disguised or not, the two men had
evidently been noticed and suspected when they
entered the city, which they seem to have done
in the dusk of evening. But, happily for them,
the streets of Jericho were not patrolled by
policemen ready to pounce on suspicious persons,
and run them in for judicial examination. The
king or burgomaster of the place seems to have
been the only person with whom it lay to deal
with them. Whoever had detected them, after
following them to Rahab's house, had then to
resort to the king's residence and give their in-
formation to him. Rahab had an inkling of
what was likely to follow, and being determined
to save the men, she hid them on the roof of the
house, and covered them with stalks of fiax,
stored there for domestic use. When, after some
interval, the king's messengers came, command-
ing her to bring them forth since they were
Israelites come to search the city, she was ready
with her plausible tale. Two men had indeed
come to her, but she could not tell who they
* It is .somewhat remarkable that the present villag-e of
Riha, at or near the site of the ancient Jericho, is noted
for its licentiousness. Tl'ie men, it is said, wink at the
infidelity of the women, a trait of character sinffularlv at
variance with the customs of the Bedouin. " At our' en-
campment over 'Ain Terabeh (says Robinson) the nig-lit
before we reached this place, we' overheard our Arabs
asking the Khatib for a paper or written charm to protect
them from the women of Jericho ; and from their conver-
sation it seemed that illicit intorcour.se between the latter
and strantjers that come here is regarded as a matter of
course. Strange that the inhabitants of the valley sliould
have retained this character froiu the earliest ages ; and
that the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah should still flourish
upon the same accursed soil. '—"Researches in Pales-
tin-," i. 553.
were, — it was no business of hers to be inquisi-
tive about them; the men had left just before the
gates were shut, and doubtless, if they were alert
and pursued after them, they would overtake
them, for they could not be far ofif. The king's
messengers had not half the wit of the woman;
they took her at her word, made no search of
her house, but set out on the wild-goose chase
on which she had sent them. Sense and spirit
failed them alike.
We are not prepared for the remarkable devel-
opment of her faith that followed. This first
Canaanite across the Jordan with whom the Is-
raelites met was no ordinary person. Rays of
Divine light had entered that unhallowed soul,
not to be driven back, not to be hidden under a
bushel, but to be welcomed, and ultimately im-
proved and followed. Our minds are carried
forward to what was so impressive in the days
of our Lord, when the publicans and the harlots
entered into the kingdom before the scribes and
the Pharisees. We are called to admire the
riches of the grace of God, who does not scorn
the moral leper, but many a time lays His hand
upon him, and says " I will, be thou clean."
" They shall come from the east, and from the
west, and from the north, and from the south,
and shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but
the children of the kingdom shall be cast into
outer darkness; there shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth."
In the first place, Rahab made a most explicit
confession of her faith, not only in Jehovah as
the God of the Hebrews, but in Him as the one
only God of heaven and earth. It would have
been nothing had she been willing to give to the
Hebrew God a place, a high place, or even the
highest place among the gods. Her faith went
much further. " The Lord your God, He is
God in heaven above and in earth beneath."
This is an exclusive faith — Baal and Ashtoreth
are nowhere. What a remarkable conviction to
take hold of such a mind! All the traditions of
her youth, all the opinions of her neighbours,
all the terrors of her priests set at nought, swept
clean off the board, in face of the overwhelming
evidence of the sole Godhead of Jehovah!
Again, she explained the reason for this faith.
" We have heard how the Lord dried up the
water of the Red Sea for you, when ye came out
of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of
the Amorites, that were on the other side Jor-
dan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed."
The woman has had an eye to see and an ear
to hear. She has not gazed in stupid amazement
on the marvellous tokens of Divine power dis-
played before the world, nor accepted the sophis-
try of sceptics referring all these marvels to ac-
cidental thunderstorms and earthquakes and high
winds. She knew better than to suppose that a
nation of slaves by their own resources could
have eluded all the might of Pharaoh, subsisted
for forty years in the wilderness, and annihilated
the forces of such renowned potentates as Sihon
and Og. She was no philosopher, and could not
have reasoned on the doctrine of causation, but
her common sense taught her that you cannot
have extraordinary effects without correspond-
ing causes. It is one of the great weaknesses of
modern unbelief that with all its pretensions to
philosophy, it is constantly accenting effects
without an adequate cause, jesus Christ, though
He revolutionised the world, though He founded
an empire to which that of the Caesars is not
foshua ii.]
THE SPIES IN JERICHO.
655
for a moment to be compared, though all that
were about Him admitted His supernatural
power and person, after all, was nothin_g but a
man. The gospel that has brought peace and joy
to so many weary hearts, that has transformed
the slaves of sin into children of heaven, that has
turned cannibals into saints, and fashioned so
many an angelic character out of the rude blocks
of humanity, is but a cunningly devised fable.
What contempt for such sophistries, such vain
explanations of facts patent to all would this
poor woman have shown! How does she rebuke
the many that keep pottering in poor natural
explanations of plain supernatural facts, instead
of manfully admitting that it is the Arm of God
that has been revealed, and the Voice of God that
has spoken!
Further, Rahab informed the spies that when
they heard these things the inhabitants of the
land had become faint, their hearts melted, and
there remained no more courage in them because
of the Israelites. For they felt that the tremen-
dous Power that had desolated Egypt and dried
up the sea, that had crushed Sihon King of the
Amorites and Og King of Bashan like nuts
under the feet of a giant, was now close upon
themselves. What could they do to arrest the
march of such a power, and avert the ruin which
it was sure to inflict? They had neither resource
nor refuge — their hearts melted in them. It is
when Divine Power draws near to men, or when
men draw near to Divine Power that they get the
right measure of its dimensions and the right
sense of their own impotence. Caligua could
scoff at the gods at a distance, but in any calam-
ity tto man was more prostrate with terror. It
is easy for the atheist or the agnostic to assume
a bold front when God is far ofif, but woe betide
him when He draws near in war, in pestilence,
or in death!
If we ask. How could Rahab have such a faith
and yet be a harlot? or how could she have
such faith in God and yet utter that tissue of
falsehoods about the spies with which she de-
luded the messengers of the king? we answer
that light comes but gradually and slowly to
persons like Rahab. The conscience is but grad-
ually enlightened. How many men have been
slaveholders after they were Christians! Worse
than that, did not the godly John Newton, one
of the two autliors of the Olney hymns, continue
for some time in the slave trade, conveying car-
goes of his fellow-creatures stolen from their
homes, before he awoke to a sense of its infamy?
Are there no persons among us calling them-
selves Christians engaged in traffic that brings
awful destruction to the bodies and souls of their
fellow-men? That Rahab should have continued
as she was after she threw in her lot with God's
people is inconceivable; but there can be no
doubt how she was living when she first comes
into Bible history. And as to her falsehoods,
though some have excused lying when practised
in order to save life, we do not vindicate her on
that ground. All falsehood, especially what is
spoken to those who have a right to trust us,
must be offensive to the God oi trutli. and the
nearer men get to the Divine image, through the
growing closeness of their Divine fellowship, the
more do they recoil from it. Rahab was yet in
the outermost circle of the Church, just touching
the boundary; the nearer she got to the centre
the more would she recoil alike from the foul-
ness ai^l the falseness of her early years.
We have to notice further in Rahab a deter-
mination to throw in her lot with the people of
God. In spirit she had ceased to be a Canaanite
and become an Israelite. She showed this by
taking the side of the spies against the king, and
exposing herself to certain and awful punish-
ment if it had been found out that they were in
her house. And her confidential conversation
with them before she sent them away, her cor-
dial recognition of their God, her expression of
assurance that the land would be theirs, and
her request for the protection of herself and her
relations when the Israelites should become
masters of Jericho, all indicated one who desired
to renounce the fellowship of her own people and
cast in her lot with the children of God. That
she was wholly blameless in the way in which
she went about this, in favouring the spies
against her own nation in this underhand way,
we will not afifirm; but one cannot look for a
high sense of honour in such a woman. Still,
whatever may be said against her, the fact of her
remarkable faith remains conspicuous and be-
yond dispute, all the more striking, too, that she
is the last person in whom we should have ex-
pected to find anything of the kind. That faith
beyond doubt was destined to expand and fructify
in her heart, giving birth to virtues and graces
that made her after life a great contrast to what
it had been. No doubt the words of the Apostle
might afterwards have been applied to her —
" Such were some of you: but ye are washed,
but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the
name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of the
Lord."
And yet. though her faith may at this time
have been but as a grain of mustard seed, we see
two effects of it that are not to be despised. One
was her protection of the Lord's people, as rep-
resented by the spies; the other was her concern
for her own relations. Father, mother, brothers,
and sisters and all that they had, were dear to
her, and she took measures for their safety when
the destruction of Jericho should come. She
exacted an oath of the two spies, and asked a
pledge of them, that they would all be spared
when the crisis of the city arrived. And the men
passed their oath and arranged for the protection
of the family. No doubt it may be said that it
was only their temporal welfare about which she
expressed concern, and for which she made pro-
vision. But what more could she have been ex-
pected to do at that moment? What more could
the two spies have engaged to secure? It was
plain enough that if they were ever to obtain
further benefit from fellowship with God's peo-
ple, their lives must be preserved in the first in-
stance from the universal destruction which was
impending. Her anxiety for her family, like her
anxiety for herself, may even then have begun to
extend beyond things seen and temporal, and a
fair vision of peace and joy may have begun
to flit across her fancy at the thought of the vile
and degrading idolatry of the Canaanites being
displaced in them by the service of a God of
holiness and of love. But neither was she far
enough advanced to be able as yet to give ex-
pression to this hope, nor were the spies the per-
sons to whom it would naturally have been com-
municated. The usual order in the Christian life
is, that as anxiety about ourselves begins in a
sense of personal danger and a desire for deliver-
ance therefrom, so spiritual anxiety about the
objects of our afTeclion h:\-- usun'ly the same be-
656
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
ginning. But as it would be a miserable thing
for the new life to stand still as soon as our
personal safety was secured, so it would be a
wretched affection that sought nothing more on
behalf of our dearest friends. When, by accept-
ing Christ, we get the blessing of personal safety,
we only reach a height from which we see how.
many other things we need. We become
ashamed of our unholy passions, our selfish
hearts, our godless ways, and we aspire, with an
ardour which the world cannot understand, to
purity and unselfishness and consecration to
God. For our friends we desire the same; we
feel for them as for ourselves, that the bondage
and pollution of sin are degrading, and that there
can be neither peace, nor happiness, nor real
dignity for the soul until it is created anew after
the image of God.
Some commentators have laid considerable
stress on the line of scarlet thread that was to be
displayed in the window by which the spies had
been let down, as a token and remembrance that
that house was to be spared when the victorious
army should enter Jericho. In that scarlet
thread they have seen an emblem of atonement,
an emblem of the blood of Christ by which sin-
ners are redeemed. To us it seems more likely
that, in fixing on this as the pledge of safety,
the spies had in view the blood sprinkled on the
lintels and door posts of the Hebrew houses in
Egypt by which the destroying angel was guided
to pass them by. The scarlet rope had some re-
semblance to blood, and for this reason its
special purpose might be more readily appre-
hended. Obviously the spies had no time to go
into elaborate explanations at the moment. It
is to be observed that, as the window looked
to the outside of the city, the cord would be ob-
served by the Israelites and the house recognised
as they marched round and round, according to
the instructions of Joshua. Not a man of all
the host but would see it again and again, as
they performed their singular march, and would
mark the position of the house so carefully that
its inmates, gathered together like the family of
Noah in the ark, would be preserved in perfect
safety.
The stratagem of Rahab, and the mode of
flight which she recommended to the spies, fruits
of woman's ready wit and intuitive judgment,
were both successful. She reminds us of the
self-possession of Jael, or of Abigail, the wife of
Nabal. In the dark, the spies escaped to the
mountain, — the rugged rampart which bounded
the valley of the Jordan on the west. Hiding
in its sequestered crevices for three days, till the
pursuit of the Jerichonians was over, they stole
out under cover of darkness, recrossed the Jor-
dan, told Joshua of their stirring and strange
adventure, and wound up with the remark that
the hearts of the people of the country were
melting because of them. How often is this true,
though unbelief cannot see it! When Jesus told
His disciples that He beheld Satan fall as light-
ning from heaven. He taught us that those who
set themselves against Him and His cause are
fallen powers, no longer flushed with victory and
hope, but defeated and dejected, and consciously
unable to overcome the heaven-aidcl for'-es
that are against them. Well for all Christian
philanthropists and missionaries of the Cross,
and brave assailants of lust and greed and vice
and error, to bear this in mind! The cause of
da kness never can triumph in the end. it has no
power to rally and rush against the truth; if only
the servants of Christ would be strong and of
a good courage, they too would find that the
boldest champions of the world do faint because
of them.
When the spies return to Joshua and tell him
all that has befallen them, he accepts their ad-
venture as a token for good. They have not
given him any hint how Jericho is to be taken;
but, what is better, they have shown him that the
outstretched arm of God has been seen by the
heathen, and that the inhabitants of the country
are paralysed on account of it. The two spies
were a great contrast to the ten that accompanied
Joshua and Caleb so long before: the ten de-
clared the land unassailable; the two looked on
it as already conquered — " The Lord hath de-
livered into our hands all the land." Children of
Israel, you must not be outdone in faith by a har-
lot; believe that God is with you, go up, and
possess the land!
CHAPTER VIII.
JORDAN REACHED.
Joshua iii. 1-7.
The host of Israel had been encamped for
some time at Shittim on the east side of the river
Jordan. It is well to understand the geographi-
cal position. The Jordan has its rise beyond the
northern boundary of Palestine in three sources,
the most interesting and beautiful of the three
being one in the neighbourhood of Cassarea
Philippi. The three streamlets unite in the little
lake now called Huleh, but Merom in Bible
times. Issuing from Merom in a single stream
the Jordan flows on to the lake of Galilee or
Gennesareth, and from thence, in a singularly
winding course to the Dead Sea. Its course be-
tween the lake of Galilee and the Dead Sea is
through a kind of ravine within a ravine; the
outer ravine is the valley or plain of Jordan, now
called by the Arabs El Ghor, which is about six
miles in width at its northern part, and consider-
ably more at its southern, where the Israelites
now were. Within this " El Ghor " is a nar-
rower ravine about three-quarters of a mile in
width, in the inner part of which flows the river,
its breadth varying from twenty to sixty yards.
Some travellers say that the Jordan does not
now rise so high as formerly, but others tell us
they have seen it overflowing its banks at the
corresponding season. But " the plain " is not
fertilised by the rising waters: hence the reason
why the banks of the river are not studded with
towns as in Egypt. It is quite possible, how-
ever, that in the days of Abraham and Lot arti-
ficial irrigation was made use of: hence the de-
scription given of it then that it was " like the
land of Egypt" (Gen. xiii. 10). If it be re-
marked as strange that Jordan should have over-
flowed his banks " in time of harvest" (Josh. iii.
15) when usually rain does not fall in Palestine,
it is to be remembered that all the sources of
the Jordan are fountains, and that fountains do
not usually feel the effects of the rain until some
time after it has fallen. The harvest referred to
is the barley harvest, and near Jericho that
harvest must have occurred earlier than through-
out the country on account of the greater heat.
The host of Israel lay encamped at Shittim, or
Joshua iii. 1-7.]
JORDAN REACHED.
657
Abel Shittim, " the shadow or moist place of the
acacias," somewhere in the Arboth-Moab or
fields of Moab. The exact spot is unknown,-
but it was near the foot of the Moabite moun-
tains, where the streams, coming down from the
heights on their way to the Jordan, caused a
luxuriant growth of acacias, such as are still
found in some of the adjacent parts. Sunk as
this part of the plain is far below the level of the
Mediterranean, and enclosed by the mountains
behind it as by the walls of a furnace, it pos-
sesses an almost tropical climate which, though
agreeable enough in winter and early spring,
would have been unbearable to the Israelites in
the height of summer. It was while Israel
" abode in Shittim," during the lifetime of
Moses, that they were seduced by the Moabites
to join in the idolatrous revels of Baal-peor and
punished with the plague. The acacia groves
gave facilities for the unhallowed revelling.
That chastisement had brought them into a bet-
ter spirit, and now they were prepared for better
things.
The Jordan was not crossed then by bridges
nor by ferry boats; the only way of crossing was
by fords. The ford nearest to Jericho, now
called El Mashra'a, is well known; it was the
ford the Israelites would have used had the river
been fordable; and perhaps the tradition is cor-
rect that there the crossing actually took place.
When the spies crossed and recrossed the river
it must have been by swimming, as it was too
deep for wading at the time; but though this
mode of crossing was possible for individuals,
it was manifestly out of the question for a host.
That the Israelites could by no possibility cross
at that season must have been the forlorn hope
of the people of Jericho; possibly they smiled at
the folly of Joshua in choosing such a time of
the year, and asked in derision. How is he ever
to get over?
The appointed day for leaving Shittim has
come, and Joshua, determined to lose no time,
rises " early in the morning." Nor is it without
a purpose that so often in the Old Testament
narrative, when men of might commence some
great undertaking, we are told that it was early
in the morning. In all hot climates work in the
open air, if done at all, must^ be done early in
the morning or in the evening. But, besides
this, morning is the appropriate time for men
of great energy and decision to be astir; and it
readily connects itself with the New Testament
text — " Not slothful in business, fervent in
spirit, serving the Lord." The benefits of an
early start for all kinds of successful work
are in the proverbs of all nations; and we may
add that few have reached a high position in the
Christian life who could not say, in the spirit of
the hymn, " early in the morning my 'song shall
rise to Thee." Nor can it easily be understood
how under other conditions the precept could be
fulfilled — " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with thy might."
From Shittim to the banks of the Jordan is an
easy journey of a few miles, the road being all
over level ground, so that the march was prob-
ably finished before the sun had risen high.
However strong their faith, it could not be with-
out a certain tremor of heart that the people
would behold the swollen river, and mark the
walls and towers of Jericho a few miles beyond.
Three days are to be allowed, if not for physical,
certainly for moral and spiritual preparation for
the crossing of the river. The three days are
probably the same as those adverted to before
(chap. i. 3), just as the order to select twelve
men to set up twelve stones (chap. iii. 12) is
probably the same as that more fully detailed in
chap. iv. 2. The host is assembled in orderly
array on the east bank of the Jordan, when the
officers pass through to give instructions as to
their further procedure. Three such instruc-
tions are given.
First, they are to follow the ark. Whenever
they see the priests that bear it in motion, they
are to move from their places and follow it.
There was no longer the pillar of fire to guide
them — that was a wilderness-symbol af God's
presence, now superseded by a more permanent
symbol — the ark. Both symbols represented the
same great truth — the gracious presence and
guidance of God, and both called the people to
the same duty and privilege, and to the same
assurance of absolute safety so long as they fol-
lowed the Lord. Familiar sights are apt to lose
their significance, and the people must have be-
come so familiar with the wilderness-pillar that
they would hardly think what it meant. Now a
different symbol is brought forward. The ark
carried in solemn procession by the priests is
now the appointed token of God's guidance, and
therefore the object to be unhesitatingly fol-
lowed. A blessed truth for all time was clearly
shadowed forth. Follow God implicitly and un-
hesitatingly in every time of danger, and you
are safe. Set aside the counsels of casuistry, of
fear, and of worldly wisdom; find out God's will
and follow it through good report and through
evil report, and you will be right. It was thus
that Joshua and Caleb did, and counselled the
people to do, when they came back from ex-
ploring the land; and now these two were reap-
ing the benefit; while the generation, that would
have been comfortably settled in the land if they
had done the same, had perished in the wilder-
ness on account of their unbelief.
Secondly, a span of two thousand cubits was to
be left between the people and the ark. Some
have thought that this was designed as a token
of reverence; but this is not the reason assigned.
Had it been designed as a token of reverence,
it would have been prescribed long before, as
soon as the ark was constructed, and began to
be carried with the host through the wilderness.
The intention was, " that ye may know the way
by which you must go" (ver. 4). If this ar-
rangement had not been made, the course of the
ark through the flat plains of the Jordan would
not have been visible to the mass of the host,
but only to those in the immediate neighbour-
hood, and the people would have been liable to
straggle and fall into confusion, if not to diverge
altogether. In all cases, when we are looking
out for Divine guidance, it is of supreme im-
portance that there be nothing in the way to
obscure the object or to distort our vision. Alas,
how often is this direction disregarded! How
often do we allow our prejudices, or our wishes,
or our worldly interests to come between us and
the Divine direction we profess to desire! At
some turn of our life we feel that we ought not
to take a decisive step without asking guidance
from above. But our own wishes bear strongly
in a particular direction, and we arc only too
prone to conclude that God is in favour of our
plan. We do not act honestly; we lay stress on
all that is in favour of what we like; we think
658
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
little of considerations of the opposite kind.
And when we announce our decision, if the
matter concern others, we are at pains to tell
them that we have made it matter of prayer. But
why make it matter of prayer if we do so with
prejudiced minds? It is only when our eye is
single that the whole body is full of light. This
clear space of two thousand cubits between the
people and the ark deserves to be remembered.
Let us have a like clear space morally between
us and God when we go to ask His counsel, lest
peradventure we not only mistake His directions,
but bring disaster on ourselves and dishonour on
His name.
Thirdly, the people were instructed, — "Sanc-
tify yourselves, for to-morrow the Lord will do
wonders among you." It is an instinct of our
nature that when we are to meet with some
one of superior worldly rank preparation must
be made for the meeting. When Joseph was
summoned into the presence of Pharaoh, and
they brought him hastily out of the dungeon,
" he shaved himself, and changed his raiment,
and came in unto Pharaoh." The poorest sub-
ject of the realm would try to wear his best and
to look his best in the presence of his sovereign.
But while " man looketh on the outward ap-
pearance the Lord looketh on the heart." And
our very instincts teach us, that the heart needs
to be prepared when God is drawing near. It is
not in our ordinary careless mood that we ought
to stand before Him who "sets our iniquities be-
fore Him, our secret sins in the light of His
countenance." Grant that we can neither atone
for our sin, nor cleanse our hearts without His
grace; nevertheless, in God's presence everything
that is possible ought to be done to remove the
abominable thing which He hates, so that He
may not be affronted and offended by its pres-
ence. Most appropriate, therefore, was Joshua's
counsel, — " Sanctify yourselves, for to-morrow
the Lord will do wonders among you." He will
surpass all that your eyes have seen since that
night, much to be remembered, when He di-
vided the sea. He will give you a token of
His love and care that will amaze you, much
though you have seen of it in the wilderness, and
in the country of Sihon and Og. Expect great
things, prepare for great things; and let the chief
of your preparations be to sanctify yourselves,
for " the foolish shall not stand in His sight, and
He hateth all workers of iniquity."
Next day (compare ver. 5, " to-morrow," and
ver. 7, " this day ") Joshua turns to the priests
and bids them " take up the ark of the covenant."
The priests obey; " they take up the ark, and go
before the people."
Shall we take notice of the assertion of some
that all those parts of the narrative which refer
to priests and religious service were introduced
by a writer bent on glorifying the priesthood?
Or must we repel the insinuation that the intro-
duction of the ark, and the miraculous effects as-
cribed to its presence, are mere myths? If they
are mere myths, they are certainly myths of a
very peculiar kind. Twice only in this book is
the ark associated with miraculous events — at the
crossing of the Jordan and at the taking of Jeri-
cho. If these were myths, why was the myth
confined to these two occasions? When mythi-
cal writers find a remarkaWe talisman they intro-
duce it at all sorts of times. Why was the ark
not brought to the siege of Ai? Why was it
absent from the battles of Bethhoron and
Merom? Why was its presence restricted to the
Jordan and Jericho, unless it was God's purpose
to inspire confidence at first through the visible
symbol of His presence, but leave the people
afterwards to infer His presence by faith?
The taking up of the ark by the priests was a
decisive step. There could be no resiling now
from the course entered on. The priests with the
ark must advance, and it will be seen whether
Joshua has been uttering words without founda-
tion, or whether he has been speaking in the
name of God. Shall mere natural forces be
brought into play, or shall the supernatural might
of heaven come to the conflict, and show that
God is faithful to His promise?
Let us put ourselves in Joshua's position. We
do not know in what manner the communica-
tions were carried on between hiin and Jehovah
of which we have the record under the words
" the Lord spake unto Joshua." Was it by an
audible voice? Or was it by impressions on
Joshua's mind of a kind that could not have
originated with himself, but that were plainly the
result of Divine influence? In any case, they
were such as to convey to Joshua a very clear
knowledge of the Divine will. Yet even in the
best of men nature is not so thoroughly sub-
dued in such circumstances but that the shadow
of anxiety and fear is liable to flit across them.
They crave something like a personal pledge that
all will go well. Hence the seasonableness of
the assurance now given to Joshua — " This day
will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all
Israel, that they may know that, as I was with
Moses, so I will be with thee." How full and
manifold the assurance! First, I will magnify
thee. I will endue thee with supernatural might,
and that will give you authority and weight, cor-
responding to the position in which you stand.
Further, this shall be but the beginning of a
process which will be renewed as often as there
is occasion for it. " This day I will begin." You
are not to go a warfare on your own charges,
but " as your days, so shall your strength be."
Moreover, this exaltation of your person and
ofifice will take place " in the sight of all Israel,"
so that no man of them shall ever be justified
in refusing you allegiance and obedience. And
to sum up — you shall be just as Moses was; the
resources of My might will be as available for you
as they were for him. After this, what misgiv-
ings could Joshua have? Could he doubt the
generosity, the kindness, the considerateness of
his Master? Here was a promise for life; and
no doubt the more he put it to the test in after
years the more trustworthy did he find it, and the
more convincing was the proof it supplied of the
mindfulness of God.
It is an experience which has been often re-
peated in the case of those who have had to
undertake difiicult work for their Master. Of
all our misapprehensions, the most baseless and
the most pernicious is, that God does not care
much about us, and that we have not much to
look for from Him. It is a misapprehension
which dishonours God greatly, and which He
is ever showing Himself most desirous to re-
move. It stands fearfully in the way of that
spirit of trust by which God is so much hon-
oured, and which He is ever desirous that we
should show. And those who have trusted God,
and have gone forward to their work in His
strength, have always found delightful evidence
that their trust has not been in vain. What is
Joshua iii.]
JORDAN DIVIDED.
659
the testimony ol our great Christian philan-
thropis-ts, our most successful missionaries, and
other devoted Christian workers? Led to un-
dertake enterprises far beyond their strength,
and undergo responsibihties far beyond their
means, we know not a single case in which they
have not had ample proof of the mindfulness of
their Master, and found occasion to wonder at
the considerateness and the bountifulness which
He has brought to bear upon their position.
And is it not strange that we should be so slow
to learn how infinite God is in goodness? That
we should have no difficulty in believing in the
goodness of a parent or of some kind friend
who has always been ready to help us in our
times of need, but so slow to realise this in regard
to God, though we are constantly acknowledging
in words that He is the best as well as the great-
est of beings? It is a happy era in one's spiritual
history when one escapes from one's contracted
views of the love and liberality of God, and be-
gins to realise that " as far as heaven is above
the earth, so far are His ways above our ways,
and His thoughts above our thoughts"; and
when one comes to find that in one's times of
need, whether arising from one's personal con-
dition or from the requirements of public service,
one may go to God for encouragement and help
with more certainty of being well received
than one may go to the best and kindest of
friends.
It is sometimes said that the Old Testament
presents us with a somewhat limited view of
God's love. Certainly it is in the New Testa-
ment that we see it placed in the brightest of all
lights — the Cross, and that we find the argument
in its most irresistible form — " He that spared
not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us
all, how shall He not, with Him also, freely
give us all things? " But one must have read
the Old Testament in a very careless spirit
if one has not been struck with its fre-
quent and most impressive revelations of
God's goodness. What scenes of gracious in-
tercourse with His servants does it not present
from first to last, what outpourings of afifection,
what yearnings of a father's heart! If there were
many in Old Testament times whom these rev-
elations left as heedless as they found them,
there were certainly some whom they filled with
wonder and roused to words of glowing grati-
tude. The Bible is not wont to repeat the same
thought in the same words. But there is one
truth and one only which we find repeated again
and again in the Old Testament, in the same
words, as if the writers were never weary of
them — " For His mercy endureth for ever." Not
only is it the refrain of a whole psalm (cxxxvi.),
but we find it at the beginning of three other
psalms (cvi., cvii., cxviii.), we find it in David's
song of dedication when the ark was brought up
to Jerusalem (i Chron. xvi. ,^4). and \Ve find also
<hat on the same occasion a body of men, Heman
and Jeduthun and others, were told ofif expressly
*' to give thanks to the Lord, because His mercy
endureth for ever" (i Chron. xvi. 41). This,
indeed, is the great truth which gives the Old
Testament its highest interest and beauty. In
the New Testament, in its evangelical setting, it
shines with incomparable brightness. Vividly
realised, it makes the Christian's cup to flow
over; as it fills him likewise with the hope of a
joy to come — " a joy unspeakable and full of
glory."
CHAPTER IX.
JORDAN DIVIDED.
Joshua iii.
At Joshua's command, the priests carrying the
ark are again in motion. Bearing the sacred
vessel on their shoulders, they make straight for
the bank of the river. " The exact spot is un-
known; it certainly cannot be that which the
Greek tradition has fixed, where the eastern
banks are sheer precipices of ten or fifteen feet
high. Probably it was either immediately above
or below, where the clifYs break away; above at
the fords, or below where the river assumes a
tamer character on its way to the Dead Sea." *
Following the priests, at the interval of a full
half-mile, was the host of Israel. " There was the
mailed warrior with sword and shield, and the
aged patriarch, trembling on his staf?. Anxious
mothers and timid maidens were there, and help-
less infants of a day old; and there, too, were
flocks and herds and all the possessions of a great
nation migrating westward in search of a home.
Before them lay their promised inheritance,
' While Jordan rolled between,'
full to the brim, and overflowing all its banks.
Nevertheless, through it lies their road, and
God commands the march. The priests take up
the sacred ark and bear it boldly down to the
brink; when lo! 'the waters which came down
from above stood and rose up upon a heap very
far from the city Adam, that is before Zaretan:
and those that came down toward the sea of the
plain, even the Salt Sea, failed, and were cut ofif:
and the people passed over right against Jericho.'
And thus, too, has all-conquering faith carried
the thousand times ten thousand of God's people
in triumph through the Jordan of death to the
Canaan of eternal rest." f
The description of the parting of the waters is
clear enough in the main, though somewhat ob-
scure in detail. The obscurity arises from the
meaningless expression in the Authorized Ver-
sion, " very far from the city Adam, which is be-
side Zaretan." The Revised rendering gives a
much more natural meaning — " rose up in one
heap, very far ofif, at Adam, the city that is
beside Zarethan." The names Adam and Zare-
tan occur nowhere else in Scripture, nor are thej'
mentioned by Josephus; some think we have a
relic of Adam in the first part of ed-Damieh,
the name of a ford, and others, following
the rendering of the Septuagint, which has J'ws
[xipovs Kapia6iapl/x, consider the final " arim " to be
equivalent to " adim " or " adam," the Hebrew
letter " r " being almost the same as " d." What
we are taught is, that the waters were cut
ofif from the descending river a long way up.
while do\^n below the whole channsl was laid
bare as far as the Dead Sea. The miracle in-
volved an accumulation of water in the upper
reaches of the river, and as it was obviously
undesirable that this should continue for a long
time, enough of the channel was laid bare to
enable the great host to cross rapidly in a broad
belt, and without excitement or confusion. The
sceptical objection is completely obviated that it
♦Stanley's " Sinai and Palestine," p. 303.
+•'• Land and Book," vol. ii., pp. 460-61.
66o
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
was physically impossible for so vast a host to
make the passage in a short time.
As soon as the waters began to retreat, after
the feet of the priests were planted in them, the
priests passed on to the middle of the channel,
and stood there " firm, on dry ground," until
all the people were passed clean over. The vast
host crossed at once, and drew up on the oppo-
site bank. That no attempt was made by the
men of Jericho, which was only about five miles
off, to attack them and stop their passage, can
be explained only on the supposition that they
were stricken with panic. One inhabitant un-
doubtedly heard of the passage without surprise.
Rahab could feel no astonishment that the arm
of God should thus be made bare before the peo-
ple whom He was pledged to protect and guide.
As little could she wonder at the paralysis which
had petrified her own people.
The priests passed on before the people, and
stood firm in the midst of the river until the
whole host had passed. It was both a becoming
thing that they should go before, and that they
should stand so firm. It is not always that
either priests or Christian ministers have set
the example of going before in any hazardous
undertaking. They have not always moved so
steadily in the van of great movements, nor stood
so firmly in the midst of the river. What shall
we say of those whose idea, whether of Hebrew
priesthood or of Christian ministry, has been that
of a mere office, that of men ordained to perform
certain mechanical functions, in whom personal
character and personal example signified little or
nothing? Is it not infinitely nearer to the Bible
view that the ministers of religion are the leaders
of the people, and that they ought as such to be
ever foremost in zeal, in holiness, in self-denial,
in victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil?
And of all men ought they not to stand firm?
Where are Mr. Byends, and Mr. Facing-Both-
Ways, and Mr. Worldly-Wiseman more out of
place than in the ministry? Where does even the
world look more for consistency and devotion
and fearless regard to the will of God? What
should we think of an army where the officers
counted it enough to see to the drill and disci-
pline of the men, and in the hour of battle con-
fined themselves to mere, mechanical duties, and
were outstripped in self-denial, in courage, in
dash and daring by the commonest of their sol-
diers? Happy the Church where the officers
are officers indeed! Feeling ever that their place
is in the front rank of the battle and in the van-
guard of every perilous enterprise, and that it
is their part to set the men an example of un-
wavering firmness even when the missiles of
death are whistling or bursting on every side!
Who shall try to picture the feelings of the
people during that memorable crossing? The
outstretched arm of God was even. more visibly
shown than in the crossing of the Red Sea, for
in that case a natural cause, the strong east wind,
contributed something to the effect, wMle in this
case no secondary cause was employed, the dry-
ing up of the channel being due solely to miracle.
Who among all that host could fail to feel that
God was with them? And how solemn yet
cheering must the thought have been alike to the
men of war looking forward to scenes of danger
and death, and to the women and children, and
the aged and infirm, dreading otherwise lest they
should be trampled down amid the tumult! But
of all whose hearts were moved by the marvel-
lous transaction, Joshua must have been pre-
eminent. " As I was with Moses, so I will be
with thee." At the dividing of the sea the leader-
ship of Moses began, and they were all baptised
unto him in the cloud and in the sea. 'And now,
in like manner, the leadership of Joshua begins
at the dividing of the river, and baptism unto
Joshua takes the place of baptism unto Moses.
A new chapter of an illustrious history begins
as its predecessor had begun, but not to be
marred and rendered abortive by unbelief and
disobedience like the last. How true God has
been to his word! What wonders He has done
among the people! What honour He has put
upon Joshua! How worthy He is to be praised!
Will disloyalty to Him ever occur again, will this
marvellous deed be forgotten, and the miserable
gods of the heathen be preferred to Jehovah?
Will any future prophet have cause to say, " O
Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee? O Judah,
what shall I do unto thee? For your goodness
is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew, it
goeth away " ?
It is to be especially remarked that God took
into His own hands the prescription of the
method by which this great event was to be
commemorated. It seems as if He could not
trust the people to do it in a way that would be
free from objection and from evil tendency. It
was assumed that the event was worthy of special
commemoration. True, indeed, there had been
no special commemoration of the passage
of the sea, but then the Passover was in-
stituted so near to that event that it might
serve as a memorial of it as well as of
the protection of the Israelites when the
firstborn of the Egyptians was slain. And gen-
erally the people had been taught, what their
own hearts in some degree recognised, that great
mercies should be specially commemorated. The
Divine method of commemorating the drying up
of the Jordan was a very simple one. In the first
place, twelve men were selected, one from every
tribe, to do the prescribed work. The demo-
cratic constitution of the nation was recognised
— each tribe was tc take part in it; and as it was
a matter in which all were concerned, each person
was to take part in the election of the representa-
tive of his tribe. Then each of these twelve
representatives was to take from the bed of the
river, from the place where the priests had stood
with the ark, a stone, probably as large as he
could carry. The twelve stones were to be car-
ried to the place where the host lodged that
night, and to be erected as a standing memorial
of the miracle. It was a very simple memorial,
but it was all that was needed. It was not like
the proud temples or glorious pyramids of Egypt,
reared as these were to give glory to man more
than to God. It was like Jacob's pillar before,
or Samuel's Ebenezer afterwards; void of every
ornament or marking that could magnify man,
and designed for one single purpose — to recall
the goodness of God.
It would appear, from chap. iv. 9, that two sets
of stones were set up; Joshua, following the
spirit of the Divine direction, having caused a
second set to be erected in the middle of the
river on the spot where the priests had stood.
Some have supposed that that verse is an inter-
polation of later date; but, as it occurs in all the
manuscripts, and as it is expressly stated in the
Septuagint and Vulgate versions that this was a
different transaction from the other, we must ac-
Joshua iii.]
JORDAN DIVIDED.
66i
cept it as such. The one memorial stood on the
spot where the ark had indicated the presence of
God, the other where the first encampment of the
host had shown God's faithfuhiess to His word.
Both seemed to proclaim the great truth after-
wards brought out in the exquisite words of
the psalm — " God is our refuge and strength;
a very present help in time of trouble." They
might not be needed so much for the generation
that experienced the deliverance; but in future
generations they would excite the curiosity of the
children, and thus afford an opportunity to the
parents to rehearse the transactions of that day,
and thrill their hearts with the sense of God's
mercy.
Among devout Israelites, that day was never
forgotten. The crossing of the Jordan was
coupled with the crossing of the sea, as the two
crowning tokens of God's mercy in the history
of Israel, and the most remarkable exhibitions
of that Divine power which had been so often
shown among them. In that wailing song, the
seventy-fourth psalm, where God's wonderful
works of old are contrasted in a very sad spirit
with the unmitigated desolations that met the
writer's eye, almost in the same breath in which
he extols the miracle of the sea, " Thou didst
divide the sea by Thy strength," he gives thanks
for the miracle of the river, " Thou didst cleave
the fountain and the flood: Thou driedst up
mighty rivers." And in a song, not of wailing,
but of triumph, the hundred and fourteenth
psalm, we have the same combination: —
" When Israel went forth out of Egypt,
The house of Jacob from a people of strange language ;
Judah became His .sanctuary,
Israel His dominion.
The sea saw it, and fled ;
Jordan was driven back.
The mountains skipped like rams,
The little hills like lambs.
What aileth thee. O thou sea, that thou fleest?
Thou Jordan, that thou turnest back ?
Ye mountains, that ye skip like rams;
Ye little hills like lambs ?
Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord,
At the presence of the God of Jacob ;
Which turned the rock into a pool of water,
The flint into a fountain of waters."
The point of this psalm lies in the first verse
— in the reference to the time " when Israel came
out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people
of strange language." Israel on that occasion
gave a signal proof of his trust in God. At
God's bidding, and with none but God to trust in,
he turned his back on Egypt, and made for the
wilderness. It was a delight to God to receive
this mark of trust and obedience, and in recogni-
tion of it the mightiest masses and forces of
nature were moved or arrested. The mountains
and hills skipped like living creatures, and the
sea saw it and fled. It seemed as if God could
not do too much for His people. It was the
same spirit that was shown when they followed
Joshua to the river. They showed that they
trusted God. They renounced the visible and the
tangible for the invisible and the spiritual. They
rose up at Joshua's command, or rather at the
conmtand of God by Joshua; and, pleased with
this mark of trust. God caused the waters of the
Jordan to part asunder. Surely there is some-
thing pathetic in this; the Almighty is so pleased
when His children trust Him, that to serve them
the strongest forces are moved about as if they
were but feathers.
In many ways the truth has been exemplified
in later times. When a young convert, at home
or abroad, takes up decided ground for Christ,
coming out from the world and becoming sepa-
rate, very blessed tokens of God's nearness and
of God's interest are usually given him. And
Churches that at the call of Christ surrender their
worldly advantages, receive tokens of spiritual
blessing that infinitely outweigh in sweetness
and in spiritual value all that they lose. " Them
that honour Me, I will honour."
Occurrences of more recent times show clearly
that God did well in taking into His own hands
the prescription of the way in which the crossing
of the Jordan was to be commemorated. Tradi-
tion has it that it was at the same place where
Joshua crossed that Jesus was baptised by John.
That may well be doubted, for the Bethabara
where John was baptising was probably at a
higher point of the river. But it is quite possible
that it was at this spot that Elijah's mantle smote
the river, and he and his servant passed over on
dry ground. Holding that all these events oc-
curred at the same place, tradition has called in
the aid of superstition, and given a sacred char-
acter to the waters of the river at this spot.
Many have seen, and every one has read of the
pilgrimage to the Jordan, performed every
spring, from which many hope to reap such ad-
vantage. " In the mosaics of the earliest
churches at Rome and Ravenna," says Dean
Stanley, " before Christian and pagan art were
yet divided, the Jordan appears as a river god
pouring his streams out of his urn. The first
Christian emperor had always hoped to receive
his long-deferred baptism in the Jordan, up to
the moment when the hand of death struck him
at Nicomedia. . . . Protestants, as well as Greeks
and Latins, have delighted to carry off its waters
for the same sacred purpose to the remotest re-
gions of the West."
No doubt the expectation of spiritual benefit
from the waters of the Jordan is one cause of the
annual pilgrimage thither, and of the strange
scene that presents itself when the pilgrims are
bathing. It seems impossible for man, except
under the influence of the strongest spiritual
views, to avoid the belief that somehow mechan-
ical means may give rise to spiritual results.
There is nothing from which he is naturally mort
averse than spiritual activity. Any amount of
mechanical service he will often render to save
him from spiritual exercise. Symbols without
number he will willingly provide, if he thereby
escape the necessity of going into the immediate
presence of God, and worshipping Him who is a
spirit in spirit and in truth. But can mechan-
ical service or material symbols be anything but
an evil, if the would-l?e worshipper is thereby
prevented from recognising the necessity of a
heart-to-heart fellowship with the living God?
Must we not be in living touch with God if the
stream of Divine influence is to reach our hearts,
and we are to be changed into His image? In
the Psalms, which express the very essence of
Hebrew devotion, spiritual contact with God is
the only source of blessing. " O God, Thou art
my God; early will I seek Thee: my soul thirst-
eth for Thee, my flesh longeth for Thee in a
dry and thirsty land, where there is no water.
To see Thy power and Thy glory, so as I have
seen Thee in the sanctuary."
Thus it was that by God's prescription the
twelve plain stones taken out of the Jordan were
the only memorial of the great deliverance.
There was no likeness on them of the Divine Be-
66:
THE BOOK OF JOSHUA.
ing by whom the miracle had been performed.
There was nothing to encourage acts of rever-
ence or worship directed toward the memorial.
Twelve rough stones, with no sculptured figures
or symbols, not even dressed by hammer and
chisel, but simply as they were taken out of the
river, were the memorial. They were adapted
for one purpose, and for one only: " When your
children shall ask their fathers in time to come,
saying, What mean these stones? then ye shall
let your children know, saying, Israel came over
this Jordan on dry land. For the Lord your
God dried up the waters of the Jordan from be-
fore you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord
your God did to the Red Sea, which He dried up
from before us, until we were gone over: that all
the people of the earth might know the hand of
the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the
Lord your God for ever."
CHAPTER X.
CIRCUMCISION AND PASSOVER— MANNA
AND CORN.
Joshua v. 1-12.
The first two facts recorded in this chapter
seem to be closely connected with each other.
One is, that when all the Amorite and Canaanite
kings on the west side of the Jordan heard of the
miraculous drying up of the waters and the
passage of the Israelites, " their heart melted,
neither was there spirit in them any more." The
other is, that the opportunity was taken then and
there to circumcise the whole of the generation
that had been born after leaving Egypt. But
for the fact recorded in the first verse, it would
have been the most unsuitable time that could
be conceived for administering circumcision.
The whole male population would have been ren-
dered helpless for the time, and an invitation
would have been given to the men of Jericho to
commit such a massacre as in the like circum-
stances the sons of Jacob inflicted on the men
of Shechem (Gen. xxxiv. 25). Why was not
this business of circumcising performed while
the host were lying inactive on the other side,
and while the Jordan ran between Israel and his
foes? It was because the kings of the Canaan-
ites were petrified. It is true they plucked up
courage by-and-by, and many of the kings
cMTtcred into a league against Joshua. But this
was after the affair of Ai, after the defeat of the
Israelites before that city had showed that, as in
the case of Achilles, there was a vulnerable spot
somewhere, notwithstanding the protection of
their God. Meanwhile the people of Jericho
were paralysed, for though the whole male popu-
lation of Israel under forty lay helpless in their
tents, not a finger was raised by the enemy
against them.
It is with no little surprise that we read that
circumcision had been suspended during the long
period of the wilderness sojourn. Why was
this? Some have said that, owing to the cir-
cumstances in which the people were, it would
not have been convenient, perhaps hardly pos-
sible, to administer the rite on the eighth day.
Moving as they were from place to place, the
administration of circumcision would often have
caused so much pain and peril to the child, that
it is no wonder it was delayed. And once de-
layed, it was delayed indefinitely. But this ex-
planation is not sufficient. There were long,
very long periods of rest, during which there
could have been no difficulty. A better expla-
nation, brought forward by Calvin, leads us to
connect the suspension of circumcision with the
punishment of the Israelites, and with the sen-
tence that doomed them to wander forty years
in the wilderness. When the worship of the
golden calf took place, the nation was rejected,
and the breaking by Moses of the two tables of
stone seemed an appropriate sequel to the rup-
ture of the covenant which their idolatry had
caused. And though they were soon restored,
they were not restored without certain draw-
backs,— tokens of the Divine displeasure. After-
wards, at the great outburst of unbelief in con-
nection with the report of the spies, the adult
generation that had come out of Egypt were
doomed to perish in the wilderness, and, with
the exception of Joshua and Caleb, not one of
them was permitted to enter the land of promise.
Now, though it is not expressly stated, it seems
probable that the suspension of circumcision
was included in the punishment of their sins.
They were not to be allowed to place on their
children the sign and seal of a covenant which
in spirit and in reality they had broken.
But it was not an abolition, but only a suspen-
sion of the sacrament for a time that took place.
The time might come when it would be restored.
The natural time for this would be the end of
the forty years of chastisement. These forty
years had now come to an end. Doubtless it
would have been a great joy to Moses if it had
been given him to see the restoration of cir-
cumcision, but that was not to take place until
the people had set foot on Abraham's land.
Now they have crossed the river. They have
entered on the very land which God sware to
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to give it them.
And the very first thing that is done after this
is to give back to them the holy sign of the cove-
nant, which was now administered to every man
in the congregation who had not previously re
ceived it. We may well think of it as an occa-
sion of great rejoicing. The visible token ot his
being one of God's children was now borne by
every man and boy in the camp. In a sense
they now served themselves heirs to the cove-
nant made with their fathers, and might thus
rest with firmer trxist on the promise — " I will
bless them that bless thee, and curse him that
curseth thee."
Two other points in connection with this trans-
action demand a word of explanation. The first
is the statement that " all the people that were
born in the wilderness by the way as they came
forth out of Egypt, them they had not circum-
cised " (ver. 5). If the view be correct that the
suspension of circumcision was part of the pun-
ishment for their sins, the prohibition would not
come into operation for some months, at all
events, after the exodus from Egypt. We think,
with Calvin, that for the sake of 'brevity the
sacred historian makes a general statement with-
out waiting to explain the exceptions to which
it was subject. The other point needing expla-
nation is the Lord's statement after the circum-
cision— " This day have I rolled the reproach of
Egypt from ofif you. Wherefore the name of
the place is called Gilgal (/. e.. Rolling) unto
this day." How could the suspension of cir-
cumcision be called the reproach of Egypt? The
Joshua V. I-I2.]
CIRCUMCISION AND PASSOVER.
663
words imply that, owing to the want of this
sacrament, they had lain exposed to a reproach
from the Egyptians, wjiich was now rolled away.
The brevity of the statement, and our ignorance
of what the Egyptians were saying of the Israel-
ites at the time, make the words difficult to
understand. What seems most likely is, that
when the Egyptians heard how God had all but
repudiated them in the wilderness, and had with-
drawn from them the sign of His covenant, they
malignantly crowed over them, and denounced
them as a worthless race, who had first rejected
their lawful rulers in Egypt under pretext of
religion, and, having shown their hypocrisy,
were now scorned and cast off by the very God
whom they had professed themselves so eager
to serve. We may be sure that the Egyptians
would not be slow to seize any pretext for de-
nouncing the Israelites, and would be sure to
make their jibes as sharp and as bitter as they
could. But now the tables are turned on the
Egyptians. The restoration of circumcision
stamps this people once more as the people of
God. The stupendous miracle just wrought in
the dividing of the Jordan indicates the kind of
protection which their God and King is sure to
extend to them. The name of Gilgal will be a
perpetual testimony that the reproach of Egypt
is rolled away.
Circumcision beftig now duly performed, the
way was prepared for another holy rite for which
the appointed season had arrived — the Passover.
Some have supposed that the Passover as well
as circumcision was suspended after the sen-
tence of the forty years' wandering, the more
especially that it was expressly enacted that no
uncircumcised person was to eat the Passover.
We know (Num. ix. 5) that the Passover was
kept the second year after they left Egypt, but
no other reference to it occurs in the history.
On this, as on many other points connected with
the wilderness history, we must be content to re-
main in ignorance. We are not even very sure
how far the ordinary sacrifices were offered dur-
ing that period. It is quite possible that the
considerations that suspended the rite of cir-
cumcision applied to other ordinances. But
whether or not the Passover was observed in the
wilderness, we may easily understand that after
being circumcised the people would observe it
Avith a much happier and more satisfied feeling.
There were many things to make this Passover
memorable. The crossing of the Jordan was so
]ike the crossing of the Red Sea that the celebra-
tion in Egypt could not fail to come back vividly
to all the older people, — those that were under
twenty at the exodus, to whom the sentence of
exclusion from Canaan did not apply (Num.
xiv. 29). Many of these must have looked on
while their fathers sprinkled the lintels and door
posts with the blood of the lamb, and must have
listened to the awful death-cry of the firstborn
of the Egyptians. They must have remembered
well that memorable midnight when all were in
such excitement marching away from Egypt;
and not less vividly must they have remembered
the terror that seized them when the Egyptian
host was seen in pursuit; and then again the
thrill of triumph with which they passed be-
tween the crystal walls, under the glow of the
fiery pillar; and once more the triumphant notes
of Miriam's timbrel and the voices of the women.
" Sing unto the Lord, for He hath triu 
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